The pope thanked young Catholics for their faith in Jesus, working to realize their dreams, and making the world “more beautiful and humane.”
“Thank you above all, because in a world that thinks only of present gain, that tends to stifle grand ideals, you have not lost the ability to dream in this world,” he said at the live-streamed Mass.
The kingship of Jesus is completely different than that of the world: He did not come to dominate but to serve. He did not come amid signs of power, but with the power of signs. He is not like other kings, but he is King for the others. #ChristTheKing
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) November 21, 2021
“Do not live your lives numbly or asleep. Instead, dream and live. This helps us adults, and the Church as well. Yes, as a Church too, we need to dream, we need youthful enthusiasm in order to be witnesses of the God who is always young.”
Pope Francis recalled that the Italian Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, archbishop of Milan from 1979 to 2002, once said that the Church and society need “dreamers who remain ever open to the surprises of the Holy Spirit.”
“This is beautiful,” the pope commented. “I hope and pray that you will be one of these dreamers.”
Turning to the second image, of Christ before Pilate, he noted that Jesus did not hide his kingly identity.
He said: “Dear young people, Jesus’ freedom draws us in. Let us allow it to resonate within us, to challenge us, to awaken in us the courage born of truth.”
“Let us ask ourselves this: Were I in Pilate’s place, looking Jesus in the eye, what would I be ashamed of? Faced with the truth of Jesus, the truth that is Jesus, what are the ways I am deceitful or duplicitous, the ways I displease him?”
“Each of us will find such ways. Look for them, seek them out. We all have these duplicities, these compromises, this ‘arranging things’ so that the cross will go away.”
“It is good to stand before Jesus, who is truth, in order to be set free from our illusions. It is good to worship Jesus, and as a result, to be inwardly free, to see life as it really is, and not be deceived by the fashions of the moment and the displays of consumerism that dazzle but also deaden.”
At the end of the Mass, the pope stood with four young people before an image of the Virgin and Child as the congregation sang the Salve Regina.
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