Pope: May the Jubilee be a time to rediscover, proclaim, build hope

The Holy Door at St Peter's, Credit: Vatican News

Source: Vatican News

Pope Francis called Christians to be builders of hope as he celebrated Vespers after presiding at the ceremony to officially proclaim the Jubilee of 2025.

The theme of Christian hope was at the heart of the Pope's homily on the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord in St Peter's Basilica, Rome, on 9 May. It followed a ceremony in which he proclaimed the ordinary Jubilee of 2025 with the public reading and delivery of the Bull of Indiction. The theme chosen for the Jubilee year that starts on 24 December 2024 with the Opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica is 'Pilgrims of Hope'.

Reflecting on the concept and reality of Christian hope that is "unperishable" and "unfading", the Pope said it sustains us in the journey of our lives, even during the darkest and most difficult moments and times. He encouraged Christians, as they prepare for the celebration of the Jubilee, to lift up their hearts to Christ, and become "singers of hope in a world marked by too much despair." Hope, he remarked, is needed by the society in which we live, "often caught up only in the present and incapable of looking to the future;" it is needed by our age, "caught up in an individualism that is frequently and content merely to scrape along from day to day."

Hope, he said, "is needed by God's creation, gravely damaged and disfigured by human selfishness," and it is needed by peoples and nations who look to the future with anxiety and fear. "As injustice and arrogance persist, the poor are discarded, wars sow seeds of death, the least of our brothers and sisters remain at the bottom of the pile, and the dream of a fraternal world seems an illusion."

Hope, the Pope said, is needed by our young people, by the elderly, by the sick and by those who suffer in body and spirit.