The Holy Year and the Pope’s dream, that of a world at peace, where weapons are archived in arsenals, those who manufacture them have stopped profiting from the death of others, the death penalty does not have scheduled executions on the calendar and prisoners are granted “forms of amnesty or pardon”. Francis reiterates this in the lines of the preface to the book “Jubilee of Hope”, written by Vaticanist Francesco Antonio Grana and published by Elledici.
Not a vague feeling
«How I would like the next Jubilee to be a real opportunity for a ceasefire in all the countries where there is fighting!» Francis reaffirms, as in so many of his appeals. «From war, from every war – this must be made clear – everyone always comes out a loser, everyone!» and «There are no winners or losers, only losers!» He stresses, recalling what is stated in the Bull of Indiction of the Holy Year Spes non-confounded, that is, that «hope does not disappoint». Because, he explains, it is not «optimism, nor a vague positive feeling about the future», but «something else»: «It is not an illusion or an emotion. It is a concrete virtue, an attitude of life, and it has to do with concrete choices. Hope is nourished by the commitment to the good on the part of each one». «Nourishing hope», Francis continues, has the value of «a social, intellectual, spiritual, artistic and political action in the highest sense of the word. It is putting one’s own abilities and resources at the service of the common good.”
Instrument of grace
The common good, as for migrants who live the paradox of odysseys called “journeys of hope” which often “are true journeys of despair” with the Mediterranean turned into a “vast cemetery.” Or the good for prisoners, in regard to whom the Pope recalls having asked for “dignified conditions” together with the abolition of the death penalty, judged “inadmissible because it attacks the inviolability and dignity of the person.” The Holy Year, Francis maintains in a passage of the preface, “is not exclusively an appointment dictated by the calendar, but a true pastoral instrument that the popes, from 1300 to today, have used according to the needs of the time in which they were called to guide the Church.”
Moment of rebirth
The next one, that of 2025, will see millions of pilgrims pass through the Holy Door of St. Peter and the other three papal basilicas. I would like, and the Pope wishes, that this pilgrimage not be a tourist trip or the pursuit of an objective, like the Olympics. I would like it to be truly an occasion for conversion, for reviewing one’s life in the light of the Gospel, and that “this pilgrimage always be accompanied by an act of charity to be carried out in secret.” The book recalls Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis, two young men who will be proclaimed saints during the Jubilee. Francis recalls examples and words from both of them, not “living from day to day” on the couch of their lives, but rather, with Jesus in their hearts, embodying the beauty of love that becomes service.
