Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Editorial
The Anchor
August 1, 2025
The Jubilee of Hope is now in full swing. This weekend in Rome, during the Jubilee of Youth — the major event for youth to flock to Rome to participate in the events of the holy year — a half million young people will surround Pope Leo at Tor Vergata to celebrate Christ Jesus as our hope (1 Tim 1:1).
Their presence in huge numbers — many originally booking their trip to be present for the canonization of Pier Giorgio Frassati, which has been moved to Sept. 7 — is a sign of the interest among the young to grow in faith and to learn from the compelling way those like Pier Giorgio, who died a century ago at 24, have lived it.
The young are supposed to be full of natural hope, as they look ahead with eager expectation to the future, whether that be the next school year, sports season, birthday or milestone, as they grow taller, stronger, smarter and see their potentials actualize. Those natural hopes are often a great foundation on which supernatural hope — for the most important things of all, for the ultimate, for God and life to the full — can grow.
That’s why the results of a 2023 report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are especially relevant and worrisome. The Agency’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary for 2011-2021 revealed that 42% of U.S. high school teens in 2021 felt persistently sad or hopeless, 22% had seriously considered attempting suicide in the previous year, 18% had come up with a concrete plan on how they would end their life, and 10% tried to carry out that plan (and thankfully failed). If those figures are not alarming enough, the data for high school girls is much worse: 57% felt persistently sad or hopeless, 30% seriously considered attempting suicide in the previous year and 24% had come up with a concrete plan on how they would end their life. Each of these figures was a 60% increase since 2011.
The CDC stated that over the course of the previous ten years, bullying, drug use, promiscuity, sexual violence, housing and family crises, and school isolation had all decreased or remained the same, and so didn’t seem to be a factor in the skyrocketing rates of hopelessness and sadness. The report wasn’t able to assess the impact of social media, which barely existed in 2011, or the role of smart phones. But we know from other surveys that Generation Z, encompassing those born between 1999 and 2015, has been experiencing a rapid decline of faith in God. Since 2010, religious practice among high schoolers has dropped 27%, with 13% now self-defining as atheist and 16% as agnostic. When the inevitable difficulties and heartbreaks of human life come, how do such students cope if they do not have at least some hope that there is a God who desires to bring good out of suffering and that everything ultimately works out for the good for those who love him?
Hopelessness, as St. Paul and Pope Benedict have both underlined, is “living without God in the world” (Eph 2:12; Spe Salvi 2). Hope, we can say, ultimately comes from living with God, consciously, in day-to-day life. If we grasp that God-with-us is still with us, whispering to us in the midst of difficulties, “Don’t be afraid. I am with you. We will confront this together,” then whatever problems we’re facing will not seem nearly as overwhelming. They may be too much for us, but not, we know, for God.
The crisis of hope that our culture is experiencing — seen likewise in high rates of despair, the push for or recourse to physician assisted suicide, skyrocketing addictions to drugs, social media, pornography and other escapes, the loss of the desire to transmit life due, and the proven failure of secularism, materialism and consumerism to deliver happiness — can be seen as symptoms of the same disease of practical atheism, of living as if God is not there with us, regardless of whether we believe he exists.
Hope is a theological virtue, a moral muscle that helps us to relate to God. The Catechism describes it as the “theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (1817). It is, in other words, an infused power that helps us to desire God and to live with him now and forever, to trust in his promises especially in difficulty, and to rely on him rather than think we’re alone when confronting crushing hardships. The focus on eternal life, which Pope Benedict called our “great hope,” is an anchor for us when lesser hopes like health, worldly success, or cherished relationships, may seem lost.
As a moral muscle, however, hope must be exercised. The Jubilee of Hope is meant to help us to train and toughen that God-given spiritual muscle so that it is strong enough when the challenges arise. This happens through acts that strengthen our hope, since virtue is built by repeated virtuous acts. What are those acts that can help us grow in hope and help us help others, both young and old?
The first action is prayer. The very fact that God enters into dialogue with us is already a cause of hope. In our prayer, however, it’s important to ask God to strengthen our hope. It’s similarly helpful to meditate about the Lord’s passion, death and resurrection, which shows us God’s response to what seemed to be the most hopeless day in history. It’s likewise key to ponder the Last Things: the more we pray about the call to heaven, the more we will be sustained on the journey; and if we have suffered injustices, the reality of future judgment buoys us in hope that malefactors will not get away with it.
The second action is gratitude. God’s past goodness is a ground of trust in his present and future care.
Third is participation in the sacraments, which are efficacious signs of the presence and action of God in life. The Sacrament of the Eucharist is a daily sign of just how much God will do for us and our salvation. The Sacrament of Confession is God’s great reset button by which he seeks to draw good even out of evil we’ve done.
Fourth is patience. A fruit of the Holy Spirit, patient endurance sustains our hope, strengthens it as a way of life and leads to perseverance.
Fifth is sound teaching. St. Peter calls us always to be ready to give an explanation of the reason of our hope (1 Pet 3:15). Our hope is reasonable, but we must know the reason. That requires getting to know our faith better. In 2008, Pope Benedict said in New York, “Only by ‘holding fast’ to sound teaching will we be able to respond to the challenges that confront us.”
Sixth is action for the good. Just as those who in a minor depression can often improve by cleaning their house, running errands, and getting something accomplished, so spiritually every time we do something good for others, every time we make someone’s life or the world a little bit better, we grow in hope.
Seventh is devotion to Mary and the saints. Pope Francis wrote, “Hope finds its supreme witness in the Mother of God,” who shows us that “hope is not naive optimism but a gift of grace amid the realities of life.” That’s why she’s called Mater Spei, “Mother of Hope.” She retained hope when Herod’s assassins were on the loose, the Nazarenes in the synagogue tried to murder her Son, and especially on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. The saints are those who were heroic in hope — that’s what’s necessary for canonization — and through growing in friendship with them, especially the martyrs, we learn how to live by hope, even in the supreme tests.
In 1994, St. John Paul II gave a book-length interview entitled “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” in which he stated, “It is very important to cross the threshold of hope, not to stop before it, but to let oneself be led.” Christ wants to lead us in his Church, through acts of hope, across that threshold. The Jubilee Doors in Rome, now open, are symbols of that threshold. In this holy year, we seek to cross it as pilgrims, spiritually and physically, and seek to bring as many people as we can, young and old, with us on that sacred passage, which is an image of the pilgrimage of life as the Church strives to cross the threshold of our “blessed hope,” the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem.
