Vatican City – “The Mass is a moment of celebration and of joy. Indeed, how can one not feel joy in the heart in the presence of Jesus? Yet the Mass is, at the same time, a serious, solemn moment, imbued with gravity. May your attitude, your silence, the dignity of your service, the liturgical beauty, the order and the majesty of the gestures help the faithful enter into the sacred greatness of the Mystery.” With these words, Leo XIV opened his meeting with hundreds of French altar servers on pilgrimage to Rome. Not a lesson, but a small spiritual itinerary, marked by three clear themes: the Jubilee as conversion, hope founded on Christ, the centrality of the Eucharist. And, as a culmination, a frank invitation to listen to the voice of God, even in a possible call to the priestly vocation.
The Jubilee as an invitation to conversion
The Pope immediately situates the pilgrimage in the context of the Holy Year, removing it from the rhetoric of an “event” and bringing it back to the practice of conversion: “When we come to Rome and cross the Holy Door, He helps us to ‘convert,’ that is, to turn towards Him, to grow in faith and in His love…”
Not a mere symbolic gesture, then, but a real passage: taking time to “speak to Jesus in the secrecy of the heart,” letting Him become “your best friend, the most faithful one.”
“Only Jesus saves”: hope as an anchor
The second movement is deeply Christological, without softening: hope is not a vague feeling, it is a Person. “The answer is perfectly clear… only Jesus comes to save us… ‘There is no other name under heaven…’” The Pope does not evade wounds — illness, disability, bereavement, failure — and poses the sequence of questions that inhabit every heart (“Who will come to save us?”). The answer is an anchor, not an analgesic: “This hope will always be… like a secure anchor, cast towards heaven, which will enable you to continue on the path.”
Here emerges Leo XIV’s pedagogy: linking emotion to adhesion. It is not enough to “feel” hope; one must put Jesus at the center and “imprint His Word in the heart.”
The heart of faith: “God loved us to the point of dying for us”
The densest part is both soteriological and affective: “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life… (Jn 15:13)… God, the creator of heaven and earth, willed to suffer and die for us… God loved us to the point of dying for us!”
The formula is striking, almost disarming in its simplicity. The Pope unites Cross and Resurrection, avoiding any sentimentalism: the most important event in history generates an “imperishable” life that today “takes care of us.” It is a catechesis that rescues hope from mere psychological optimism and restores it to the memory of Easter.
“The treasure of treasures”: Eucharist and ars celebrandi
The next passage is true Eucharistic mystagogy. The statement is peremptory: “The Eucharist is the treasure of the Church, the treasure of treasures… In the hands of the priest… Jesus still gives His life on the altar… The celebration of the Mass saves us today! It saves the world today!”
Two clear pastoral corrections emerge from the Pope’s words, a direct admonition also to parish priests:
The Mass is not a duty but a need: “the need for the life of God who gives Himself without asking anything in return.”
Form conveys content: to altar servers, the Pope entrusted an almost monastic vocabulary — “attitude,” “silence,” “dignity,” “liturgical beauty,” “order,” “majesty of gestures” — so that they may introduce the faithful into the “sacred greatness of the Mystery.”
Here the invitation is not rubricist, but missionary: beauty educates in faith when form becomes transparent to the Mystery.
“A disaster for the Church”: candid words on vocations
The vocational passage is deliberately blunt, without euphemisms: “The lack of priests in France, in the world, is a great disaster! A disaster for the Church!” This is not a media alarm, but an ecclesial judgment that becomes a proposal: “to discover the beauty, the happiness, and the necessity of the priesthood.” And the motivation is not functional (“we need priests”), but theological: the priest is the man who encounters Jesus “at the center of each day” and gives Him to the world. The lingering question is: which adults, which communities, which liturgical style will truly help a young person discern this call?
A paternity that challenges
The discourse alternates exclamations and questions (“What should we fear from a God who has loved us to this extent?”), precise biblical quotations and discreet imperatives (“put Jesus at the center,” “persevere faithfully”). It avoids moralism, aiming instead at familiarity with Christ: “His only desire is to be part of your life… to become your best friend… Yet He awaits your response.”
This is the grammar of Christian freedom: God knocks, He does not break down doors; whoever opens, dines with Him. In a few simple words, Leo XIV offered to French youth (and, by reflection, to our communities) a straightforward yet lofty path: to cross the Jubilee as real conversion; to anchor hope to the Lordship of Christ; to rediscover in the Eucharist the “treasure of treasures” that “saves the world today”; to pray and work so that the Lord may call and find hearts ready.
In short, Leo has returned to speak of priesthood, vocation, Mass, sacrifice, prayer… something many had almost forgotten.
d.A.E.
Silere non possum