VATICAN CITY (CNS) — When Catholics come to Rome for the Holy Year, their journey should have the specific goal of encountering and listening to Jesus, Pope Francis said.
With a jubilee, the destination is the Holy Door, which “represents Jesus Christ, his mystery of salvation, which allows us to enter into the new life, free from the slavery of sin, free to love and serve God and neighbor,” he said in a talk to young members of the Italian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired. The pope met the group at the Vatican Jan. 3.
The theme of Holy Year 2025 is “Pilgrims of hope,” he said, and “the word ‘pilgrim‘ makes us think about walking, so I would like to wish for you always to be people on the move,” who yearn to keep moving forward in life.
“But the ‘pilgrim’ is one who not only walks, but has a destination, and a particular destination,” which is “a holy place, which attracts him, which motivates the journey, which sustains him in his fatigue,” the pope said.
Pilgrims “eager to meet Jesus”
The pope told his young guests that they should always be “on the move” and “also pilgrims, that is, eager to meet Jesus, to know him, to listen to his word.”
The Lord’s word, the pope said, gives meaning to life and “fills it with a new joy, a different joy, a joy that does not remain ‘outside’ on the surface, but which fills the heart and warms it, a joy that is peace, that is goodness, that is tenderness.”
Throughout the Church’s history there have been many young “pilgrims of hope,” he said, that is, “young people who encountered the Lord Jesus and walked with him,” such as Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, Sts. Francis and Clare of Assisi, and St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
Jesus “is the hope for every man, woman and also for the world,” Pope Francis said. “Let us follow this road, and we too will become little signs of hope for those we meet.”
