Pope Leo XIV spoke about unity, hope, and community in his historic June 14 video address to the young people of the Church and to those gathered at White Sox Rate Field for the Archdiocese of Chicago’s event celebrating the first American pontiff.
The event included Mass celebrated by Cardinal Blase Cupich, music, testimonies, and the special message from Pope Leo, who is a native of Chicago. In his address, the Pope encouraged the faithful and young people in particular to be beacons of hope to the world and, having noted how prevalent isolation and loneliness can be in the world, to continue coming together in community.
“In this Jubilee Year of Hope, Christ, Who is our hope, indeed calls all of us to come together, that we might be that true living example, the light of hope in the world today,” Pope Leo said in the video address, which was live-streamed on the Archdiocese of Chicago’s YouTube channel.
In coming together, Pope Leo later said, “you can discover that you, too, are indeed beacons of hope, that light that perhaps on the horizon is not very easy to see, and yet, as we grow in our unity … we can discover that that light will grow brighter and brighter, that light which is indeed our faith in Jesus Christ. And we can become that message of hope to promote peace and unity throughout our world.”
The full event and address can be rewatched here. The full transcript of his address is below:
My dear friends, it’s a pleasure for me to greet all of you gathered together at White Sox Park on this great celebration, as a community of faith in the Archdiocese of Chicago. Special greeting to Cardinal Cupich, to the auxiliary bishops, to all my friends who are gathered today, on this the feast of the Most Holy Trinity.
And I begin with that because the Trinity is a model of God’s love for us. God, Father, Son, and Spirit, three Persons in one God, live united in the depth of love, in community, sharing that communion with all of us. So as you gather today in this great celebration, I want to both express my gratitude to you and also an encouragement to continue to build up community, friendship — as brothers and sisters — in your daily lives, in your families, in your parishes, in the archdiocese and throughout our world.
I’d like to send a special word of greeting to all the young people, those of you gathered together today, and many of you who are perhaps watching this greeting through technological means on the internet.
As you grew up together, you may realize, especially having lived through the time of the pandemic, times of isolation, of great difficulty — sometimes even difficulties in your families — in our world today, sometimes it may be that the context of your life has not given you the opportunity to live the faith, to live as participants in a faith community.
And I’d like to take this opportunity to invite each one of you to look into your own hearts, to recognize that God is present, and that perhaps in many different ways, God is reaching out to you, calling you, inviting you to know His Son, Jesus Christ, through the Scriptures, perhaps through a friend or a relative, a grandparent, who might be a person of faith — but to discover how important it is for each one of us to pay attention to the presence of God in our hearts —to that longing for love in our lives, for searching, a true searching for finding the ways that we may be able to do something with our own lives to serve others. And in that service to others, we may find the coming together in friendship, building up community, we too can find true meaning in our lives.
Moments of anxiety, of loneliness, so many people who suffer from different experiences of depression or sadness, they can discover that the love of God is truly healing, that it brings hope, and that, actually, coming together as friends, as brothers and sisters, in community, in a parish, and in an experience of living our faith together, we can find that the Lord’s grace, that the love of God can truly heal us, can give us the strength that we need, can be the source of that hope that we all need in our lives. To share that message of hope with one another, in outreach, in service, and looking for ways to make our world a better place, gives true life to all of us, and is a sign of hope for the whole world.
To, once again, the young people who are gathered here, I’d like to say that you are the promise of hope for so many of us.
The world looks to you, as you look around yourselves, and says, ‘We need you.’ We want you to come together, to share with us in this common mission as Church and in the society, of announcing a message of true hope, and of promoting peace, promoting harmony among all peoples.
We have to look beyond our own, if you will, our own egotistical ways. We have to look for ways of coming together and promoting a message of hope. Saint Augustine says to us that if we want the world to be a better place, we have to begin with ourselves.
We have to begin with our own lives, our own hearts. And so, in this sense, as you gather together as a faith community, as you celebrate in the Archdiocese of Chicago, as you offer your own experience of joy and of hope, you can find out, you can discover that you, too, are indeed beacons of hope, that light that perhaps on the horizon is not very easy to see, and yet, as we grow in our unity, as we come together in communion, we can discover that that light will grow brighter and brighter, that light which is indeed our faith in Jesus Christ. And we can become that message of hope to promote peace and unity throughout our world.
We all live with many questions in our hearts. Saint Augustine speaks so often of our restless hearts, and says, ‘Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, oh God.’
That restlessness is not a bad thing, and we shouldn’t look for ways to put out the fire, to eliminate or even numb ourselves, to the tensions that we feel, the difficulties that we experience.
We should, rather, get in touch with our own hearts and recognize that God can work in our lives, through our lives — and through us, reach out to other people.
And so I’d like to conclude this brief message to all of you with an invitation to be, indeed, that light of hope.
“Hope does not disappoint,” Saint Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans.
When I see each and every one of you, when I see how people gather together to celebrate their faith, I discover myself how much hope there is in the world.
In this Jubilee Year of Hope, Christ, Who is our hope, indeed calls all of us to come together, that we might be that true living example, the light of hope in the world today.
So I would like to invite all of you to take a moment to open up your own hearts to God, to God’s love, to that peace which only the Lord can give us, to feel how deeply beautiful, how strong, how meaningful, the love of God is in our lives – and to recognize that while we do nothing to earn God’s love. God, in His own generosity, continues to pour out His love upon us.
And as He gives us His love, He only asks us to be generous and to share what He has given us with others.
May you indeed be blessed, as you gather together for this celebration, may the Lord’s love and peace come upon each and every one of you, on your families, and may God bless all of you, so that you might always be beacons of hope, sign of hope and peace throughout the world.
And may the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit come upon you and remain with you always. Amen.