A new beginning

The new year has begun amid serious uncertainties and concerns for many people and countries around the world. Especially migrants in the American continent, but also in other regions, are seeing the already few glimmers of hope for a better life that motivated them to walk and take risks, close even more. For many, the “new beginning” seems to herald above all difficulties and problems.

In the Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025, Pope Francis aptly described the feelings that can arise within us: “In the heart of every person hope is enclosed as a desire and expectation for good, even without knowing what tomorrow will bring. The unpredictability of the future, however, gives rise to sometimes opposing feelings: from trust to fear, from serenity to discouragement, from certainty to doubt.” The Pope hoped that the Jubilee could “be for everyone an opportunity to rekindle hope.” This is not about spiritual escapism, nor an illusion, because “the Word of God helps us to find its reasons.”[...]
For each of us, personally, Jesus is the gateway to a filial, trusting, intimate relationship with God, while revealing to us our deepest identity: that of being sons/daughters in the Son.
It is this filial relationship that frees us from conditioning, reconciles us deeply—with God, with ourselves, with others, with creation—and saves us, that is, brings us home. It is in this filial relationship that we can receive the gift of resetting and starting again, and thus, build or glimpse with confidence many promising new beginnings for each and for all, recognizing ourselves as brothers, children of the same Father, going against the current of the mentality of hatred and racism that seems to prevail as a fruit of fear.
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Every day we see firsthand how migration and hope are inseparably connected. In fact, what drives migrants and refugees is precisely the hope of surviving, of finding a better future, of living in peace. The current bishop of Piacenza, Mons. Adriano Cevolotto, emphasized, on the occasion of the canonization of St. G.B. Scalabrini, that since the latter is the “Father of migrants”, one should add to his various titles that of “Father of hope”, because together with migrants he also guards hope.
Of him, a man of concreteness and great visions, we can truly say what Pope Benedict XVI wrote about hope: “Every serious and upright action of man is hope in action. (…) Thus, on the one hand, from our actions hope arises for us and for others; at the same time, however, it is the great hope based on the promises of God that, in good times as in bad, gives us courage and guides our actions” (Spe salvi 35). We can learn from Scalabrini to let ourselves be carried by the “great hope-certainty that, despite all failures, my personal life and history as a whole are guarded by the indestructible power of Love” (Spe salvi 35).
Christian hope is not a concept, a desire, a human effort... but a living person! We can rely with full confidence on the rock that is the crucified-risen Jesus, hope in person. Before Him we can entrust everything, even humanity’s cry for peace… letting Him grow, who is peace for our life and for the whole world!

Regina


* Magazine On the roads of the exodus 2025 n.1 (p.3) (Read more)