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Pope Francis’ preface to the book “GIUBILEO della SPERANZA'” (Jubilee of Hope)
Pope Francis confides this dream of his in the preface to the book : Giubileo della Speranza’ (i.e. ‘Jubilee of Hope”). (Editrice Elledici, 2024, pages 144, euro 14), written by Vaticanist Francesco Antonio Grana.
Pope Francis’ preface text:
Today there are so many ‘Turandots’ in life who say: ‘Hope always deludes’. (turandots are unfinished operas)
The Bible, on the other hand, tells us: ‘Hope does not disappoint’. (Rom 5:5 – hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.).
This is precisely the title of the bull (Spes non confundit – Hope does not disappoint’) with which I officially proclaimed Jubilee 2025. We must set out, together, and truly become pilgrims of hope, the motto I have chosen for the coming Holy Year.
Hope, in fact, is not, as is often thought, optimism, nor a vague positive feeling about the future. No,
No, hope is something else. It is not an illusion or an emotion.
It is a concrete virtue/. It is an attitude of life and it has to do with concrete choices.
Hope is nourished by the commitment to goodness on the part of each individual.
It grows when we feel that we are participating and are involved in giving meaning to our own lives and the lives of others’.
The nurturing of hope is therefore social, intellectual, spiritual, artistic and political action in the highest sense of the word.
It is about putting your skills and resources at the service of the common good.
It is sowing the seeds of the future. Hope creates change and improves the future.
It is the smallest of virtues, said Charles Péguy.
It is the smallest, but it is the one that takes you the furthest.
And hope does not disappoint. Never!
So what does it mean to become a pilgrim of hope?
Pilgrimage is a physical movement: one leaves one’s home with one’s certainties and sets off towards a destination.
Sometimes one makes a pilgrimage to ask for a grace for oneself or a loved one and, only when one returns home, does one realize that the real miracle is not that of physical healing, but is the gift of faith that comes out fortified, confirmed by that journey.
But the pilgrimage is not just setting out physically.
It is also a journey within oneself, questioning oneself in the light of the Gospel.
‘Setting out on a journey is typical of those who go in search of the meaning of life’.
Conventional wisdom mocks the men and women of hope saying ‘He who lives by hope lives in despair and dies’ And today’s world seems to confirm this conviction with its contradictions, with wars escalating day by day, with arms factories exponentially and rapidly increase their profits, with the ever-decreasing birth rate, with feminicides and with so much hatred that seems to be taking over more and more.
But, thank God, there is so much silent good, even in the Church, that every day responds to what may seem like the abyss of evil.
We see it in the lack of reception of migrants – they are our brothers! – who, facing what are called journeys of hope, but which, instead, are real journeys of despair, finding death in that Mediterranean which has become a great cemetery. We see it in those who are fomenting conflicts that are too often forgotten because they are humanitarian dramas that, unfortunately, do not make the news.
How I wish that the next Jubilee would really be a propitious occasion for a ceasefire in all the
countries where there is fighting!
‘May the first sign of hope be translated into peace for the world, which once again finds itself immersed in the tragedy of war’.
From war, from every war, – this must be clear – everyone always comes out the loser, everyone!
There are no winners and losers, only losers! ‘
From this interweaving of hope and patience, it is clear that the Christian life is a journey, that also needs strong moments to nourish and strengthen hope, the irreplaceable companion that gives a glimpse of the goal: the encounter with the Lord Jesus’.
Hope does not disappoint anyone. ‘Inn order to offer prisoners a concrete sign of closeness, I myself will open a Holy Door in a prison, so that it may be a symbol for them, inviting them to look to the future with hope and a renewed commitment to life’.
In the Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee 2025, I asked for forms of amnesty or remission of punishment, dignified conditions for prisoners – they are our brothers! – and the abolition of the death penalty.
It ‘is inadmissible because it attacks the inviolability and dignity of the person’.
Every time I enter a prison, especially for the Holy Thursday Mass in Coena Domini with the rite of the washing of the feet, I always think: ‘Why them and not me?’ It is God’s mercy!
In the Jubilee 2025 millions of pilgrims will pass through the Holy Door of St Peter’s and those of the other three Papal Basilicas: St John Lateran, St Mary Major and St Paul Outside the Walls.
I do not want this pilgrimage to be a tourist trip or the achievement of a goal, like the Olympic Games.
I would like it to be a true occasion of conversion, pf reviewing one’s life in the light of the Gospel, of listening to the only word that saves, that of Jesus Christ.
I want this pilgrimage to always be accompanied by a gesture of charity to be done in secret.
Everyone will be able to do this according to his or her possibilities to help a brother or sister to get back on his or her feet.
In fact there is only one case in which it is permissible to look down on a person: when you extend your hand to lift him from the ground.
And I would also like the pilgrimage to be accompanied by a prayer for me, for the Pope, because this work is not easy.
I would also like to emphasize that everyone, everyone can make this pilgrimage. Everyone!
The Jubilee is not a preferential road to Paradise for those who consider themselves perfect!.
No, the Holy Year with the Jubilee indulgence is for everyone. Everyone!
Because we are all sinners, even the Pope, and we need to be forgiven.
All! There is no sin that the Lord cannot forgive and there is no one who cannot ask the Lord’s forgiveness.
And to confessors, especially the missionaries of mercy whom I established in the recent Extraordinary Jubilee, I ask that they ‘continue to be instruments of reconciliation and help to look to the future with the hope of the heart that comes from the Father’s mercy’ (Spes non confundit, 23).
How can we not think of the poetic scene of the bread of forgiveness in Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed?
There where Brother Christopher says: ‘Here is the rest of that bread… the firstI asked for out of charity; the bread you have heard about! I leave it to you: keep it; show it to your children. They shall come in a sad world, in sad times, among the proud and the rebellious: tell them to forgive always, always! Everything, everything! And let them also pray for the poor brother”’ (Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed?, XXXVI, 580).
I am grateful to Francesco Antonio Grana who, with this book, wanted to summarise the meaning of the Jubilee 2025.
I am glad that he has highlighted the fact that the Jubilee is not just a date dictated by the calendar, but a real pastoral tool that the Popes, from 1300 to the present day, have used according to the needs of the time in which they were called to lead the Church.
‘I like to think that a path of grace, animated by popular spirituality, preceded the first Jubilee in 1300.
the First Jubilee in 1300.
Indeed, we cannot forget the various ways in which the grace of forgiveness was poured out with
abundance on God’s holy faithful people.
Let us recall, for example, the great pardon granted by St Celestine V to those who came to the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio in L’Aquila on 28 and 29 August 1294, six years before Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the Jubilee.
The Church has already experienced, therefore, the grace of the Jubilee.
And even earlier, in 1216, Pope Honorius III had accepted the petition of St Francis, who had asked for a
indulgence for those who visited the Porziuncola during the first two days of August.
The same can be said of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
In fact, Pope Calixtus II, in 1122, authorized the celebration of the Jubilee in this sanctuary whenever the feast of the Apostle James fell on a Sunday.
It is good that this ‘widespread’ way of celebrating the Jubilee should continue, so that the power of God’s forgiveness may sustain and accompany the journey of communities and individuals” (Spes non confundit, 5). The Jubilee 2025 will offer us two more concrete examples of hope: Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and Blessed Carlo Acutis, who will be canonized during the Holy Year.
