70 that “original love” of which St. John speaks in Revelation: “Yet I hold this against you: you have lost the love you had at first. Realize how far you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Rev. 2:4-5). And the third condition for a fruitful jubilee is to look to the future of the congregation and the Church with renewed hope. Today the word “crisis” has a huge career. The litany of crises in which today’s world has been immersed is very long. Much has been also said about the crisis in the Church: the crisis of faith, the ravaging of churches especially in Western Europe, the crisis of priestly and religious vocations. The Church today is under attack from all sides and even persecuted in various parts of the world. The Holy Father Benedict XVI once said that it seems that in today’s world, the cause of God and the Gospel is constantly losing. But this is not true, because God never loses, because every apparent defeat of His, entails a new initiative of God’s mercy, which has no limits and constantly reaches out to save man (cf. Address to the Bishops of Switzerland, in Insegnamenti, 11.2 (2006), pp. 570-573). The Church and the world today need prophets of hope, for too many prophets of misfortune have multiplied! The congregation’s jubilee is, above all, a school of hope. Keeping in mind these three conditions for authentically experiencing the Jubilee – which St. John Paul II told us about – we pray in this Eucharist that the Jubilee of the 350th anniversary of the Congregation of Marian Fathers will bring abundant fruits of spiritual renewal at the service of the Church’s mission today. 3. And now, to conclude our meditation, let’s turn our gaze to the icon of Our Lady Salus Populi Romani. The faces of the Mother and the Son shine with extraordinary beauty. Their eyes look at us, gathered in this chapel, with great love. This is an icon of the Byzantine tradition of the Hodegetria type, as it depicts Mary as the one who shows us the Way, namely her Son. In her left hand, Mary holds a handkerchief, ready to wipe away the tears of all those who, crying, beg her for help. Here for centuries, until our time, the people of the faithful came to Her on the occasion of important ecclesiastical events (such as Councils, Synods, celebrations of the Holy Year...) and on the occasion of important civil events (thanksgiving for victories won, prayers of supplication during threats of war or epidemics...). It is worth noting that this is one of the most famous and widespread Marian icons in the Catholic world.
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