00:00My dear friends, it's a pleasure for me to greet all of you gathered together at White Sox Park
00:09on this great celebration as a community of faith in the Archdiocese of Chicago.
00:17A special greeting to Cardinal Cupich, to the Auxiliary Bishops, to all my friends who are
00:24gathered today on this, the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity. And I begin with that because the
00:30Trinity is a model of God's love for us. God, Father, Son, and Spirit, three persons in one God
00:39live united in the depth of love in community, sharing that communion with all of us. So as you
00:47gather today in this great celebration, I want to both express my gratitude to you and also an
00:54encouragement to continue to build up community, friendship as brothers and sisters in your daily
01:02lives, in your families, in your parishes, in the Archdiocese, and throughout our world.
01:09I'd like to send a special word of greeting to all the young people, those of you gathered
01:15together today, and many of you who are perhaps watching this greeting through technological
01:23means on the internet. As you grow up together, you may realize, especially having lived through
01:30the time of the pandemic, times of isolation, great difficulty, sometimes even difficulties in your
01:37families, in our world today, sometimes it may be that the context of your life has not given you the
01:44opportunity to live the faith, to live as participants in a faith community. And I'd like to take this
01:53opportunity to invite each one of you to look into your own hearts, to recognize that God is present,
02:02and that perhaps in many different ways, God is reaching out to you, calling you, inviting you
02:10to know his son Jesus Christ, through the scriptures, perhaps through a friend or a relative, a
02:17grandparent, who might be a person of faith, but to discover how important it is for each one of us
02:23to pay attention to the presence of God in our own hearts, to that longing for love in our lives,
02:31for searching, a true searching, for finding the ways that we may be able to do something with our own
02:37lives, to serve others. And in that service to others, we may find that coming together in friendship,
02:45building up community, we too can find true meaning in our lives. Moments of anxiety, of loneliness,
02:55so many people who suffer from different experiences of depression or sadness, they can discover that the
03:04love of God is truly healing, that it brings hope, and that actually coming together as friends, as
03:11brothers and sisters in community, in a parish, in an experience of living our faith together, we can find
03:19that the Lord's grace, that the love of God can truly heal us, can give us the strength that we need, can be
03:26the source of that hope that we all need in our lives. To share that message of hope with one another
03:32in outreach, in service, and looking for ways to make our world a better place, gives true life to all
03:39of us, and it's a sign of hope for the whole world. To, once again, the young people who are gathered here,
03:47I'd like to say that you are the promise of hope for so many of us. The world looks to you as you look
03:54around yourselves and says, we need you. We want you to come together to share with us in this common
04:03mission as church and in the society of announcing a message of true hope and promoting peace, promoting
04:11harmony among all peoples. We have to look beyond our own, if you will, egotistical ways. We have to
04:19look for ways of coming together and promoting a message of hope. St. Augustine says to us that if we
04:26want the world to be a better place, we have to begin with ourselves. We have to begin with our own
04:31lives, our own hearts. And so in this sense, as you gather together as a faith community, as you
04:38celebrate in the Archdiocese of Chicago, as you offer your own experience of joy and of hope, you can
04:46find out, you can discover that you too are indeed beacons of hope, that light that perhaps on the
04:53horizon is not very easy to see, and yet as we grow in our unity, as we come together in communion, we can
05:02discover that that light will grow brighter and brighter, that light which is indeed our faith in
05:07Jesus Christ, and we can become that message of hope to promote peace and unity throughout our world.
05:15We all live with many questions in our hearts. St. Augustine speaks so often of our restless hearts
05:21and says, our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O God. That restlessness is not a bad thing, and we
05:30shouldn't look for ways to put out the fire, to eliminate or even numb ourselves to the tensions that
05:40we feel, the difficulties that we experience. We should rather get in touch with our own hearts
05:45and recognize that God can work in our lives, through our lives, and through us, reach out to other people.
05:52And so I'd like to conclude this brief message to all of you with an invitation to be indeed that light
06:01of hope. Hope does not disappoint, St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans. When I see each and
06:09every one of you, when I see how people gather together to celebrate their faith, I discover myself
06:15how much hope there is in the world. In this jubilee year of hope, Christ, who is our hope, indeed calls
06:22all of us to come together, that we might be that true living example, the light of hope in the world
06:30today. So I would like to invite all of you to take a moment to open up your own hearts to God, to God's
06:39love, to that peace which only the Lord can give us, to feel how deeply beautiful, how strong, how
06:47meaningful the love of God is in our lives, and to recognize that while we do nothing to earn God's
06:54love, God in his own generosity continues to pour out his love upon us. And as he gives us his love,
07:02he only asks us to be generous and to share what he has given us with others. May you indeed be blessed
07:11as you gather together for this celebration. May the Lord's love and peace come upon each and every one
07:18of you, upon your families, and may God bless all of you so that you might always be beacons of hope,
07:27sign of hope and peace throughout our world. And may the blessing of Almighty God, the Father,
07:33the Son, and the Holy Spirit come upon you and remain with you always. Amen.
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