Jun 19
The Joy of the Holy Gospel according to Pope Leo XIV (Mt 6,19-23)
The Evangelist Matthew invites us to reflect on the importance of the heart, quoting this beautiful phrase of Jesus: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt 6:21). It is therefore in the heart that true treasure is kept, not in earthly safes, not in large financial investments, which today more than ever before are out of control and unjustly concentrated at the bloody price of millions of human lives and the devastation of God’s creation.

It is important to reflect on these aspects, because in the numerous commitments we continually face, there is an increasing risk of dispersion, sometimes of despair, of meaninglessness, even in apparently successful people. Instead, interpreting life in the light of Easter, looking at it with the Risen Jesus, means finding access to the essence of the human person, to our heart: cor inquietum. With this adjective “restless”, Saint Augustine helps us understand the human being’s yearning for fulfilment. The full sentence refers to the beginning of the Confessions, where Augustine writes: “Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you” (I, 1,1).

Restlessness is the sign that our heart does not move by chance, in a disordered way, without a purpose or a destination, but is oriented towards its ultimate destination, the “return home”. The authentic approach of the heart does not consist in possessing the goods of this world, but in achieving what can fill it completely; namely, the love of God, or rather, God who is Love. (Pope Leo XIV, General Audience, 17 December 2025)