Following his brief message, he recited the Regina Caeli, a Latin antiphon honoring the Virgin Mary which is prayed during the Easter Season. From Easter Sunday to Pentecost, Pope Francis will pray the Regina Caeli instead of the Angelus on Sundays.
Pope Francis delivered a brief message before reciting the Regina Caeli prayer on Easter Monday, April 10, 2023. Vatican Media
In his address, the pope reflected on the account in St. Matthew’s Gospel of the women Mary and Mary Magdalene finding the empty tomb and going swiftly to tell the news of Christ’s resurrection to the other disciples.
“Let us run through the scene described in the Gospel: the women arrive, they see the empty tomb and, ‘with fear and great joy,’ they run, the text says, ‘to tell his disciples,’” Francis said.
“Now, just as they are going to give this news, Jesus comes towards them. Let us take good note of this: Jesus encounters them while they are going to announce him. This is beautiful,” the pope said.
He explained that the day’s Gospel reminds us that the women disciples were the first to encounter Jesus after he rose from the dead. “We might ask ourselves: why them? For a very simple reason: because they were the first to go to the tomb.”
“Like all the disciples,” he noted, “they too were suffering because of the way the story of Jesus seemed to have ended; but, unlike the others, they do not stay at home paralyzed by sadness and fear.”
The women’s desire to anoint Jesus’ body with ointments, a gesture of love, prevails over everything else, he said. “They are not discouraged, they overcome their fears and their anguish. This is the way to find the Risen One: to overcome our fears, to overcome our anxieties.”
Pope Francis said the birth of a child is an example of a common moment when someone is overfilled with joy and cannot wait to share a good piece of news.
“One of the first things we do is to share this happy announcement with friends,” he said.