The last homily of Pope Pius XII

Our mouths are filled with the word “love”.

“But I, before anyone else, didn’t know how to define it.

Our mouths are filled with the word “beauty”.

But I, before anyone else, didn’t know how to receive it.

For this, I ask you forgiveness.

Please, forgive me.

At times we confound love with madness.

Beauty with ecstasy.

History has repeated itself.

Madness and ecstasy have once again proven to be irresistible temptations, but they always end the way they did on Ventotene.

With unjust death.

In this case, of a good and innocent priest.

There is a life of happiness to be found in the sphere of gentleness, kindness, mildness, lovingness.

We must learn to be in the world.

And the Church must contemplate the idea of opening up to the love that is possible, in order to fight against the love that is aberrant.

All this, John Paul III, with great humility, calls “the middle way.”

In the past few days I have understood.

It’s not the middle way.

It is the way.

Ever since I came back, you’ve been asking yourselves all sorts of questions.

Is he the father or the son?

Is he God or the Holy Spirit?

Is he man or is he Jesus?

Did he wake up or did he rise from the dead?

Is he a saint or is he an imposter?

Is he Christ or is he the Antichrist?

Is he alive or is he dead?

It doesn’t matter.

You know what is so beautiful about questions?

It’s that we don’t have the answers.

In the end, only God has the answers.

They are his secret.

God’s secret, which only He knows.

That is the mystery in which we believe.

And that is the mystery which guides our conscience.

And now I would like to come down among you, and do what I have wanted to do since the first moment: embrace you, one by one.