In this week’s General Audience, Pope Leo XIV continued his catechesis on the Passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus by meditating with the Last Supper on how forgiveness is always possible, even after bitter betrayal or disappointment.
In what is “one of the most striking and luminous gestures in the Gospel,” Jesus, during the Last Supper, “offers a morsel to the one who is about to betray Him. It is not only a gesture of sharing: it is much more; it is love’s last attempt not to give up,” the Pope said.
>> Pope Leo continues Last Supper meditation with reflection on betrayal, love, conversion <<
The Pontiff related that Jesus, knowing now is His hour, does not withdraw, accuse, or defend Himself, but rather continues loving — by washing the Apostles’ feet, sharing bread, and offering — to the end, as chapter 13 of John’s Gospel states.
Pope Leo said, “To love until the end: here is the key to understanding Christ’s heart. A love that does not cease in the face of rejection, disappointment, even ingratitude.”
Jesus says the one to whom He gives the morsel is the one who will betray Him — and then He offers it to Judas.
“With this simple and humble gesture, Jesus carries His love forward and to its depths, not because He is ignoring what is happening, but precisely because He sees it clearly,” Pope Leo said. “He has understood that the freedom of the other, even when it is lost in evil, can still be reached by the light of a meek gesture, because He knows that true forgiveness does not await repentance, but offers itself first, as a free gift, even before it is accepted.”
The Gospel relates that after Judas took the morsel, “Satan entered him,” and Pope Leo said that here, where evil seems to manifest “after love showed its most defenseless face,” tells a crucial fact about salvation.
“[I]t tells us that God does everything — absolutely everything — to reach us, even in the hour when we reject Him,” he said. “It is here that forgiveness reveals all its power and manifests the true face of hope. It is not forgetfulness; it is not weakness. It is the ability to set the other free, while loving him to the end. Jesus’ love does not deny the truth of pain, but it does not allow evil to have the last word.”
The faithful are also called to participate in this radical forgiveness, the Pope said.
“How many relationships are broken, how many stories become complicated, how many unspoken words remain suspended,” he continued. “And yet the Gospel shows us that there is always a way to continue to love, even when everything seems irredeemably compromised. To forgive does not mean to deny evil, but to prevent it from generating further evil. It is not to say that nothing has happened, but to do everything possible to ensure that resentment does not determine the future.”
The Gospel relates that it was night when Judas leaves the room, but Jesus then says, “Now is the Son of Man glorified.” Though it is still dark, there is a light already beginning to shine, Pope Leo said, “because Christ remains faithful to the end, and so his love is stronger than hatred.”
“Dear brothers and sisters, we too experience painful and difficult nights,” he continued. “Nights of the soul, nights of disappointment, nights in which someone has hurt or betrayed us. In those moments, the temptation is to close ourselves up, to protect ourselves, to return the blow. But the Lord shows us the hope that that another way exists, always exists. He teaches us that one can offer a morsel even to someone who turns their back on us. That one can respond with the silence of trust. And that we can move forward with dignity, without renouncing love.”
He encouraged the faithful to pray for the grace to be able to forgive even when feeling misunderstood or abandoned.
“Because it is precisely in those hours that love can reach its pinnacle,” he said. “As Jesus teaches us, to love means to leave the other free — even to betray — without ever ceasing to believe that even that freedom, wounded and lost, can be snatched from the deception of darkness and returned to the light of goodness.”
Forgiveness is never futile, even if the other person rejects it, because “forgiveness frees those who give it: it dispels resentment, it restores peace, it returns us to ourselves,” he concluded. “Jesus, with the simple gesture of offering bread, shows that every betrayal can become an opportunity for salvation, if it is chosen as a space for a greater love. It does not give in to evil, but conquers it with good, preventing it from extinguishing what is truest in us: the capacity to love.”
>> Pope Leo calls for Aug 22 to be day of prayer and fasting for peace <<
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Author: McKenna Snow
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