Under a brilliant Roman sun, Pope Leo XIV delivered a powerful homily to tens of thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the Jubilee of Families on June 1, 2025.
Newsroom (June 01, 2025, 10:30, Gaudium Press) Drawing from Christ’s prayer for unity at the Last Supper (John 17:20-26), the pontiff framed the Christian family as an antidote to modern fragmentation and “a cradle for humanity’s future.”
The Trinity’s Blueprint for Family
The Pope’s meditation centered on what he called “the most revolutionary truth of Christianity” — that God loves each person with the same infinite love He has for Christ Himself. “The Father does not love us any less than He loves His only-begotten Son,” he declared, his voice echoing across the square where multi-generational families sat together. This divine love, he argued, provides the model for family bonds that transcend mere biological ties.
Christ himself bears witness to this when he says to the Father: “You loved me before the foundation of the world” (v. 24). And so it is: 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.
Saints Next Door
In one of the homily’s most poignant moments, Leo XIV highlighted beatified married couples — including the Ulma family, who were martyred together in Nazi-occupied Poland — as evidence that holiness grows in domestic soil. “The Church doesn’t propose unattainable ideals,” he said, “but shows us the Beltrame Quattrocchis and Louis-Zélie Martin — ordinary spouses who loved extraordinarily.” The crowd erupted when he added: “Your kitchen tables are altars. Your daily sacrifices are incense rising to heaven.”
A Counter-Cultural Witness
The Pope issued a sharp critique of what he termed “the dictatorship of self-invention,” lamenting societies where freedom is invoked “to end lives rather than nurture them.” His solution? Families that become “schools of grateful obedience,” where children learn to say thank you for life itself, and grandparents offer “the quiet heroism of presence.” Journalists noted his deliberate use of the word “obedience” — a term largely abandoned in contemporary discourse — which he framed not as oppression but as “the key that unlocks authentic freedom.”
“I would remind all married couples that marriage is not an ideal but the measure of true love between a man and a woman: a love that is total, faithful and fruitful (cf. SAINT PAUL VI, Humanae Vitae, 9). This love makes you one flesh and enables you, in the image of God, to bestow the gift of life.” the Pope stated.
From Cradle to Eternity
As the afternoon shadows lengthened, Leo XIV turned eschatological. “Our families are rehearsals for the eternal banquet,” he said, inviting the crowd to sense the presence of departed loved ones. “the moment when all our broken togetherness becomes whole in Christ.”
“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 (cf. Saint Augustine, Sermo super Ps. 127): one in the one Saviour, 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.”
- Raju Hasmukh
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