Pope Francis: ‘in God’s love is the source of all our hope’
June 14, 2017
Continuing his series of Wednesday general audiences devoted to Christian hope, Pope Francis devoted his June 14 audience to the relationship between God’s love and our hope.
“In our catechesis on Christian hope, we have found the source of that hope in God’s unconditional love, revealed for us in the coming of the Son and the gift of the Holy Spirit,” the Pope said to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square.
“None of us can live without love,” he continued, according to the Vatican’s official English-language summary of the audience. “Happiness comes from the experience of knowing love, freely given and received. So much unhappiness in our world is born of the feeling of not being loved for our own sake.”
Pope Francis added:
Faith teaches us that God loves us with an infinite love, not for any merit of our own, but out of his sheer goodness. Even when we stray from him, God seeks us out, like the merciful father in the parable of the prodigal son, offers us forgiveness, and restores us to his embrace. In the words of Saint Paul: “While we still were sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8), so that we might become beloved sons and daughters of our heavenly Father.
Through the resurrection of Jesus and the grace of the Holy Spirit, we become sharers in God’s own life of love. May all of us find in God’s embrace the promise of new life and freedom. For in his love is the source of all our hope.
Previous general audiences on hope:
- Isaiah 40: “Comfort, comfort my people…” (December 7)
- Isaiah 52: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings…” (December 14)
- Christ’s birth is the source of hope (December 21)
- Abraham’s hope against all hope (December 28)
- Rachel “is weeping for her children”, but... “there is hope for your descendants” (Jer. 31) (January 4)
- The false hopes of idols (January 11)
- Jonah: hope and prayer (January 18)
- Judith, the Courage of a Woman Restores Hope to a People (January 25)
- The helmet of hope (1 Thess. 5:4-11) (February 1)
- Hope, Source of Mutual Comfort and Peace (1 Thess. 5:12-22) (February 8)
- Hope Does Not Disappoint (February 15)
- For in this hope, we were saved (cf. Rom. 8:19-27) (February 22)
- Lent as a journey of hope (March 1; no audience March 8, during the Curia’s Lenten retreat)
- Rejoice in hope (cf. Rom. 12:9-13) (March 15)
- On Hope Founded in the Word (March 22)
- Hope against All Hope (March 29)
- On accounting for our hope (April 5)
- Hopes of the world and hope of the Cross (cf. John 12:24-25) (April 12)
- The Risen Christ our Hope (April 19)
- “I Am with You Always” (April 26; May 3 audience devoted to Pope’s apostolic journey to Egypt)
- The Mother of Hope (May 10)
- Mary Magdalen, Apostle of Hope (May 17)
- Emmaus, the Journey of Hope (May 24)
- The Holy Spirit makes us overflow with hope” (cf. Rm. 15:13-14) (May 31)
- God’s Paternity, Wellspring of Our Hope (June 7)
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