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“Dear young people, I am inviting you to set out on a journey, to discover life along the path of love, and to seek the face of God. [...] Do not set out as mere tourists, but as true pilgrims.” This is how Pope Francis encouraged young people in his message for the 2024 diocesan World Youth Day, published on September 17, 2024.
Looking towards the 2025 Jubilee year, Pope Francis urged young people to not satisfy themselves with fleeting experiences but to live the “pilgrimage of life,” with all its ups and downs, as a deep journey of personal growth.
“Do not be like superficial sightseers, blind to the beauty around you, never discovering the meaning of the roads you take, interested only in a few fleeting moments to capture in a selfie. Tourists do this,” he said. “Pilgrims, on the other hand, immerse themselves fully in the places they encounter, listen to the message they communicate, and make them a part of their quest for happiness and fulfillment.
"The Jubilee pilgrimage is meant to be the outward sign of an inward journey that all of us are called to make towards our final destination.”
Pope Francis addressed this three-page letter to the participants of the next World Youth Day. The WYD is held every year at the diocesan level and every two or three years in an international location (the next being in Seoul, South Korea, in 2027).
The 2024 diocesan World Youth Day will take place on November 24 and the theme is a verse by the Prophet Isaiah: “Those who hope in the Lord will run and not be weary” (40:31).
This fits also with the theme of the 2025 Jubilee which is “pilgrims of hope.”
How young people feel
In his text, the Pope laments that young people “pay the highest price” for the prevailing lack of hope in our time, which is “marked by dramatic situations that generate despair and prevent us from looking to the future with serenity.”
“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 behaviors,” the Pope explained.
He wrote that the material “goals, achievements, and successes” offered by contemporary society, “cannot completely satisfy our soul, because we were created by One who is infinite; as a result, we have an innate desire for transcendence.”
Thus he explains that the tendency is to fall into “an empty activism” that makes us fill our days with a thousand things and, in spite of this, feel that we "never manage to do enough and never quite measure up."
Other than this fatigue, there is also the risk of feeling a certain sense of boredom, an “apathy and dissatisfaction that affects those who [...] [prefer] to remain in their own comfort zone, closed in on themselves, seeing and judging the world from behind a screen.”
The Pope sharply criticized this attitude, likening it to a “wet cement” in which young people become entangled, soon unable to move.
How challenges make us grow
“The solution to tiredness, oddly enough, is not to stand still and rest. It is to set out and become pilgrims of hope,” the Pope encouraged, citing the theme of the 2025 Jubilee. “This is my invitation to you: Walk in hope” not as tourists, “but as pilgrims” on a personal journey.
However, Pope Francis also acknowledges that in the course of the “pilgrimage of life” there will “inevitably” be challenges.
“Even for those who are believers, the pilgrimage of life and the journey to our ultimate goal can prove tiring, as the journey through the desert to the Promised Land was for the people of Israel,” he explained. He added also that even with faith there are moments where “we can feel God’s presence and closeness” but also moments where “we experience the desert.”
“It can happen that our initial enthusiasm for school or work, or for following Christ – whether in marriage, the priesthood or consecrated life – can be followed by moments of crisis, that make life seem like a difficult trek in the desert,” Francis wrote. However these moments of crisis “are not wasted or useless” as they are “important times of growth” when “hope is purified," he continued.
“In crises, many false 'hopes,' hopes too small for our heart, fade in significance; they are revealed for what they are and we find ourselves alone in facing the fundamental questions of life, with no illusions,” he added.
Gathering strength from the Lord through the Eucharist
In those difficult moments we face, in the challenges of a pilgrimage, Pope Francis emphasizes that “the Lord does not abandon us. Like a father, he draws near to us and constantly gives us the bread that renews our strength for the journey.”
As an example he cited Blessed Carlo Acutis who “made the Eucharist his most important daily appointment” and said “the Eucharist is the highway to heaven.”
Although Pope Francis has recognized the young Acutis as a saint, he has still not set a date for the canonization ceremony. Many observers estimate that it will take place during the 2025 Jubilee.
“In those inevitable moments of fatigue in our pilgrimage in this world, let us learn, then, to rest like Jesus and in Jesus,” Francis said. “He also recognizes your own need for bodily rest, time for recreation, for enjoying the company of friends, for sports, and for sleep. Yet there is a deeper kind of rest, the repose of the soul, which many seek and few find, for it is to be found in Christ alone. Realize that all your inner weariness can find repose in the Lord.”
The Pope is waiting for you in Rome in 2025
Pope Francis concluded his letter expressing his hope that many young people will be able to come to Rome for the 2025 Jubilee and especially for the Youth Jubilee that will take place from July 28, to August 4.
“It is my hope that this Jubilee pilgrimage will become for each of us a moment of genuine, personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the ‘Door’ of our salvation,” he explained.
He added that young people should approach this experience with three attitudes: thanksgiving for the gifts God gives them, a spirit of seeking to encounter the Lord, and penance to acknowledge one’s wrong decisions.
Evoking the colonnade surrounding St. Peter’s Square, that is like two arms embracing those who arrive, Pope Francis encouraged all the young people who will come to Rome to feel “embraced by God and born again in him” so that they can then “become open arms to embrace your many friends and peers who need to feel, through your welcome, the love of God the Father, [...] and thus become tireless missionaries of joy.”
