Editorial
Hope allows us to commit ourselves to God and our neighbor
During his first Sunday Angelus address for 2026, Pope Leo XIV offered an insight into the hope that Jesus made possible by his Incarnation.
After spending all of the previous year—the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope—celebrating this important, but often elusive, theological virtue, the Holy Father reminds us that “the coming of Jesus in the weakness of human flesh rekindles our hope.” It is precisely through his weakness and fragility that the infant Savior inspires hope for the future.
In his Message for the World Day of Peace on Jan. 1, Pope Leo makes a similar point. “Goodness is disarming,” he says. “Perhaps this is why God became a child. The mystery of the Incarnation, which reaches its deepest descent even to the realm of the dead, begins in the womb of a young mother and is revealed in the manger in Bethlehem.”
Hope is born in our hearts when we witness the defenselessness of an infant who must depend on others for everything. And yet we know that by the grace of God, this fragile child will one day grow to be an adult capable of remarkable things that seem unimaginable in its infancy.
In his World Day of Peace Message, Pope Leo continues:
“Peace on Earth,” sing the angels, announcing the presence of a defenseless God, in whom humanity can discover itself as loved only by caring for him [cf. Lk 2:13-14]. Nothing has the power to change us as much as a child. Perhaps it is precisely the thought of our children and of others who are equally fragile, that cuts to the heart [cf. Acts 2:37].
Hope effects change in us. It convinces us that the world is not a prison, that we are not determined by the status quo but are free to become the persons that God intends us to be.
Hope liberates us from the fear and mistrust that hold us back. “At the same time,” the Holy Father says, “it entrusts us with a twofold commitment: one to God and the other to our fellow human beings.”
In order for hope to realize its potential, we must bind ourselves to others. This is a paradox. True liberation (freedom) requires commitment. It does not mean that we have no obligations or responsibilities. On the contrary, the more we give ourselves to God and our neighbor, the more we can be freed from the chains of selfishness and sin.
Pope Leo challenges us to think differently about our relationship to Jesus, the incarnate Word of God:
We are committed to God, for since he has become flesh, choosing our human frailty as his dwelling place, we are called to reconsider how we think about him, beginning with the flesh of Jesus, and not from an abstract doctrine. We must, therefore, constantly examine our spirituality and the ways in which we express our faith, in order to ensure that they are truly incarnate. In other words, we must be capable of contemplating, proclaiming and praying to the God who meets us in Jesus. He is not a distant deity in a perfect heaven above us, but a God who is nearby and inhabits our fragile Earth, who becomes present in the faces of our brothers and sisters, and reveals himself in the circumstances of daily life.
The God who is near to us—who is one with us especially in the holy Eucharist—is the source of our hope for the future.
The same is true of our commitment to all men and women, our neighbors. “Since God has become one of us,” the Holy Father says, “every human creature is a reflection of him, bearing his image and containing a spark of his light. This calls us to recognize the inviolable dignity of every person and to offer ourselves in mutual love for one another.”
The hope that springs from the incarnation demands a concrete commitment to the promotion of fraternity and communion among all God’s people. “Through this commitment,” Pope Leo says, “solidarity becomes the criterion of all human relationships, calling us to strive for justice and peace, to care for the most fragile, and to defend the weak.”
The incarnation of God’s only Son has made hope possible for us. As Pope Leo says, “God has become flesh; therefore, there is no authentic worship of God without care for humanity.”
Hope allows us to commit ourselves to God and our neighbor. By binding ourselves to others, we are set free.
—Daniel Conway