Mary: " ... sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim people of God"

 Pope Leo XIV, in his Angelus address for the Solemnity of the Assumption, suggests that this truth of our faith is perfectly in line with the theme of the Jubilee 2025.

Mary, who the risen Christ carried body and soul into the glory, shines as an icon of hope for her pilgrim children throughout history.

How can we not think of Dante’s verses in the last canto of the Paradiso? Through the prayer put on Saint Bernard’s lips, which begins “Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son” (XXXIII, 1), the poet lauds Mary because here among us mortals she is “the living fountain-head of hope” (ibid., 12), that is the living spring, gushing with hope.

Sisters and brothers, this truth of our faith is perfectly in line with the theme of the present Jubilee: “Pilgrims of hope.” Pilgrims need a goal that orients their journey: a beautiful and attractive goal that guides their steps and revives them when they are tired, that always rekindles in their heart a desire and hope. On the path of life, our goal is God, infinite and eternal Love, fullness of life, peace, joy and every good thing. The human heart is drawn to such beauty and it is not happy until it finds it; and indeed it risks not finding it if it gets lost in the middle of the “dark forest” of evil and sin.

Let us consider this grace: God came to meet us, he assumed our flesh fashioned from the earth, and has carried it with him into the presence of God, or as we commonly say “into heaven.” It is the mystery of Jesus Christ, who became flesh, died and rose for our salvation. Inseparable from him, is also the mystery of Mary, the woman from whom the Son of God has taken flesh, and of the Church, the mystical body of Christ. It concerns a unique mystery of love, and thus of freedom. Just as Jesus said “yes,” so also Mary said “yes;” she believed in the word of the Lord. All of her life has been a pilgrimage of hope together with her son, the Son of God, a pilgrimage which, through the Cross and Resurrection, has reached the heavenly homeland, in the embrace of God.

After praying the Angelus, Pope Leo recalled how the proclamation of the dogma by Pope Pius XII in 1950 occurred at a time when memories of the Second World War were still recent. In entrusting a prayer for peace in the world to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Pope Leo likened these earlier times to those of today.