A solemn moment
A Pope absorbed in prayer, at times emotional, aware of the solemnity of the moment, can be seen in front of the large bronze door, surrounded by flowers and green branches, on which the salient moments of the history of salvation are carved. This image of the Successor of Peter also recurs in the Mass for the Solemnity of the Epiphany, celebrated in St Peter's Basilica, with appeals to continue the jubilee journey by loving and seeking ‘peace’, shunning all violence and this ‘distorted economy’ that ‘tries to profit from everything’, becoming instead a sign of a Church that spreads ‘the fragrance of life’.
Thousands of faithful
Accompanying the Pope in this liturgical moment were 10,000 faithful gathered—despite the cold and the weather alert—in St Peter's Square, which for 378 days became an open-air jubilee church amid the prayers, songs, and pilgrimages of over 33 million faithful who came from all over the world. They all crossed this entrance, dominated by the Keys of Primacy carved in stone, with two plaques at the top centre bearing inscriptions commemorating the Holy Year of 1975 desired by Paul VI and the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, the end of the century and the beginning of the new millennium. Another 5,800 people were seated in the Basilica for the celebration. Among them were the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, with his daughter Laura. Also present were the Mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, the President of the Lazio Region, Francesco Rocca, and the Secretary of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, Alfredo Mantovano.
A Door Always Open
Before Mass, in the atrium surrounded by cardinals, bishops, and canons of St Peter's, Leo XIV read the admonition and then the prayer:
‘With grateful hearts, we are about to close this Holy Door, crossed by a multitude of faithful, confident that the Good Shepherd always keeps the door of his heart open to welcome us whenever we feel tired and oppressed.’
‘God reveals himself and nothing can remain unchanged’
The Pope's homily intertwines joy and turmoil, resistance and obedience, fear and desire. These are the feelings of the Magi and King Herod, symbols of all those ‘contrasts’ that appear in Sacred Scripture every time God manifests himself. Today we celebrate the Epiphany of the Lord, says Leo XIV, ‘aware that in his presence nothing remains as before.’
Lives on a journey in a troubled world
The Pope's gaze shifts to the Holy Door, the last to be closed after those of St Mary Major, St John Lateran, and St Paul Outside the Walls. This gateway, observes the Pope, ‘has seen the flow of countless men and women, pilgrims of hope, on their way to the City with doors always open, the new Jerusalem. What moved all these people? Spiritual seeking is a serious question at the end of the Jubilee Year: Millions of them have crossed the threshold of the Church. What have they found? What hearts, what attention, what correspondence?’ Like the Magi, these people accepted ‘the challenge of risking their own journey, which in a troubled world like ours, in many ways repulsive and dangerous, they feel the need to go, to seek.’
All of us, says Pope Leo, ‘are lives on a journey.’ It is the Gospel that drives this dynamism, orienting it toward God, who ‘can unsettle us, because he does not remain fixed in our hands like silver and gold idols.’ He is a ‘living and life-giving’ God, and this “fragrance of life” must now spread from all those places such as cathedrals, basilicas, and shrines that have become destinations for jubilee pilgrimages.
They must now give them ‘the indelible impression that another world has begun.’
The Gospel makes us bold and creative
The joy of the Gospel ‘frees’ us, ‘makes us prudent’ yes, but also ‘bold, attentive, and creative; it suggests paths different from those already travelled,’ the Pope emphasises.
The Pope then invited us to love and seek peace, reminding us that the Kingdom of God is not imposed by force but grows silently in the world, even when encountering resistance and violence, visible in current conflicts. Seeking peace means protecting what is fragile and nascent, like a child, because there is something sacred there.
He then denounced a distorted economy, capable of transforming everything into profit, even the deepest desires of human beings. The Jubilee then becomes an opportunity to change our perspective: to see the visitor as a pilgrim, the stranger as a seeker, the different as a travelling companion.
Looking at the Child Jesus, the Pope invited us to recognise the ‘signs of the times’: God does not manifest himself in luxury, but in humility. Jesus is an inestimable good that cannot be bought or sold: he is the Epiphany of gratuitousness.
Finally, he expressed the hope that, if churches remain alive and welcoming, communities united and free from the seductions of power, Christians can become the ‘generation of the dawn’ capable of renewing humanity not with omnipotence, but with the love of God made flesh.
At the end of the celebration, the Pope went before the statue of the Child Jesus in the Basilica for a moment of veneration. Finally, he greeted the faithful who at noon joined those in the square to follow the Angelus from the Loggia of Blessings.
Source: Vatican News
