“In the family, faith is handed on together with life, generation after generation,” Pope Leo said in his homily at the Mass for the festive celebration of the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly under a blazing sun in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, June 1. “Families are the cradle of the future of humanity.”
Sixty thousand Romans and pilgrims from 131 countries had come for this Jubilee event. Pope Leo XIV sparked great excitement as he drove among them for more than 20 minutes before the Mass. The pilgrims chanted “Leone! Leone!” and waved the flags of their homelands as he passed by, including those of the United States, Peru, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Ukraine, Spain, Germany, France and Italy.
Leo started the Mass by singing the opening prayer that reminded believers that through baptism “we are one family.” Commenting on the Gospel of the day (Jn 17: 20ff). which tells us that Jesus at the Last Supper prayed that “we may all be one,” Pope Leo said, “as he nears the end of his earthly life, [Jesus] thinks of us, his brothers and sisters,” and that as we enter into Jesus’ prayer, “we become, thanks to his love, part of a great plan that concerns all of humanity.”
“Christ prays that we may ‘all be one’,” Leo XIV said, speaking in Italian. “This is the greatest good that we can desire, for this universal union brings about among his creatures the eternal communion of love that is God himself.”
For this reason, he explained,“the unity for which Jesus prays is thus a communion grounded in the same love with which God loves, which brings life and salvation to the world.” Jesus came to bring this gift when he prayed to the Father in these words: “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
Pope Leo said, “Jesus is telling us that God loves us as he loves himself,” that is, “with an infinite love,” and so “in his mercy, God has always desired to draw all people to himself. It is his life, bestowed upon us in Christ, that makes us one, uniting us with one another.”
The pope told the crowd in St. Peter’s Square and a global audience of millions of believers who were following by television, radio or other means of social communication, “Listening to this Gospel today, during the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly, fills us with joy.”
He told his global audience that is the message “we want to proclaim to the world: we are here in order to be ‘one’ as the Lord wants us to be ‘one,’ in our families and in those places where we live, work and study. Different, yet one; many, yet one; always, in every situation and at every stage of life.”
Pope Leo recalled that in recent decades, “several spouses have been beatified and canonized, not separately, but as married couples. I think of Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus; and of Blessed Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi, who raised a family in Rome in the last century,” as well as “the Ulma family from Poland: parents and children, united in love and martyrdom.” The entire Ulma family was killed by the Nazis in 1944 for having hidden eight Jews in their home.
“By pointing to them as exemplary witnesses of married life, the church tells us that today’s world needs the marriage covenant in order to know and accept God’s love and to defeat, thanks to its unifying and reconciling power, the forces that break down relationships and societies,” he said.
Speaking to married couples, Pope Leo said: “Be examples of integrity to your children, acting as you want them to act, educating them in freedom through obedience, always seeing the good in them and finding ways to nurture it.” Marriage, the pope noted, “is not an ideal, but the measure of true love between a man and a woman: a love that is total, faithful and fruitful. This love makes you one flesh and enables you, in the image of God, to bestow the gift of life.”
Addressing the many children present wearing colorful caps, he told them to “show gratitude to your parents” and “to say ‘thank you’ each day for the gift of life and for all that comes with it is the first way to honour your father and your mother (cf. Ex 20:12).”
Turning to the grandparents and elderly people in St. Peter’s Square, he said, “I recommend that you watch over your loved ones with wisdom and compassion, and with the humility and patience that come with age.” He reminded everyone that it is “in the family, faith is handed on together with life, generation after generation. It is shared like food at the family table and like the love in our hearts. In this way, families become privileged places in which to encounter Jesus, who loves us and desires our good, always.”
The missionary pope concluded his homily with a final reflection drawn from St. Augustine:
The prayer of the Son of God, which gives us hope on our journey, also reminds us that one day we will all be uno unum, one in the one Savior, embraced by the eternal love of God. Not only us, but also our fathers, mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, brothers, sisters and children who have already gone before us into the light of his eternal Pasch, and whose presence we feel here, together with us, in this moment of celebration.
Pope Leo then went on to concelebrate Mass, mainly in Italian, with Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, and with 10 other cardinals, 30 bishops and 400 priests. The Scriptures were read in Spanish, English and Italian, and prayers were said in Chinese, French, Swahili, Croatian and Arabic.
At the end of Mass, Leo informed the crowd that yesterday in Poland, Christopher Klomfass and 14 sisters of the Congregation of St. Catherine the Virgin and Martyr were beatified. “[They were] killed in 1945 by Red Army soldiers in territories of present-day Poland,” he said, and “despite the climate of hatred and terror against the Catholic faith, they continued to serve the sick and orphans.” He went on to entrust to the intercession of the new blessed martyrs “all the women religious in the world who spend themselves generously for the Kingdom of God.”
He recalled that today is World Communications Day, and thanked the media workers “who, by caring for the ethical quality of their messages, help families in their educational task.”
He concluded his Sunday message by asking for the intercession of the Virgin Mary to “bless families and support them in their difficulties,” especially those “who are suffering because of the war in the Middle East, in Ukraine and in other parts of the world.”
