Pope Leo continues his reflection on Vatican II

With weather conditions allowing, Pope Leo XIV held the General Audience once again in St. Peter’s Square, after several weeks of winter catecheses inside the Paul VI Hall. The return outdoors came on Ash Wednesday, as the Church begins the penitential season of Lent.

In his ongoing series on the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the Pope turned from Dei Verbum to the Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium (promulgated Nov. 21, 1964). Leo XIV explained that when Vatican II set out to describe the Church, it first sought to clarify her origin — where she comes from and what gives her life.

To do so, the Council drew from the Letters of St. Paul, adopting the term “mystery.” The Pope insisted that this word does not mean something obscure or incomprehensible, as it is sometimes understood in everyday speech. On the contrary, for Paul — especially in the Letter to the Ephesians — “mystery” refers to a reality that was once hidden and is now revealed.

That revealed reality, Leo XIV said, is the plan of God, which has a purpose: to unify all creatures through the reconciling action of Jesus Christ, an action accomplished in his death on the Cross. The Pope noted that this unity is experienced first of all in the assembly gathered for the liturgical celebration. There, differences are “relativized,” because what matters is being together, drawn by the love of Christ who has broken down the wall of separation between persons and social groups (cf. Eph 2:14).

The Pope described how, for St. Paul, the mystery is God’s intention for all humanity, made known in local experiences that gradually expand to include all human beings — and even the cosmos. Human life, he observed, is marked by fragmentation that people are unable to repair on their own, even though the desire for unity lives in the human heart. Into this condition enters the action of Jesus Christ who, through the Holy Spirit, overcomes the forces of division and “the Divider himself.”

To be gathered in worship after believing the Gospel, Leo XIV said, is lived as an attraction exercised by the Cross of Christ — the supreme manifestation of God’s love — and as a recognition of being called together by God. This is why the Church is called ekklesia, an assembly of persons who know they have been convoked.

In this sense, the Pope explained, there is a profound convergence between the mystery and the Church: the Church is the mystery made perceptible. Yet this convocation cannot be limited to a single group; it is destined to become the experience of all.

Leo XIV concluded by citing Lumen gentium’s foundational definition: “The Church is, in Christ, in some way the sacrament — that is, the sign and instrument — of intimate union with God and of the unity of the whole human race” (n. 1). The Council’s language, he said, expresses that the Church is both a sign of what God intends for humanity and an active instrument through which God draws people to himself and reunites them with one another.

Follow along Rome’s Lenten Station Church Itinerary, where I take you to the most ancient churches of Rome as we visit the tombs of martyrs, a tradition dating back to the 5th century. Today, on Ash Wednesday, Pope Leo travels to Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill.