Francis delivered the homily during Second Vespers, after the delivery and reading of the Bull proclaiming the Holy Year of 2025. On the Solemnity of the Ascension, celebrated today in the Vatican, the Holy Father reinforced the importance of the virtue of hope in the lives of Christians: ” Everything, inside and outside of us, invokes hope and seeks, even without realizing it, the closeness of God.”
Thulio Fonseca – Vatican News
This Thursday afternoon (05/09), Pope Francis presided over the celebration of Second Vespers in the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord in St. Peter’s Basilica. In many countries, this liturgical festivity is transferred to successive Sundays, in order to accommodate greater participation by the faithful.
Shortly before, in the atrium of the Basilica, in front of the Holy Door which, as announced today, will be opened on December 24, 2024 to begin the Jubilee of 2025, the Pope handed over the Bull proclaiming the Holy Year to representatives of the Church on five continents. Some excerpts from the Bull were read by Monsignor Leonardo Sapienza, regent of the Prefecture of the Pontifical House and dean of the College of Apostolic Prothonotaries.
The fulfillment of Jesus’ mission
Francis, in his homily, recalled that “the Ascension of the Lord is not moving away, separating, distancing himself from us, but the fulfillment of his mission: Jesus came down to us to make us ascend to the Father; he went down to the bottom to take us to the top; he descended into the depths of the earth, that Heaven might open wide upon us. He destroyed our death so that we could receive life, forever.”
“Brothers and sisters, it is this hope rooted in the dead and risen Christ that we want to celebrate, welcome and announce to the whole world in the next Jubilee, which is already upon us.”
According to the Pope, this act is not a matter of mere human optimism or an ephemeral expectation linked to any earthly security: “It is a reality already enacted in Jesus and which is also given to us daily until we become one in the embrace of the your love.”
Three thousand faithful participated in the celebration in the Vatican
We become “singers of hope”
The Pope stressed that the virtue of hope sustains the path of our life, “even when it appears tortuous and tiring; opens before us paths to the future, when resignation and pessimism want to keep us prisoners; it makes us see the good that is possible, when evil seems to prevail; instills serenity in us, when the heart is oppressed by failure and sin; It makes us dream of a new humanity and makes us courageous in building a fraternal and peaceful world, when it seems useless to strive.”
“My friends, as we prepare for the Jubilee with the Year of Prayer, let us lift our hearts to Christ to become singers of hope in a world marked by too many desperate situations.”
Awaken joy and courage in humanity
“It is hope that we need”, underlined Francisco, the society in which we live, which is often immersed only in the present and unable to look to the future, needs it; Our era needs it, which sometimes drags wearily in the gray of individualism and “getting by”; Creation, seriously injured and disfigured by human selfishness, needs it; The peoples and nations need it, who look full of concern and fear towards tomorrow, while injustices reign 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 rampant. the risk of appearing like a mirage.
“Hope is needed by young people, who are often disoriented but eager to live to the full; they need it by the elderly, whom the culture of efficiency and disposal no longer knows how to respect or listen to; they need it by the sick and all those who are injured in the body and in spirit, who can receive relief through our solidarity and care.”
Francis during the celebration of Second Vespers on the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord
The closeness of God
The Church needs hope, the Pope highlighted, “so that, even when she experiences the weight of tiredness and fragility, she never forgets that she is the Bride of Christ, loved with eternal and faithful love, called to preserve the light of the Gospel , sent to transmit to everyone the fire that Jesus brought and lit, once and for all, in the world.”
“Each of us needs hope: our lives, sometimes tired and wounded, our hearts thirsty for truth, goodness and beauty, our dreams that no darkness can extinguish. Everything, inside and outside of us, invokes hope and seeks, even without knowing it, closeness to God.”
“Brothers and sisters, may the resurrected Lord raised to Heaven give us the grace to rediscover hope, to announce hope, to build hope”, concluded the Pontiff.
Second Vespers of the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, May 9, 2024
