The Church tells us that today’s world needs the marital bond, the only means to overcome the precarious situation of our times through its uniting and reconciling strength.
Newsdesk (16/07/2025 10:02, Gaudium Press) Jubilees, in their beginnings in the year 1300, occurred every 100 years. Over time they evolved from the biblical concept – a time of grace and forgiveness, both in the Jewish and Christian tradition (Lev 25) – to 50 years; currently fixed at every 25 years. It is a celebration of the Holy Catholic Church in honour of God’s mercy and forgiveness of sins. The faithful commonly go on pilgrimage to Rome, take advantage of the indulgence of passing through the Holy Door – which represents the passage to Salvation that Jesus opened to mankind – and venerate the relics of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, preserved in the Basilicas of their namesake. As it is a celebration for the whole Church, it can also be celebrated in other places, as it is, locally, in its Cathedrals.
Shortly at the beginning of the third millennium, Pope St. John Paul II desired to celebrate the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of the Divine Saviour of the world, Jesus our Lord. With the Bull Incarnationis Mysterium of November 29th, 1998, the conditions for receiving the Jubilee indulgence were simplified by simplifying the norms of previous years, although the necessary conditions of confession, communion, prayer for the Pope and renunciation of sin remained the same. It was on December 24th, 1999 that the celebrations began with the opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica, shortly after the Mass of the Nativity of the Lord.
We are now in the first twenty-five years of the 21st century, with a new Papal Bull introduced this Jubilee Year entitled: Spes non confundit (Hope does not confound, Rom 5:5). With the death of the previous Pontiff, this whole journey under the sign of hope came at the hands of Leo XIV.
Among the many special moments already experienced during the first months of this Jubilee: the world of communications, the Armed Forces, the Holy See, artists, deacons, adolescents, movements and associations, seminarians, bishops, etc., participated in this grace.
Among the events, the Jubilee of Families, of the Elderly and of Children took place – and I would like to highlight its importance.
Before a crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square, the Holy Father Leo XIV celebrated the solemn Eucharist; we could summarize, in a few words, his message during the homily: “From the bosom of families is born the future of peoples”.
“In the face of a humanity that is betrayed”, “in the face of the evil that divides and kills”, the Holy Father stressed to those present: “The Church tells us that today’s world needs the conjugal covenant in order to know and accept God’s love”, the only way to overcome, “the forces that destroy relationships and societies”.
As a symbol of joy, he invited us “to reflect” that in recent decades “spouses have been beatified and others canonized, not separately, but together, as a married couple”: Louis and Zelie Martin, parents of St. Therese of the Child Jesus; the Blessed Luigi and Maria Beltrame Quattrocchi, Romans of the last century; the Polish family of Józef and Wictoria Ulma, with their 6 children and in 9 months of pregnancy, united in love, and martyrdom, for trying to rescue a Jewish family by hiding them in their own home during the Nazi occupation in World War II; all – even the children – were summarily executed on March 24th, 1944.
How many solutions are proposed for the troubled world in which we live in its precarious situation. Being “a sign that gives food for thought’, Leo XIV firmly stated: ‘to propose as exemplary witnesses holy married couples“.
Contradicting statements so often made today, he said to the spouses present and to everyone in general: “Marriage is not an ideal, but the model of true love between man and woman: total, faithful and fruitful love“, quoting St. Paul VI (Humanae vitae, 9). “This love, by making them ‘one flesh’, enables them to give life, in the image of God“.
And, to that end, he encouraged them to be for their children, “examples of integrity, behaving as you wish them to behave, educating them in freedom through obedience, always seeing the good in them and finding means to nurture it”.
Adding for the children: “be grateful to your parents: to say ‘thank you’ for the gift of life and for all that life gives us every day is the first way of honouring father and mother (Ex 20,12)”.
Not forgetting the elderly, grandparents and elders, he recommended them to “watch over those they love with wisdom and tenderness, with the humility and patience that one learns over the years”.
His wise teachings emphasized how faith is transmitted in families from generation to generation, being a “privileged place to encounter Jesus, who loves us and desires our good always”.
At one point in his homily, he emphasized that: “if we love one another in this way, on the foundation of Christ, who is “the Alpha and the Omega”, “the beginning and the end” (Rev 22:13), we will be a sign of peace for all, in society and in the world. We must not forget: From the bosom of families is born the future of peoples”.
A few days earlier, to the participants of the seminar ‘Evangelizing with the families of today and tomorrow’ (2-6-2025), the Holy Father said that what moves the Church in Her pastoral and missionary efforts “is the desire to go and ‘fish’ for this humanity in order to save it from the waters of evil and death through the encounter with Christ”. Encouraging, above all, married couples to “set an example of life”, so that today’s young people may understand: “the beauty of the vocation to love and to the service of life which God grants to spouses” (St. John Paul II, Familiaris consortio, 1).
The world is seeing how Leo XIV, with his serene presence and firm principles, has, at one moment or another, expressed himself concerning the path to holiness and the importance of the witness of life, characterizing his own style of government in the Holy Church of today — as a ‘“Good Shepherd’”, shepherding the sheep, offering Christ Jesus as ‘’the Way, the Truth and the Life’ (Jn 14:6), the true hope of peace. May Our Lady protect him, enlighten him, these are our prayers for him.
(Originally published in La Prensa Gráfica de El Salvador, 13 July 2025)
By Fr. Fernando Gioia, EP
Compiled by Roberta MacEwan
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