In the celebration of the Second Vespers of the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, which took place on the afternoon of this Thursday, May 9, in St. Peter’s Basilica, where the bull of the Jubilee 2025 was also published, Pope Francis affirmed that we all need hope “in a world marked by excess of despair.”
In his homily, Pope Francis explained that the Ascension of the Lord is not a distancing or separation, “but the fulfilment of his mission: Jesus came down to us to make us ascend to the Father; He lowered himself to exalt us; he descended into the depths of the earth so that the sky would open wide above us.”
Later, he referred to the virtue of hope and stated that its foundation is that “Christ ascended to heaven introduces our humanity loaded with expectations and questions into the heart of God.”
In this way, he assured that the hope rooted in the dead and risen Christ, “is what we want to celebrate, welcome and announce to the entire world in the next Jubilee, which is already around the corner.”
For Pope Francis, the theological virtue to which Jubilee 2025 is dedicated “sustains the path of our life, even when it becomes tortuous and difficult; It opens before us future horizons when resignation and pessimism would like to keep us prisoners.”
“Sos makes us see the possible good when evil seems to prevail; He instills serenity in us when our hearts are burdened by failure and sin; “It makes us dream of a new humanity and instills in us the courage to build a fraternal and peaceful world, when it seems that it is not worth compromising,” he continued.
Likewise, he recalled that this year 2024 must be a time of prayer for preparation for the Jubilee and therefore invited us to raise “our hearts to Christ, to become singers of hope in a world marked by an excess of despair.”
“With gestures, with words, with our daily choices, with the patience to sow a little beauty and kindness wherever we are, we want to sing hope, so that its melody makes the strings of humanity vibrate and awakens. in the hearts the joy and courage to embrace life,” he expressed.
“We need hope”
The Holy Father remarked that “we lack hope,” especially in the society in which we live, “often immersed only in the present and incapable of looking toward the future; Our times need it, which sometimes drags wearily between the monotony of individualism and ‘getting by’.”
“It is needed by creation, seriously wounded and disfigured by human selfishness; It is needed by the people and nations who face tomorrow full of worries and fears, while injustices continue with arrogance, the poor are discarded, wars sow death, the last remain at the bottom of the list and the dream of a fraternal world runs the risk of appearing like a mirage.”
He also stated that “it is needed by young people, who often feel disoriented but desire to live fully; It is needed by the elderly, whom the culture of efficiency and waste no longer knows how to respect or listen to; It is needed by the sick and all those who are wounded in body and spirit, who can find relief with our closeness and our care.”
He also highlighted that the Church needs hope, so that, “even when she experiences the weight of fatigue and fragility, she never forgets that she is the Bride of Christ, loved with eternal and faithful love, called to guard the light of the Gospel, sent to bring to everyone the fire that Jesus brought and lit in the world once and for all.”
Finally, the Pontiff stressed that “each one of us needs hope; Our sometimes tired and wounded lives need it, our hearts thirsty for truth, goodness and beauty, our dreams that no darkness can quench. Everything, inside and outside of us, longs for hope and seeks, even without knowing it, the closeness of God.”
“May the risen and ascended Lord give us the grace to rediscover hope, to announce hope and to build hope,” Pope Francis concluded.