Pope Francis says "Christian hope gives us serenity when the heart is weighed down...it makes us dream of a new humanity and gives us courageous in building a fraternal and peaceful world..." FULL TEXT + Video

ASCENSION OF THE LORD –
DELIVERY AND READING OF THE BUBBLE OF INDICATION OF THE JUBILEE 2025 AND 

SECOND VESPERS - PAPAL CHAPEL
Pope Francis calls Christians to be builders of hope as he celebrates Vespers after presiding at the ceremony to officially proclaim the Jubilee of 2025.
HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS

Basilica of Saint Peter - Thursday, May 9, 2024
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Among songs of joy, Jesus ascended into Heaven, where he sits at the right hand of the Father. He - as we have just heard - swallowed death so that we might become heirs of eternal life (see 1 Pt 3,22 Vulg.). The Ascension of the Lord, therefore, is not a detachment, a separation, a distancing from us, but it is the fulfillment of his mission: Jesus descended to us to make us ascend to the Father; he descended low to take us high; he descended into the depths of the earth so that Heaven could open wide above us. He destroyed our death so that we could receive life, and forever.
This is the foundation of our hope: Christ ascended into Heaven and brings our humanity full of expectations and questions into the heart of God, «to give us the serene confidence that where He is, head and firstborn, we too, his members, will be united in the same glory" (see Preface of the Ascension).
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 now upon us.

It is not a question of simple optimism - let's say human optimism - or of an ephemeral expectation linked to some earthly security, no, it is a reality already accomplished in Jesus and which is also given to us every day, until we are one in the embrace of his love. Christian hope - writes Saint Peter - is "an inheritance that does not corrupt, does not stain or rot" (1 Pt 1,4). Christian hope supports the path of our life even when it appears tortuous and tiring; it opens up paths of the future before us when resignation and pessimism would like to keep us prisoners; it makes us see the possible good when evil seems to prevail; Christian hope gives us serenity when the heart is weighed down by failure and sin; it makes us dream of a new humanity and gives us courageous in building a fraternal and peaceful world, when it seems that it is not worth the effort. This is the hope, the gift that the Lord gave us with Baptism.
Dear ones, while, with the Year of Prayer, we prepare for the Jubilee, let us lift our hearts to Christ, to become singers of hope in a civilization marked by too much desperation. With gestures, with words, with everyday 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 joy in hearts, awaken the courage to embrace life.
In fact, we need hope, we all need it. Hope does not disappoint, let's not forget this. The society we live in needs it, often immersed only in the present and unable to look to the future; our era needs it, which sometimes wearily drags itself along in the grayness of individualism and "getting by"; creation needs it, gravely wounded and disfigured by human selfishness; people and nations need it, as they face the future full of anxieties and fears, while injustices continue with arrogance, the poor are discarded, wars sow death, the last still remain at the bottom of the list and the dream of a fraternal world risks appearing like a mirage. Young people need it, often disoriented but eager to live fully; the elderly need it, as the culture of efficiency and waste no longer knows how to respect and listen; the sick and all those who are wounded in body and spirit, who can receive relief through our closeness and our care, need it.
And furthermore, dear brothers and sisters, 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 an eternal and faithful love, called to safeguard the light of the Gospel, sent to transmit to everyone the fire that Jesus brought and lit in the world once and for all.
Each of us needs hope: our sometimes tired and wounded lives, 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, the closeness of God. It seems to us - said Romano Guardini - that ours is the time of distance from God, in which the world is filled with things and the Word of the Lord sets; however, he states: «But if the time comes – and it will come, after the darkness has been overcome – when man asks God: “Lord, where were you then?”, then again he will hear the answer: “Closer than ever before!”. Perhaps God is closer to our glacial times than to the Baroque with the splendor of its churches, to the Middle Ages with the wealth of its symbols, to early Christianity with its youthful courage in the face of death. […] But He waits […] for us to remain faithful to Him. From this could arise a faith no less valid, indeed perhaps purer, in any case more intense than it has ever been in the times of interior richness" (R. Guardini, Accepting oneself, Brescia 1992, 72).
Brothers and sisters, may the risen Lord who ascended into Heaven give us the grace to rediscover hope - rediscover hope! –, to announce hope, to build hope.