The Gospel of the resurrection of Jesus Christ begins with the journey of the women to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week. They go to anoint and honour the Lord’s body, but they find the tomb open and empty. The angel says to them: “Do not be afraid!” and sends them to tell the disciples: “He has been raised from the dead, and he is going ahead of you to Galilee!” The women depart and on the way, Jesus himself meets them.

After the death of their Master, the disciples scattered; their faith shaken, their certainties crumbled, their hopes dead. But the message of the women, incredible as it was, came to them like a ray of light in the darkness. News began to spread: Jesus is risen! Then there was his command to go to Galilee; the women had heard it first from the angel, and again from Jesus himself. Galilee: the place where they were first called, where everything began! They must return to the place where Jesus had walked along the lakeshore, where he called them, where they left everything and followed him.

For each of us, too, there is a “Galilee” at the origin of our journey with Jesus. We are all called to “go to Galilee”: to rediscover our baptism as a living fountainhead, to draw new energy from the sources of our faith, and from our own Christian experience. To return to Galilee is to go back to that blazing light with which God’s grace touched me at the very start of my journey. From that flame I can light a fire, bringing warmth and light to my brothers and sisters, re-igniting within myself a joy – a good, gentle joy – which sorrow and distress can never take away.

In the life of every Christian, there is also a more existential “Galilee”: the experience of a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, who called me to follow him and to share in his mission. Treasure in your heart the living memory of that call, when Jesus passed your way, when he gazed at you with mercy and asked you to follow him. Relive that moment when his eyes met yours, when you knew that he loved you.

What is my Galilee? Where is it? Do I remember it? Have I forgotten it? Have I gone off on roads and paths which made me neglect it? Lord, help me: show me my Galilee, so that I may return there to encounter you and to be embraced by your mercy. The Gospel of Easter is clear: we need to go back there, to see Jesus risen, to become witnesses of his resurrection. This is not going backward, a kind of nostalgia. It is returning to our first love, receiving the fire which Jesus has kindled in the world, bringing that fire to all people, to the very ends of the earth. Let us live as Easter people: as witnesses to that light and fire, to the love of Christ, who rose triumphant over death. Pope Francis