Continuing his reflection from last week, drawn from the Vatican II document on Revelation, Dei Verbum, Pope Leo XIV invited the faithful to a growing discovery of God and self, through Jesus Christ.
Before a packed Paul VI Hall, the Pope continued this new series of catechesis on the Second Vatican Council.
During the first general audience of 2026, he announced his desire to "rediscover the beauty and importance" of the Second Vatican Council, and invited the faithful to read or re-read its documents.
He described this ecclesial event as the "beacon that guides the Church's path" since it was held in 1962-1965.
Where to start?
Earlier this year, Aleteia included a survey at the end of our articles with a simple question: Have you ever read a Vatican II document? More than 60% answered that they had not!
The reflections of this and last week indicate that Dei Verbum is the place to start!
Moreover, the Pope's prayer intention for this month is "Prayer with the Word of God":
Let us pray that praying with the Word of God be nourishment for our lives and a source of hope in our communities, helping us to build a more fraternal and missionary Church.
While last week he focused on how God addresses men as friends, this week, the Pope centered his reflection on the Revelation made possible by Jesus Christ, in his full humanity (full text below).
Christ's humanity is the "revealer of the Father," he said. "To know God in Christ, we must welcome his entire humanity."
It is this humanity "that reveals to us the truth of the Father." Thus, it is not only the death and resurrection of Jesus that saves us, "but his very person" who became incarnate, lived, died, and rose again.
"Brothers and sisters, by following Jesus' path to the end, we come to the certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God," the Pope affirmed. Quoting St. Paul, he called for placing all our trust in God the Father.
At the end of the audience, the Pope invited Catholics to participate in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, under way through January 25, feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.
"Let us ask the Lord to grant the gift of his Spirit to all the Churches scattered throughout the world so that, through him, Christians may overcome their divisions and forge strong bonds of unity," the pontiff said.
On the feast day, he will close the week of prayer with the celebration of Vespers in the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in the presence of representatives of other Christian denominations.
Here is a full translation of the audience, provided by the Vatican after this article was published:
Dear brothers and sisters, good morning and welcome!
We will continue the catecheses on the Dogmatic Constituion Dei Verbum, of Vatican Council II, on divine Revelation. We have seen that God reveals himself in a dialogue of covenant, in which he addresses us as friends. It is therefore a relational knowledge, which not only communicates ideas, but shares a history and calls for communion in reciprocity. The fulfilment of this revelation takes place in a historical and personal encounter in which God himself gives himself to us, making himself present, and we discover that we are known in our deepest truth. It is what happens in Jesus Christ. The Document states that the deepest truth about God and the salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation (cf. DV, 2).
Jesus reveals the Father to us by involving us in his own relationship with Him. In the Son sent by God the Father “man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature” (ibid.). We therefore reach full knowledge of God by entering into the Son’s relationship with his Father, by virtue of the action of the Spirit. This is attested to, for example, by the Evangelist Luke when he recounts the Lord’s prayer of jubilation: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Lk 10:21-22).
Thanks to Jesus we know God as we are known by Him (cf. Gal 4:9); 1 Cor 13:13). Indeed, in Christ, God has communicated himself to us and, at the same time, he has manifested to us our true identity as his children, created in the image of the Word. This “eternal Word … enlightens all men” (DV 4), revealing their truth in the eyes of the Father: “Your Father, who sees in secret will reward you” (Mt 6:5; 6:8), says Jesus, and he adds that “your Father knows that you need all these things” (cf. Mt 6:32). Jesus Christ is the place where we recognize the truth of God the Father, while we discover ourselves known by Him as sons in the Son, called to the same destiny of full life. Saint Paul writes: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son … so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba!’, Father!” (Gal 4:4-6).
Finally, Jesus Christ reveals the Father with his own humanity. Precisely because he is the Word incarnate that dwells among men, Jesus reveals God to us with his own true and integral humanity: “To see Jesus is to see His Father (Jn 14:9). For this reason, Jesus perfected revelation, fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth” (DV, 4). In order to know God in Christ, we must welcome his integral humanity: God’s truth is not fully revealed where it takes something away from the human, just as the integrity of Jesus’ humanity does not diminish the fullness of the divine gift. It is the integral humanity of Jesus that tells us the truth of the Father (cf. Jn 1:18).
It is not only the death and resurrection of Jesus that saves us and calls us together, but his very person: the Lord who becomes incarnate, is born, heals, teaches, suffers, dies, rises again and remains among us. Therefore, to honour the greatness of the Incarnation, it is not enough to consider Jesus as the channel of transmission of intellectual truths. If Jesus has a real body, the communication of the truth of God is realized in that body, with its own way of perceiving and feeling reality, with its own way of inhabiting and passing through the world. Jesus himself invites us to share his perception of reality: “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Mt 6:26).
Brothers and sisters, by following the path of Jesus to the very end, we reach the certainty that nothing can separate us from God’s love. “If God is for us, who is against us?”, writes Saint Paul again. “He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else?” (Rom 8:31-32). Thanks to Jesus, Christians know God the Father and entrust themselves to Him with confidence.
