Basilica packed for Christmas night and the beginning of the Jubilee. Around the altar of the cathedra, a work by Bernini restored in record time for the Holy Year, people sing and pray. Pope Francis speaks with a firm voice, adding many off-the-cuff sentences and explains the meaning of hope founded on Jesus. It starts from the night pierced by light and good news: «I announce to you a great joy, which will be for all the people: today, in the city of David, a Savior was born for you, who is Christ the Lord». Heaven appears on earth, «God became one of us to make us like Him, he descended among us to raise us up and bring us back into the Father’s embrace. This is our hope, explains the Pontiff. God, he continues, comes “even when our heart resembles a poor manger, then we can say: hope is not dead, hope is alive, and envelops our lives forever! Hope does not disappoint.”
He underlines that, with the opening of the Holy Door and the beginning of a new Jubilee «each of us can enter into the mystery of this announcement of grace. This is the night in which the door of hope opened onto the world; this is the night in which God says to each one: there is hope for you too! There is hope for each of us.” And he adds: «Do not forget, brothers and sisters, that God forgives everything, God always forgives. Don’t forget this, this is a way of understanding the hope of the Lord.” And it must be done without delay, as the shepherds did by rushing to the cave after the angel’s announcement. «This is the indication to rediscover lost hope, renew it within us, sow it in the desolations of our time and our world: without delay. There are many desolations in this time, let’s think about the wars, the machine-gunned children, the bombs on schools and hospitals. Don’t delay, don’t slow down, but let yourself be attracted by the good news.
Without hesitation, let us go and see the Lord who was born for us, with a light and alert heart, ready to meet, to be able to translate hope into the situations of our lives.” And he urges: «This is our task: to translate hope into the situations of our lives. Because Christian hope is not a happy ending to be passively waited for: it is the promise of the Lord to be welcomed here and now, in this land that suffers and groans. It therefore asks us not to linger, not to drag ourselves into habits, to do not remain in mediocrity and laziness; it asks us – as Saint Augustine would say – to be indignant at the things that are wrong and to have the courage to change them; asks us to become pilgrims in search of the truth, dreamers who are never tired, women and men who allow themselves to be disturbed by the dream of God, which is the dream of a new world, where peace and justice reign”.
Hope, explains the Pontiff, “is born in this night” and “does not tolerate the indolence of the sedentary and the laziness of those who have settled into their own comforts; many of us are in danger of settling into our comforts, hope does not allow the false prudence of those who do not go out of their way for fear of compromising themselves and the calculation of those who think only of themselves; it is incompatible with the quiet life of those who do not raise their voices against evil and injustices committed against the poorest. On the contrary, Christian hope, while inviting us to patiently wait for the Kingdom that germinates and grows, demands from us the audacity to anticipate this promise today, through our responsibility and not only our responsibility, our compassion. Here it would be good for us to ask ourselves about our compassion. I have compassion, I know how to suffer with?”.
Remember the words of Pronzato, «a good writer» who «prayed like this for Holy Christmas: “Lord, I ask you for some torment, some anxiety, some remorse. At Christmas I would like to find myself dissatisfied. Happy, but also dissatisfied. Happy with what you do, dissatisfied with my lack of answers. Please take away our false peaces and put a bunch of thorns inside our “manger”, always too full. Put the desire for something else in our hearts.” Let us not stand still, urges the Pope, «let us remember that still water is the first to corrupt. Christian hope is precisely the “something else” that asks us to move.”without delay.” In fact, we disciples of the Lord are asked to rediscover our greatest hope in Him, and then bring it without delay, as pilgrims of light in the darkness of the world.”
And he concludes: «This is the Jubilee, this is the time of hope! It invites us to rediscover the joy of the encounter with the Lord, it calls us to spiritual renewal and commits us to the transformation of the world, so that this truly becomes a jubilee time: it becomes one for our mother Earth, disfigured by the logic of profit; become so for the poorest countries, burdened by unjust debts; you become one for all those who are prisoners of old and new slavery.
To us, all, the gift and commitment of Frbring hope where it has been lost: bring it where life is wounded, in betrayed expectations, in broken dreams, in failures that shatter the heart; in the tiredness of those who can no longer take it, in the bitter loneliness of those who feel defeatedin the suffering that digs the soul; in the long and empty days of prisoners, in the narrow and cold rooms of the poor, in places desecrated by war and violence”.
And rLet us remember that «on this night it is for you that the “holy door” of God’s heart opens. Jesus, God-with-us, is born for you, for me, for us, for every man and every woman. And you know, with Him joy flourishes, with Him life changes and with Him hope does not disappoint.”
