Homily by His Holiness Pope Leo XIV
Dear brothers and sisters,
To gather in this place during the Jubilee Year is a gift that we must not take for granted. Above all, it is a gift because to go on a pilgrimage, to pass through the Holy Door, reminds us that life makes sense only when it is lived as a journey, when it knows how to keep moving forward, that is, when it is capable of making the reality of Easter present.
It is good, then, to think how the Church, through celebrating the Jubilee in these months, has been remembering that she constantly needs to undergo conversion and that she must always walk behind Jesus without hesitation and without the temptation to move on ahead of him. Indeed, she is always in need of Easter, that is, of “passing over” from slavery to freedom, from death to life. I hope that all of you experience within yourselves the gift of this hope, and that the Jubilee may be an opportunity through which your lives can begin anew.
Today, I would like to address you who are part of university institutions and all those who, in various ways, dedicate themselves to study, teaching and research. What is the grace that can touch the life of a student, a researcher, a scholar? I would respond in this way: it is the grace of an overarching vision, a perspective capable of grasping the horizon, of looking beyond.
We can see this insight in the Gospel passage just proclaimed (Lk 13:10-17), which presents the picture of a woman who was bent double and, healed by Jesus, can finally receive the grace of a new perspective, a broader vision. This woman’s condition resembles the condition of ignorance, which is often linked to being closed in on ourselves and lacking spiritual and intellectual restlessness. She is bent double, turned in on herself, and thus unable to look beyond herself. When human beings are incapable of seeing beyond themselves, beyond their own experiences, ideas and convictions, beyond their own projects, then they remain imprisoned, enslaved and incapable of forming mature judgements.
Like the bent-over woman of the Gospel, the risk is always that of remaining prisoners of our self-centered perspective. Yet, in reality, many of the things that truly matter in life – we might say, the most fundamental things – do not come from ourselves; we receive them from others. They come to us through our teachers, encounters and life experiences. This is an experience of grace, for it heals us from self-absorption. This is a genuine healing that, just as for the woman in the Gospel, allows us once again to stand upright before life and its reality, and to look at them with a wider perspective. The healed woman receives hope, for she can finally lift her eyes and see something different, can see in a new way. This especially happens when we encounter Christ in our lives, when we open ourselves up to a life-changing truth capable of making us step out of ourselves and freeing us from our self-absorption.
Those who study are “lifted up,” broadening their horizons and perspectives in order to recover a vision that does not look downward, but is capable of looking upward: toward God, others and the mystery of life. Indeed, the grace of being a student, researcher or scholar means accepting a broad vision that can see far into the distance; that does not simplify problems nor fear questions; that overcomes intellectual laziness and, in doing so, also defeats spiritual decay.
Let us always remember that spirituality needs this perspective, to which the study of theology, philosophy and the other disciplines contribute in a particular way. Today, we have become experts in the smallest details of reality, yet we have lost the capability of an overarching vision that integrates things through a deeper and greater meaning. The Christian experience, however, wishes to teach us to look at life and reality with a unified gaze, capable of embracing everything while rejecting merely partial ways of thinking.
I thus urge you, students, researchers and teachers alike, not to forget that the Church needs this unified perspective for both today and tomorrow. We can look to the example of men and women such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Edith Stein and many others who knew how to integrate research into their lives and spiritual journey. We likewise are called to advance in our intellectual endeavors and the search for truth without separating them from life. It is important to cultivate this unity so that what happens in university classrooms and educational environments of all kinds does not remain an abstract intellectual exercise. Instead, it becomes capable of transforming life, and helps us to deepen our relationship with Christ, to understand better the mystery of the Church, and makes us bold witnesses of the Gospel in society.
Dearest friends, study, research and teaching bring with them an important educational responsibility, and I wish to encourage universities to embrace this calling with passion and commitment. To educate is similar to the miracle recounted in today’s Gospel, for the activity of the educator is to lift people up, helping them become themselves and able to develop informed consciences and the capacity for critical thinking. Pontifical universities must be able to continue this “activity” of Jesus. This is a true act of love, for it is a form of charity expressed through study, knowledge and the sincere search for what is true and worth living for. To feed the hunger for truth and meaning is an essential task, since without them we would fall into emptiness and even succumb to death.
On this journey, each of us can also rediscover the greatest gift of all, which is to know that we are not alone and that we belong to someone, as the Apostle Paul affirms: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’…” (Rom 8:14-15). Indeed, what we receive while we are searching for the truth and devoting ourselves to study helps us to discover that we are not creatures cast by chance into the world, but that we belong to someone who loves us and who has a plan of love for our lives.
Dear brothers and sisters, together with you I ask the Lord that the experience of study and research during your university years may render you capable of this new perspective. May your academic journey help you to know how to speak, narrate, deepen and proclaim the reasons for the hope that is in us (cf. 1 Pet 3:15). May the university form you to be men and women who are never bent in on themselves but always upright, capable of bringing the joy and consolation of the Gospel wherever you go.
May the Virgin Mary, Seat of Wisdom, accompany and intercede for you.
Source: vatican.va
