Relentless effort, quick action are not always the answer, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In an overly frenetic world, the Gospel teaches the importance of stopping, resting and trusting in the Lord, Pope Leo XIV said.

"We rush to produce, to prove ourselves, to keep up," the pope said during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square Sept. 17.

"But the Gospel teaches us that knowing how to stop is an act of trust that we must learn to perform," he said, adding that "life does not always depend on what we do, but also on how we know how to take leave of what we have been able to do." 

The day also marked the feast of St. Robert Bellarmine, a 17th-century Jesuit theologian and cardinal, and the name day of Pope Leo, who was born Robert F. Prevost.

"I'd like to thank all of you for expressing your good wishes today on my name day. Thank you so much," he said at the end of the audience.

It was also just a few days after his 70th birthday Sept. 14, and several people in the audience shouted "happy birthday" to the pope when he rode by in the popemobile.

In his main talk, the pope continued his series of reflections on lessons of hope from the Gospel by looking at the mystery of Holy Saturday and Jesus lying buried in the tomb.

For Christians, it is a day of "great silence and joyful expectation," he said, in English. 

"Just as God rested after creating the universe, so did the Son rest after completing the work of redemption, having loved us to the end," he said. "We, too, are invited to find quiet and restful moments amidst the frenzy of our daily activity."

"In the tomb, Jesus, the living word of the Father, is silent," he said in Italian. "But it is precisely in that silence that the new life begins to ferment like a seed in the ground, like the darkness before dawn."

Therefore, the pope said, even when people experience moments that are empty, still, unproductive or "useless," they can turn them into a time of grace and resurrection "if we offer it to God."

"God who lets things be done, who waits, who withdraws to leave us freedom -- he is the God who trusts, even when everything seems to be over," he said.

People should "learn that we do not have to be in a hurry to rise again; first we must stay and welcome the silence, let ourselves be embraced by limitation," he said. 

"At times we seek quick answers, immediate solutions," he said. "But God works in the depths, in the slow time of trust."

"When it seems to us that everything is at a standstill, that life is a blocked road, let us remember Holy Saturday," Pope Leo said. "Even in the tomb, God was preparing the greatest surprise of all."

"If we know how to welcome with gratitude what has been, we will discover that, precisely in smallness and silence, God loves to transfigure reality, making all things new with the fidelity of his love," he said.