Here is the translation of Pope Francis' address during the first General Audience of his Pontificate today, held in St. Peter Square.

I am pleased to welcome you in this my first General audience. With great gratitude and veneration I gather the "witness" from the hands of my beloved predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. After Easter we will return to the catechesis of the Year of Faith. Today I would like to dwell on Holy Week. With Palm Sunday we have begun this Week - the center of the whole Liturgical Year - in which we accompany Jesus in his Passion, Death and Resurrection.

But what could living Holy Week mean for us? What does it mean to follow Jesus in his path towards the Cross on Calvary and the Resurrection? In his earthly mission, Jesus walked the streets of the Holy Land; he called twelve simple people to remain with him, to share his journey and to continue his mission; he has chosen them from among the people full of faith in God's promises. He spoke to everyone, without distinction, to the great and the humble, to the rich young man and the poor widow, to the powerful and the weak; he brought the mercy and forgiveness of God; he healed, he consoled, he understood; he gave hope; he brought to all the presence of God who is interested in every man and every woman, as a good father and a good mother is in each of their children. God did not wait for everyone to go to Him, but it was He who moved toward us, without calculating, without measure. God is like this: He always takes the first step, He moves towards us. Jesus lived the daily realities of the most common people: he was moved before the crowd that seemed like a flock without a shepherd; he cried in front of the suffering of Martha and Mary for the death of their brother Lazarus; he called a tax collector to be his disciple; he suffered the betrayal of a friend. In him God gave us the certainty that He is with us, in our midst. "Foxes have holes", Jesus said, "and the birds of the air their nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head" (Mt 8:20). Jesus has no home because his home is the people, his mission is open to all the doors to God, to be the presence of God's love.

In Holy Week, we live the summit of this journey, of this design of love that runs through the entire history of the relationship between God and humanity. Jesus enters Jerusalem to perform the last step, summarizing his whole existence: he gives himself totally, he doesn't take anything for himself, even his own life. In the Last Supper, with his friends, he shares the bread and distributes the chalice "for us". The Son of God offers us, he delivers into our hands his Body and his Blood to always be with us, to dwell among us. And in the Garden of Olives, as in the trial before Pilate, he offers no resistance, he gives himself; he is the suffering servant foretold by Isaiah that pours himself out to death (cf. Is 53:12).

Jesus doesn't live this love that leads to sacrifice passively or as a fatalistic destiny; he certainly doesn't hide his deep human anguish in the face of violent death, but he entrusts himself with full confidence to the Father. Jesus handed himself over voluntarily to death in order to respond to the love of God the Father, in perfect union with his will, to prove his love for us. On the cross Jesus "loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20), says St. Paul. Each one of us can say: He loved me and he gave himself for me. Each one can say this "for me".

What does all this mean for us? It means that this is also my, your, our way. To live Holy Week following Jesus not only with the commotion of the heart; to live Holy Week following Jesus means learning to come out of ourselves - as I said on Sunday - to reach out to others, to go to the outskirts of existence, ourselves taking the first step towards our brothers and sisters, especially those farthest away, those who are forgotten, those most in need of understanding, consolation, help. There is much need to bring the living presence of the Jesus, merciful and full of love!

Living Holy Week means entering more and more into God's logic, the logic of the Cross, which is not first of all that of pain and death, but that of love and self-giving that brings life. It is entering into the logic of the Gospel. To follow, to accompany Christ, to stay with him requires a "going out", to go out. To go out of oneself, of a dull or mechanical way of living the faith, of the temptation to close ourselves in our schemes which end up closing the horizon of the creative action of God. God came out himself to come among us, he has placed his tent among us to bring us God's mercy that saves and gives hope. We, too, if we want to follow Him and stay with Him, must not be content with staying in the enclosure of the ninety-nine sheep, we must "come out", to seek out with Him the lost sheep, the farthest. Mark this well: to come out of ourselves, like Jesus, Like God came out of Himself in Jesus and Jesus came out of himself for all of us.

Someone could say to me: "But Father, I don't have time", "I have so many things to do", "it's hard", "what can I do with my little strength, and with my sins, with so many things?" Often we settle for a few prayers, a distracted and inconstant Sunday Mass, a few acts of charity, but we do not have the courage to "go out" to bring Christ. We are a little like St. Peter. As soon as Jesus speaks of passion, death and resurrection, of self-giving, of love towards all, the Apostle takes him aside and rebukes him. What Jesus says disrupts his plans, it appears unacceptable, it endangers the fixed securities that he had built, his idea of the Messiah. And Jesus looks at the disciples and addresses to Peter one of the toughest words of the Gospels: "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not thinking according to God, but according to men" (Mk 8:33). God always thinks with mercy, never forget this. God always thinks with mercy: He is the merciful Father! God thinks like the father who awaits the return of his son and goes out to meet him, he sees him coming when he's still far off...What does this mean? That every day he went to see whether his son was coming home: this is our merciful Father. It is a sign that He was hoping for his return, with all his heart, from the terrace of his house. God thinks like the Samaritan who does not pass near the victim, feeling sorry for him, or looking the other way, but coming to his aid without asking anything in return; without asking whether he was a Jew, or a pagan, or a Samaritan, if he was rich, if he was poor: he doesn't ask anything. He comes to his aid: this is God. God thinks like the shepherd who gives his life to defend and save the sheep.

Holy Week is a time of grace that the Lord gives us to open the doors of our hearts, of our lives, of our parishes - what a pity, so many closed parishes! - of the movements, of the associations, and "to go out" towards the other, going out in search of others so as to bring them the light and joy of our faith. To go out always! And this with the love and tenderness of God, with respect and patience, knowing that we offer our hands, our feet, our heart, but then it is God who guides them and makes fruitful every our action.

I wish everyone to live well these days following the Lord with courage, bearing within ourselves a ray of His love to those we encounter.

[Translation by Peter Waymel]