In the General Audience of this Wednesday, October 15, 2025, Pope Leo XIV continued the cycle of catechesis for the 2025 Jubilee focused on Christian hope. In his reflection, he emphasized that the Risen Jesus is not just another event in history, but the fact that transformed it from within. The Pontiff recalled that life is not made for lack but for fullness, and that the Risen One is the source that quenches the deep thirst of the human heart. With words full of hope, he underlined that Christ walks with us amid tiredness, trials, and sufferings, and is the only one capable of leading us to the definitive goal: eternal life in God.
We leave below the complete message of Leo XIV:
GENERAL AUDIENCE
St. Peter’s Square
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Catechesis cycle – 2025 Jubilee. Jesus Christ, our hope. IV. The resurrection of Christ and the challenges of the current world. 1. The Risen One, living source of human hope. (Jn 10,7.9-10)
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!
In the catecheses of the Jubilee Year, up to this point, we have journeyed through the life of Jesus following the Gospels, from birth to death and resurrection. In this way, our pilgrimage in hope has found its firm foundation, its secure path. Now, in the last part of the journey, we will allow the mystery of Christ, which culminates in the Resurrection, to release its light of salvation in contact with the current human and historical reality, with its questions and its challenges.
Our life is marked by countless events, full of nuances and different experiences. Sometimes we feel joyful, other times sad, other times even satisfied, or stressed, gratified or demotivated. We live very busy, we focus on achieving results, we even reach high, prestigious goals. And vice versa, we remain suspended, precarious, waiting for successes and recognitions that are slow to arrive or never arrive. In summary, we find ourselves experiencing a paradoxical situation: we would like to be happy, but it is very difficult to achieve it in a continuous and shadow-free way. We accept our limitations and, at the same time, we have the irrepressible impulse to try to overcome them. Deep down, we feel that something is always missing.
In truth, we have not been created for lack, but for fullness, to enjoy life and life in abundance, according to the expression of Jesus in the Gospel of John (cf. 10:10).
This great desire of our heart can find its ultimate answer not in roles, not in power, not in possessions, but in the certainty that this constitutive impulse of our humanity exists and is given to us freely, coinciding with hope. Disappointment lurks when hope is based on unstable foundations; what sustains us is thinking optimistically: often optimism disappoints us, seeing how our expectations implode, while hope promises and fulfills.
Brothers and sisters, the Risen Jesus is the guarantee of this arrival! He is the source that quenches our burning thirst, the infinite thirst for fullness that the Holy Spirit infuses into our heart. The Resurrection of Christ, in fact, is not a simple event in human history, but the event that transformed it from within.
Let us think of a spring of water. What are its characteristics? It quenches and refreshes creatures, waters the earth, the plants, makes fertile and alive what would otherwise be arid. It relieves the tired traveler by offering the joy of an oasis of coolness. A spring appears as a free gift for nature, for its creatures, for human beings. Without water, one cannot live.
The Risen One is the living spring that does not dry up and does not undergo alterations. It remains always pure and ready for everyone who is thirsty. And the more we taste the mystery of God, the more it attracts us, without ever being completely satisfied. St. Augustine, in the tenth book of the Confessions, captures this insatiable longing of our heart and expresses it in the famous Hymn to Beauty: «You breathed forth your fragrance and I drew it in, and now I sigh for you; I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst; you touched me, and now I burn for your peace» (X, 27, 38).
Jesus, with his Resurrection, has assured us a permanent source of life: He is the Living One (cf. Acts 1:18), the lover of life, the victor over every death. That is why He is capable of offering us relief on the earthly journey and assuring us perfect rest in eternity. Only the dead and risen Jesus responds to the deepest questions of our heart: is there really a point of arrival for us? Does our existence have meaning? And the suffering of so many innocents, how can it be redeemed?
The Risen Jesus does not drop an answer «from above,» but makes Himself our companion on this often tiring, painful, mysterious journey. Only He can fill our empty jar when thirst becomes unbearable.
And He is also the point of arrival of our walking. Without His love, the journey of life would become a wandering without a goal, a tragic mistake with a lost destiny. We are fragile creatures. Error is part of our humanity, it is the wound of sin that makes us fall, give up, despair. To rise again, however, means to get up again and set out once more. The Risen One guarantees the arrival, leads us home, where we are awaited, loved, saved. Making the journey with Him at our side means experiencing being sustained despite everything, discovering unprecedented strengths in trials and fatigues that, like heavy stones, threaten to block or divert our story.
Dear ones, from the Resurrection of Christ springs the hope that makes us taste in advance, despite the fatigues of life, a deep and joyful stillness: that peace which He alone will be able to give us at the end, endlessly.
Source: Holy See, General Audience of Leo XIV, 10.15.2025.