“May the light of Christian hope illumine every man and woman, as a message of God’s love addressed to all—and may the Church bear faithful witness to this message in every part of the world.” Pope Francis spoke these words on Christmas Eve 2024, opening the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica and inaugurating the 2025 Jubilee of Hope.
The Jubilee Year’s theme continues a focus on hope that Pope Francis has emphasized throughout his papacy but with increasing force since the Covid-19 pandemic. We were all forced by the pandemic, he wrote in 2022, to “experience firsthand not only the tragedy of dying alone, but also the uncertainty and fleetingness of existence” in ways that have “changed our very way of life.”
That plague may no longer be an overwhelming presence, but the realities with which we were confronted starkly remain. What is the Christian response to a world of ill omens and uncertainty? Not the naïve optimism of a Pollyanna, but also not the glum defeatism that can characterize much of the contemporary world’s political and social discourse.
A new year offers us all a chance to revisit our shared vision of hope, to seek it where it can be found and to draw strength from its presence. “Hope does not disappoint,” begins Pope Francis’ bull of indiction for the Jubilee Year, drawing on Rom 5:5. “Spes Non Confundit” is not just a fervorino exhorting the faithful to greater fidelity or courage, but also a practical selection of particular acts and initiatives that can help us answer two questions: Where can that hope be found? How and where can we draw strength from it and share it with others?
A primary exhortation of “Spes Non Confundit” might sound at first as if it came from the pen of Iggy Pop rather than Pope Francis: We should have enthusiasm for life. This is not a goad toward greater consumerism, of course. In fact, it is a specific condemnation of consumerism as an escape from facing real issues. Rather, enthusiasm for life entails a willingness to bring new life into the world, something that declining birth rates and the rise of anti-natalism indicate is more and more rare in the developed world.
The document identifies fear of the future, a lack of job security, the disappearance of social safety nets and the widespread embrace of a profit-first economic model as other culprits. Instead, can we build a just economy and sustainable communities, abandoning “the quest for profit rather than concern for relationships”? Can we embrace children, even when inconvenient, as God’s promise of a brighter future?
As enthusiasm for life is enkindled, Francis calls us to share it with those suffering hardships. This is more than a question of how we choose to act charitably in our own lives; it is also a question of how we orient our entire society. As our elected officials debate how and where to spend tax dollars and allocate resources, it is imperative that we not privilege the most favored issues—military expenditures, tax cuts, corporate subsidies and more—over those that have few cheerleaders.
These less popular initiatives would include aid to the unemployed or unhoused, assistance for the sick and elderly, funding for underprivileged students, the forgiveness of debts—and not just student debts—that are an essential part of any jubilee. The recipients of such care do not have four-star generals or billionaire moguls trumpeting their cause, but they are, as Pope Francis notes, in dire need of hope—and of the care of a society that believes in their future.
So, too, we hear about joblessness and anomie among our young people; how can they look forward to the security that their parents and grandparents enjoyed in an economy that offered many routes to prosperity rather than rewarding the richest among us? We need to give them reasons for hope, too.
Another group suffering hardships is often made into scapegoats for our nation’s ills these days: migrants. In the aftermath of our presidential election, can we now reach out our hands to those who are literally on physical pilgrimages inspired by hope? The Trump administration’s plans for mass deportation depict migrants as a threat to American prosperity and values, but Francis calls on us “to defend the rights of those who are most vulnerable, opening wide its doors to welcome them, lest anyone ever be robbed of the hope of a better future.” We need to remember not only that migrants are equal to us in dignity, but that the United States itself has been built by people willing to undertake risky journeys in hope of better lives for themselves and their families.
Migrants in our time are not always fleeing war or poverty. Many now face the reality of climate displacement, driven from their homes by environments that have been drastically altered by climate change. Pope Francis reminds us “the goods of the earth are not destined for a privileged few, but for everyone”—including those in the Global South who bear the brunt of environmental exploitation while reaping few of its rewards.
Finally, we must consider a marginalized group that has few advocates at any time: those behind bars. And yet caring for them—in addition to being a Gospel mandate—is also an indication of a society’s orientation toward the future or the past. Do we truly believe in rehabilitation, in second chances, in restorative justice? Or do we simply want to lock away (or execute) our prisoners? Our “land of the free” leads the world both in per capita incarceration rates and in total number of people behind bars. How can a country with hope for the future give up on these people so easily?
Such questions should be near the hearts of all who seek to “fan the flame of hope” during this jubilee year. Jubilee years are spiritual journeys, or pilgrimages. A people on pilgrimage is a people that takes what it needs for the journey, aware that the road is long and arduous but the goal is worthwhile. A pilgrim is one who lends a hand to a flagging fellow traveler, who shares from his or her abundance and who relies on others in times of need. A pilgrim is patient. A pilgrim is appreciative of the world through which he or she journeys. And, of course, a pilgrim’s eyes are focused not on where the journey began, but where it will end—itself an essential component of hope.
“We must fan the flame of hope that has been given us and help everyone,” Pope Francis wrote in 2022, “to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and a farsighted vision.”
Christians have been a people of hope from the very beginning: The Gospel story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus in the days after Jesus’ crucifixion is perhaps the first reminder of that Easter theme. “We had hoped,” the two travelers say to a fellow pilgrim, one who turns out to be the confirmation of that hope. Two millennia later, we are called to remain a people of hope, cooperating in God’s building of the kingdom and seeing the world charged with God’s grandeur and infused with new possibilities.
