“We believe that our best days are yet to come”

Vatican City, Wednesday 6 November 2024 – In view of the Jubilee of 2025, dedicated to the theme “Pilgrims of Hope”, the Vatican Publishing House (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, LEV) has published two books by Pope Francis, to live the Holy Year more intensely.

The texts, available in bookshops from today, each include a previously unpublished introduction by the Pope.

The first anthology, La speranza è una luce nella notte. Meditazione sulla virtù umile (“Hope is a light in the night. Meditation on the humble virtue”, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, pp. 96, €9) offers a reflection on the meaning of Christian hope. The Christian is a person of springtime rather than autumn. He knows how to discern the signs of the future that are fermenting in the travails of time. He does not give in to despair nor to the cynicism of those who do not believe that things can change for the better. Pope Francis decided to dedicate the Jubilee to hope, aware that today's world, gripped by too much darkness and reckless violence, needs this Christian virtue. “We believe that on the horizon of humankind there is a sun that shines forever”, says the Pontiff, thus sketching a vivid image of why the believer hopes: because God's salvation has a face, Jesus, who died for all and rose again for all. “Being Christian implies a new perspective: a gaze full of hope”, notes the Pope. In these pages, Francis offers us reflections full of wisdom, and fruitful for the life of every person, with an invitation in the introduction: “Let us train ourselves to recognise hope. We will then know how to be amazed at how much good exists in the world. And our hearts will light up with hope. We will then be able to be beacons of the future for those around us”.

The second anthology, La fede è un viaggio. Meditazioni per viandanti e pellegrini (“Faith is a journey. Meditations for wayfarers and pilgrims”, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, pp. 72, €8) opens up the gaze on faith that “is a road to be travelled, without ever losing sight of the destination”, as Francis often reminds us. Christian faith is the opposite of static. It is movement, research, journey and also restlessness. Pope Francis, “Pontifex callejero”, has repeatedly urged every believer never to consider themselves to have already arrived in their relationship with God. One must always be aware of being on the road, because “Jesus is the road”.

This text addresses various dimensions of the human gesture of walking in its spiritual meaning, in the perspective of the Jubilee that invites all Christians to be ‘Pilgrims of Hope’. Walking is, therefore, a metaphor and substance of being followers of the Lord who walked all his life, ceaselessly seeking the lost man and woman, and who continues to walk the roads of time to make each person experience the tenderness of the Father: “Walk courageously and joyfully with the knowledge that you are loved by Jesus”.

In the first pages of the book, Pope Francis reminds us, “With God, we have never arrived, we have never arrived at God: we are always walking, we are always searching for Him. But it is precisely in walking towards God that we are offered the heady certainty that He awaits us to give us His consolation and His grace”.

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