If you are here for the Jubilee, then you are here for Jesus of Nazareth

perhaps to get to know Him better and to understand that He is someone who still has words to say to today's world, to each one of us…  

If you are here for other reasons, perhaps to admire this immense Basilica, maybe you can take this opportunity to encounter that Jesus who can speak meaningful words to our lives, which so often struggle to find meaning in what happens…  

We know well that there are other conceptions of mankind, other religions, other ideas of freedom—each of them wonderful, because they show how deeply humanity has searched for meaning, for the divine, for what it means to be truly human... But we want to say that we have found a path that we can walk, a path that sets in motion the humanity within us. We have believed in a word that has opened up horizons of meaning —sometimes difficult— but a path that can make life a masterpiece. That path has a name: Jesus.  

We’re not strange for thinking that He is someone worth living and dying for. If you truly get to know Him, you too will discover this joy.  

His love, which knows no bounds, opens up the human experience to us, and everything can find meaning.  

Why not give it a try?  

Let’s listen to a passage from Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”… It always places great hope in our hearts. These are the words of a desperate, degraded man who has lost his humanity, but who manages to see in Jesus a reason for hope:  

“He who has had pity on all men, who understood all things and all men, He will have pity on us too... He is the one, He is the judge. He will come in that day, and He will say: ‘Come forth, you also! Come forth, you drunkards, come forth, you weak ones, come forth, you children of shame!’And we shall all come forth, without shame, and shall stand before Him. And He will say unto us, ‘You are swine, made in the image of the beast and with his mark; but come, you also!’ And the wise ones and those of understanding will say, ‘Lord, why do You receive these?’And He will say, ‘Because not one of them ever considered himself worthy…’ And He will stretch out His arms to us, and we shall fall at His feet… and we shall weep… and we shall understand all things… and we shall understand all!” Lord, Thy Kingdom come.

(Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Part I, Chapter II)