Pope at Audience: Even at darkest moment, never too late to love and forgive

During his weekly General Audience, Pope Leo XIV illustrates to the faithful how Jesus’ love, despite being betrayed, did not allow evil to have the last word, and “that there is always a way to continue to love, even when everything seems irredeemably compromised.”

By Deborah Castellano Lubov

VATICAN CITY — “Let us ask today for the grace to be able to forgive, even when we do not feel understood, even when we feel abandoned.”

Pope Leo XIV gave this recommendation during his weekly General Audience on Wednesday morning—his first public event in the Vatican since departing from Castel Gandolfo on Tuesday evening.

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Due to the Roman heat, the audience took place inside the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall. Regardless, the Holy Father still stopped over to greet faithful who were not able to fit into the Hall and were instead in other locations nearby to stay out of the extreme temperatures.

The Lord’s forgiving love

Continuing his series of catecheses on the Jubilee theme of ‘Christ our Hope,’ the Holy Father focused this week on Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection by considering the Lord’s forgiving love, especially how the Lord, despite His having been betrayed, loves His disciples until the end.

Pope Leo specifically explored a “striking and luminous gesture” in the Gospel, in which 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,” the Pope said, but rather “it is much more; it is love’s last attempt not to give up.”

“To love until the end: here,” Pope Leo continued, “is the key to understanding Christ’s heart. A love that does not cease in the face of rejection, disappointment, even ingratitude.”

Jesus does not submit 

“Jesus knows the time, but He does not submit to it: He chooses it. It is He who recognizes the moment in which his love must pass through the most painful wound, that of betrayal. And instead of withdrawing, accusing, defending Himself… He continues to love: He washes the feet, dips the bread and offers it. ‘It is the one to whom I hand the morsel after I have dipped it.’” 

With this simple and humble gesture, Pope Leo said, “Jesus carries His love forward and to its depths, not because He is ignoring what is happening, but precisely because He sees it clearly.”

“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.”

Forgiveness reveals and manifests hope

Unfortunately Judas, Pope Leo observed, does not understand, and “after the morsel—says the Gospel—’Satan entered him.’”

“This passage strikes us,” the Pope said, “as if evil, hidden until then, manifested itself after love showed its most defenseless face. And precisely for this reason, brothers and sisters, that morsel is our salvation: because it tells us that God does everything—absolutely everything—to reach us, even in the hour when we reject Him.”

It is here, the Holy Father said, 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,” Pope Leo explained, “does not deny the truth of pain, but it does not allow evil to have the last word.”

There is always a way to continue to love

This, the Holy Father said, is the mystery Jesus accomplishes for us, in which we too, at times, are called to participate.

“How many relationships are broken, how many stories become complicated, how many unspoken words remain suspended,” he reflected, while observing, “And yet the Gospel shows us that there is always a way to continue to love, even when everything seems irredeemably compromised.”

“And yet the Gospel shows us that there is always a way to continue to love, even when everything seems irredeemably compromised…”

To forgive, the Pope said, 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.”

Countering temptation with the Lord

“Dear brothers and sisters, we too experience painful and difficult nights,” the Pope recognized, saying we experience ” nights of the soul, nights of disappointment, nights in which someone has hurt or betrayed us.” In those moments, he acknowledged, “the temptation is to close ourselves up, to protect ourselves, to return the blow.”

“But the Lord,” the Holy Father reassured, “shows us the hope that another way 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.”

And thus, the Pope invited the faithful today to ask the Lord for the ability to forgive, even when they feel abandoned or misunderstood, because it is precisely in those hours that love can reach its pinnacle.

“As Jesus teaches us,” the Pope marveled, “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.”

Jesus shows each betrayal presents opportunity for salvation

The Pope said that when the light of forgiveness “succeeds in filtering through the deepest crevices of the heart,” “we understand that it is never futile.”

“Even if the other does not accept it, even if it seems to be in vain,” Pope Leo said, “forgiveness frees those who give it: it dispels resentment, it restores peace, and it returns us to ourselves.”

Hence, Pope Leo XIV 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.”

Vatican News