Pope: Focus Holy Year on Jesus Christ

December 20, 2024

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis called on Catholics to focus their Holy Year 2025 pilgrimages on Jesus Christ, who is both the path and destination for Christian hope.

At his general audience Dec. 18, the pope began a new series of talks on "Jesus Christ our hope," which he announced will the theme for his weekly catechesis throughout the Jubilee Year, which is set to begin with the opening of the Holy Door in St. Peter's Basilica Dec. 24.

Jesus, "is the destination of our pilgrimage, and he himself is the way, the path to be traveled," he said in the Vatican audience hall.

Walking across the stage to his seat rather than using a wheelchair as he had previously done, Pope Francis stopped to pray before a relic of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the 19th-century French saint who was the subject of an apostolic exhortation published by the pope in 2023.

After aides read the genealogy of Jesus from St. Matthew's Gospel in various languages, the pope explained that "the genealogy is a literary genre that is a suitable for conveying a very important message: No one gives life to him- or herself but receives it as a gift for others."

Unlike the genealogies in the Old Testament, which mention only male figures, St. Matthew includes five women in Jesus' lineage, Pope Francis noted. Four of the women are united "by being foreigners to the people of Israel," the pope said, highlighting Jesus' mission to embrace both Jews and Gentiles.

The mention of Mary in the genealogy "marks a new beginning," Pope Francis said, "because in her story it is no longer the human creature who is the protagonist of generation, but God himself."

CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE