‘Raise your heads,’ Pope Francis tells faithful in first Advent message amid multiple conflicts

Written by AC Wimmer, via the Catholic News Agency.

Pope Francis welcomed the recent Lebanon-Israel ceasefire while urging the faithful to “stand erect and raise your heads” amid global turmoil during his Sunday Angelus address.

Speaking to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the first Sunday of Advent, the pontiff expressed hope that the diplomatic breakthrough between Lebanon and Israel could spark similar ceasefires elsewhere, particularly in Gaza, while delivering a powerful message about maintaining spiritual vigilance in times of tribulation.

“Jesus’ invitation is this: Raise your head high and keep your heart light and awake,” the Holy Father said, addressing a world grappling with what he called “cosmic upheavals and anxiety and fear in humanity.”

The pope noted that many people today, like Jesus’ contemporaries, faced with “catastrophic events they saw happening around them — persecutions, conflicts, natural disasters — are gripped by anxiety and think that the end of the world is coming.”

“Their hearts are weighed down with fear,” Francis observed. “Jesus, however, wants to free them from present anxieties and false convictions, showing them how to stay awake in their hearts, how to read events from the plan of God, who works salvation even within the most dramatic events of history.”

Diplomatic breakthrough offers ‘glimmer of peace’

“I welcome the ceasefire that has been reached in recent days in Lebanon, and I hope that it may be respected by all parties, thus enabling the population of the regions involved in the conflict — both Lebanese and Israeli — to return home soon and safely, also with the valuable help of the Lebanese army and the United Nations peacekeeping forces,” the pope said.

The pontiff also expressed concern about Syria, “where unfortunately war has flared up again, claiming many victims,” and added: “I am very close to the Church in Syria. Let us pray!”

Addressing the situation in Ukraine, Francis noted that “for almost three years we have witnessed a terrible sequence of deaths, injuries, violence, and destruction... Children, women, the elderly, and the weak are the first victims. War is a horror, war is an affront to God and to humanity, war spares no one, war is always a defeat, a defeat for the whole of humanity.”

A light heart in Advent season

Looking toward Christmas, the pope connected the season’s message of hope with contemporary challenges: “All of us, in many moments of life, ask ourselves: What can I do to have a light heart, a wakeful heart, a free heart? A heart that does not let itself be crushed by sadness?”

The pontiff concluded with a stark warning about indifference to conflict, stating that “the quest for peace is the responsibility not of a few, but of all. If habituation and indifference to the horrors of war prevail, the whole, entire human family is defeated.”