At 10.00 this morning, Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord, the Holy Father Francis presided at the solemn celebration of the Mass of the day on the parvis of the Vatican Basilica.

The celebration, which began with the rite of the “Resurrexit”, was attended by Roman faithful and pilgrims from every part of the world for the Easter holidays.

The following is the text of the off-the-cuff homily that Pope Francis pronounced during the Holy Mass, after the proclamation of the Gospel:

Homily of the Holy Father

After listening to the Word of God, of this passage of the Gospel, it comes to me to say three things.

The first: the announcement. There is an announcement: the Lord is risen. That announcement that, since the first times of Christians went from mouth to mouth; it was the greeting, “The Lord is risen”. And the women, who went to anoint the body of the Lord, found before them a surprise. The surprise… God’s announcements are always surprises, because our God is the God of surprises. And in this way, since the beginning of the history of salvation, of our father Abraham, God surprises you: “But go, go, leave, go away from your land and go”. And there is always one surprise after another. God does not make announcements without surprising us. And the surprise is what moves the heart, which touches you right there, where you do not expect it. To say it using the language of the young: surprise is a low blow; you don’t expect it. And He comes and moves you. First: the announcement as a surprise.

Second: hurry. The women run, they go in haste to say: “But we have found this!”. God’s surprises put us in motion, immediately, without waiting. And so they run to see. And Peter and John run. The shepherds, that Christmas night, ran: “Let us go to Bethlehem to see what the angels told us about”. And the Samaritan woman runs to say to her people: “This is new: I have found a man who told me all that I have done”. And the people knew the things that she had done. And those people, they run, they leave what they are doing, even the housewife leaves the potatoes in the pan – she will find them burned – but the important thing is to go, to run, to see that surprise, that announcement. It happens today too. In our neighbourhoods, in the villages when something out of the ordinary happens, the people run to see. They go in haste. Andrew wasted no time and went to Peter in haste to say to him, “We have found the Messiah”. Surprises, good news, are always given thus: in haste. In the Gospel there is one who takes a little time; he does not want to risk. But the Lord is good, He awaits him with love, it is Thomas. “I will believe when I see the wounds”, he says. And the Lord also has patience for those who do not go in such haste.

The surprise announcement, the response of haste, and the third that I would like to say to you today is a question: “And me? Is my heart open to God’s surprises, am I able to go in haste or always with that refrain, “But tomorrow I will see, tomorrow, tomorrow”? What does surprise say to me? John and Peter went in haste to the tomb. Of John the Gospel says, “He believed”. Peter too: he believed, but in his own way, with faith mixed with the remorse of having denied the Lord. The announcement made as a surprise, running in haste, and the question, “And I, today, at Easter 2018, what do I do? You, what do you do?