Complete catechesis of Pope Francis on hope

The world today is so in need of this Christian virtue! The world needs hope, as it also needs patience, a virtue that walks hand in hand with hope. Patient human beings are weavers of good. They stubbornly desire peace, and although some are in a hurry and would like everything and everything now, patience has the capacity to wait. Even when many around him have succumbed to disappointment, he who is buoyed by hope and patient is able to get through the darkest nights. Hope and patience go together.

Hope is the virtue of one who has a young heart; and here, age does not count. Because there are also elderly people with eyes full of light, who live a permanent tension towards the future. Let us think of those two great elders of the Gospel, Simeon and Anna: they never tired of waiting and saw the last stretch of their earthly journey blessed by the encounter with the Messiah, whom they recognized in Jesus, taken to the Temple by his parents. How funny if it were like that for all of us!

If, after a long pilgrimage, as we left our saddlebags and staff, our hearts would be filled with a joy we had never felt before, and we too could exclaim: “Now, Lord, you can, according to your word, let your servant may he go in peace; For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light to illuminate the Gentiles and glory to your people Israel” (Lc 2,29-32). Brothers, sisters, let us move forward and ask for the grace to have hope. Hope with patience. Always look at that definitive encounter, always see that the Lord is always at our side and that death will never be victorious. Let us move forward and ask the Lord to give us this virtue of hope accompanied by patience.