By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily while celebrating Mass with archdiocesan school principals gathered for a meeting before the start of the 2025-26 school year, Aug. 1, 2025. The principals met at Epiphany Catholic Parish and School.
Happy New Year! For those of us whose lives are built around the school calendar - August, not January, is the beginning of the year. Our calendars – or, at least, the important dates or celebrations remind us of and help us grow in our personal and community identities. In the first reading from the Book of Leviticus, Moses sets forth for the Hebrews as they begin their wandering through the desert to the promised land the celebrations that will define them as God’s Chosen People. They will observe the Passover; they will keep the Sabbath…
It is in the observance of these feasts, their identity as Jews is forged- this is also true for us, Catholics. One of the main identifiers of a Catholic is simply going to Mass on Sundays. It’s what we Catholics do. Our observances of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, our faithful attendance at Sunday Mass are what mark the rhythms of our lives as Catholics as we make our own Passover from this life to Eternity.
This year, as you know, is also observed as a Jubilee Year, a celebration that takes place every 25 years to recall the Incarnation, that God entered into our history by taking on our flesh, by assuming our human nature, born of the Virgin Mary. This year’s Jubilee theme as set by the late Pope Francis is “Pilgrims of Hope.” This week in Rome, thousands of young people will gather with Pope Leo XIV. There are several hundred young people from Miami, including my priest secretary, Father Estrada, in Rome this week for the Jubilee of Youth. Considering how hot and uncomfortable Rome can be in August (it’s worse than Miami), they are really pilgrims – and not tourists.
Having hope implies openness to the Infinite, openness to God. As Pope Benedict once said, “a world without God is a world without hope, a world without a future.” We begin this new academic year, I trust, with great hope. And that’s why we begin with Mass, with prayer. Because only those who have hope pray.In choosing the theme, “Pilgrims of Hope” for this Jubilee Year, Pope Francis – and, now of course, Pope Leo – want us to grow in this theological virtue called hope but also to help communicate hope to a world that has seemingly lost hope. This loss of hope is seen in the soaring rates of addiction, the increased incidence of depression and even suicide among young people; it is seen in the collapse of marriage – you only will commit if you can see a future of hope ahead of you. The demographic winter in many countries – people not having kids anymore – is a sign of the loss of hope, for kids represent hope for the future.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “Hope is 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…” The catechism continues saying: “The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men's activities and purifies them so as to order them to the kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity.”
Today’s gospel reading has Jesus returning to his hometown of Nazareth. He is met with suspicion, with skepticism. They think they know who he is. “Isn’t he the carpenter’s son?” But they don’t know him really, for Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. Who he was, or who he is we proclaim each Sunday in the Nicene Creed, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.”
(It’s interesting that some will use these Bible verses to deny that Mary was virgin, and or to insist that Jesus had siblings because they’re basing their conclusions on people who really didn’t know Jesus or who he really was.)
I think we might be in a similar situation today. Unlike those first Christians who announced Jesus Christ to people who have never heard of him, today we must announce Jesus Christ, not to people who have never heard of him and his Church but to people who think that they have – and what they think they know does not draw them closer either to Jesus or to the Church.
Our Catholic schools represent a huge investment of people and resources in what really could be called “youth ministry.” The challenges of evangelizing these young people and their families are daunting. Jesus experienced rejection and opposition even in his hometown, but he persevered. While those whose “lack of faith” saddened him, he never gave up on his disciples whom he often chided as having “little faith.”
But even “little faith” can grow into heroic faith if it is planted and nourished in “good ground,” if it is anchored in hope, the hope celebrated in the Sacraments of the Church, a hope that reaches beyond this life and invites us to trust in Christ’s promises and to rely on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. We can be pilgrims of hope when we know that our life in this world has a destination that is found in Christ, the hope that will never disappoint us.
Again, “Happy New Year!” As you begin this new academic year, I thank you for embracing this work.
