Jesus is the path and destination for Jubilee pilgrims, pope says

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.”

In St. Matthew’s Gospel, the genealogy typically describes lineage by stating that a male figure “became the father of” a son. However, when it comes to Mary, the wording shifts: “of her was born Jesus who is called the Messiah.”

Through his lineage to David, Jesus is destined to be the Messiah of Israel, but because he is also descended from Abraham and foreign women, he will become the “light of the Gentiles” and “savior of the world,” Pope Francis said citing Scripture.

“Brothers and sisters, let us awaken in ourselves the grateful memory toward our ancestors,” he said, “and above all let us give thanks to God who, through mother church, has begotten us to eternal life, the life of Jesus, our hope.”

In his greeting to pilgrims after his main talk, Pope Francis briefly reflected on his Dec. 15 daytrip to the French island of Corsica to close a theology conference on popular religiosity.

“The recent trip in Corsica, where I was so warmly welcomed, particularly struck me for the fervor of the people” who do not treat faith as a “private matter,” he said, as well as “for the number of children present, a great joy and a great hope.”