Vatican City (AsiaNews) – The Vatican Press Office today released the message Pope Francis wrote for World Youth Day 2024. In it, the pontiff says that nowadays young people pay "the highest price" for the wounds of the world. Yet, even to this generation, which is called to live through difficult times, the Church wants to bring the Gospel message of hope.
The message, whose title is inspired by the biblical verse “those who hope in the Lord... will run and not be weary” (Is 40:31), lays out the event that will be celebrated in each diocese on Sunday, 24 November, the Solemnity of Christ the King. The observance comes a few weeks before the opening – on Christmas night – of the Holy Year 2025, centred on the theme of hope. Pope Francis looks to this horizon in his message to young people.
Referring to the context of the verse taken from the Book of Isaiah – which follows the end of the exile of the people of Israel in Babylon – the pontiff notes that even “Today, we too live in times marked by dramatic situations that generate despair and prevent us from looking to the future with serenity: the tragedy of war, social injustices, inequalities, hunger and the exploitation of human beings and the natural environment.”
“Often the ones who pay the highest price are precisely young people. You sense the uncertainty of the future and are not sure about where your dreams will lead. In this way, you can be tempted to live without hope, as prisoners of boredom, depression and even be drawn to risk-taking and destructive behaviours.
“For this reason, dear young people, I would like the message of hope to come to you, as was the case with Israel in Babylon. Today too, the Lord is opening a highway before you, and he invites you to set out on it with joy and hope.”
This road is not easy to travel. For Francis, anxiety is generated by the social pressures young people face, the temptation to boredom or seeking refuge in one's own “comfort zone” [. . .], seeing and judging the world from a distance, without ever ‘dirtying their hands’ with problems, with other people, with life itself.”
Instead, Francis “prefer[s] the tiredness of those who are moving forward, not the ennui of those who stand still with no desire to move! [. . .] If a beautiful goal exists, if life has an ultimate meaning, if nothing of what I dream, plan and accomplish will ever be lost, then it is worth the effort to keep walking, exerting ourselves, overcoming obstacles and fatigue, because the ultimate prize is magnificent beyond measure!”
Times of crisis, the pontiff notes, “are not wasted or useless: they can become important times of growth. They are moments when hope is purified!”
In his message, Pope Francis goes on to urge young people to rediscover "the great gift of the Eucharist" as a sustaining force on this journey, citing the example of the young Italian Blessed Carlo Acutis, who is expected to be canonised in coming months.
The pontiff also expressed hope that many young people from all over the world will be able to travel to Rome for the Jubilee or in any case experience the Holy Year in their own dioceses.
“I encourage you to approach this experience with three fundamental attitudes. First, thanksgiving, with hearts open to praise God for his many gifts, especially the gift of life. Then, a spirit of seeking, as an expression of our heart’s unquenchable thirst to encounter the Lord. And finally, penance, which helps us to look within, to acknowledge the wrong paths and decisions we have at times taken and, in this way, to be converted to the Lord and to the light of his Gospel.”
“In this coming Holy Year of Hope, I invite all of you to experience the embrace of our merciful God, to experience his pardon and the forgiveness of all our ‘interior debts’, as in the biblical tradition of the jubilee years.”
Thus, “embraced by God and born again in him, you too can become open arms to embrace your many friends and peers who need to feel, through your welcome, the love of God the Father.
“May each of you give even just ‘a smile, a warm gesture of friendship, a kind look, a ready ear, a good deed, in the knowledge that, in the Spirit of Jesus, these can become, for those who receive them, rich seeds of hope’, and thus become tireless missionaries of joy.”
