On the morning of January 6, 2026, the solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, Pope Leo XIV presided over the rite of the closure of the Holy Door and the subsequent celebration of Holy Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, thus bringing the 2025 Jubilee to an end. The liturgical gesture closed a year marked by pilgrimage, the call to conversion, and the search for hope by millions of the faithful.
In his homily, the Pontiff drew from the Gospel account of the Magi from the East to reflect on the contrast between the joy of those who seek God and the fear of those who feel threatened by the novelty He brings, a tension that—he emphasized—also permeates the life of the Church today. Leo XIV invited us not to fear the spiritual dynamism of men and women who approach the Church in search, recalling that the Jubilee has revealed a deeper spiritual thirst than is sometimes perceived.
The Pope insisted that the Church is called to be an open house and a space of life, capable of recognizing in every visitor a pilgrim and in every search a sign of hope. In the face of the risk of reducing faith to ideology, routine, or product, he defended a Christian life centered on worship, gratuity, and real encounter with Christ, present in humility and not in places of power.
The closure of the Holy Year, he affirmed, does not end the journey begun, but reminds us that the Epiphany continues to occur wherever the Church welcomes, accompanies, and announces that God continues to “be born” in the midst of His people, calling it to set out once again.
We now leave below the complete homily of Leo XIV:
Dear brothers and sisters:
The Gospel (cf. Mt 2:1-12) has detailed for us the great joy of the Magi upon seeing the star (cf. v. 10), but also the disturbance experienced by Herod and all Jerusalem at their search (cf. v. 3). Whenever it comes to the manifestations of God, Sacred Scripture does not hide this type of contrasts: joy and disturbance, resistance and obedience, fear and desire. Today we celebrate the Epiphany of the Lord, aware that in His presence nothing remains as before. This is the beginning of hope. God reveals Himself, and nothing can remain static. A certain type of tranquility ends, the one that makes the melancholic repeat: “There is nothing new under the sun” (Qo 1:9). Something begins on which the present and the future depend, as the Prophet announces: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you!” (Is 60:1).
It is surprising that it is precisely Jerusalem, the city witness to so many new beginnings, that is disturbed. Within it, the one who studies the Scriptures and thinks he has all the answers seems to have lost the capacity to ask questions and cultivate desires. Moreover, the city is frightened by the one who, moved by hope, arrives from afar, to the point of considering as a threat what should instead cause it great joy. This reaction also challenges us, as Church.
The Holy Door of this Basilica, which has been the last to close today, has seen countless men and women pass through, pilgrims of hope, on their way to the City of the always-open gates, the new Jerusalem (cf. Rev 21:25). Who were they and what moved them? It challenges us with particular seriousness, at the end of the Jubilee Year, the spiritual search of our contemporaries, much richer than we may perhaps understand. Millions of them have crossed the threshold of the Church. What have they found? What hearts, what attention, what reciprocity? Yes, the Magi still exist. They are people who accept the challenge of risking their own journey; who, in a complicated world like ours—in many aspects exclusive and dangerous—feel the demand to set out, in search.
Homo viator, the ancients used to say. We are lives on the way. The Gospel leads the Church not to fear this dynamism, but to value it and direct it toward the God who arouses it. It is a God who can disconcert us, because we cannot grasp Him in our hands like silver and gold idols, because He is alive and gives life, like that Child whom Mary held in her arms and whom the Magi adored. Holy places like cathedrals, basilicas, and shrines, turned into destinations of the Jubilee pilgrimage, must spread the perfume of life, the indelible sign that another world has begun.
Let us ask ourselves: Is there life in our Church? Is there space for what is born? Do we love and proclaim a God who sets us on the way?
In the account, Herod fears for his throne, he is agitated by what escapes his control. He tries to take advantage of the desire of the Magi by manipulating their search for his own benefit. He is ready to lie, he is willing to do anything; fear, in fact, blinds. The joy of the Gospel, on the other hand, liberates; it makes us prudent, yes, but also bold, attentive, and creative; it suggests paths different from those already traveled.
The Magi bring to Jerusalem a simple and essential question: “Where is the king of the Jews who has just been born?” (Mt 2:2). How important it is that the one who crosses the door of the Church realizes that the Messiah has just been born there, that a community gathers there where hope has arisen, that a story of life is being realized there. The Jubilee has come to remind us that we can start over, indeed, that we are still at the beginnings, that the Lord wants to grow among us, wants to be the God-with-us. Yes, God questions the existing order; He has dreams that He inspires even today in His prophets; He is determined to rescue us from old and new slaveries; in His works of mercy, in the wonders of His justice, He involves young and old, poor and rich, men and women, saints and sinners. Without making noise; however, His Kingdom is already sprouting all over the world.
How many epiphanies have been given to us or will be given to us! But they must be withdrawn from Herod’s intentions, from the fears always lurking to turn into aggression. “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force” (Mt 11:12). This mysterious expression of Jesus, indicated in the Gospel of Matthew, makes us think of the numerous conflicts with which men can resist and even attack the Novelty that God has reserved for all. Loving peace, seeking peace, means protecting what is holy and which precisely because of that is being born: small, delicate, and fragile like a child. Around us, a deformed economy tries to profit from everything. We see it: the market turns even the human thirst to seek, to travel, and to start over into business. Let us ask ourselves: Has the Jubilee educated us to flee from this type of efficiency that reduces everything to product and the human being to consumer? After this year, will we be more capable of recognizing in the visitor a pilgrim, in the stranger a seeker, in the distant a neighbor, in the different a fellow traveler?
The way in which Jesus went out to meet everyone and let everyone approach Him teaches us to value the secret of hearts that only He knows how to read. With Him we learn to discern the signs of the times (cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, 4). No one can sell us this. The Child whom the Magi adore is a Good that has no price or measure. It is the Epiphany of gratuity. He does not wait for us in prestigious places, but in humble realities. “And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah” (Mt 2:6). How many cities, how many communities need to be told: “You are by no means the least.” Yes, the Lord continues to surprise us! He lets Himself be found. His ways are not our ways, and the violent cannot dominate them, nor can the powers of the world obstruct them. Here lies the great joy of the Magi, who leave behind the palace and the temple to go to Bethlehem; and it is then that they see the star again!
Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, it is beautiful to become pilgrims of hope. And it is beautiful to continue being so, together. God’s fidelity will always surprise us. If we do not reduce our churches to monuments, if our communities become homes, if we unitedly reject the flattery of the powerful, then we will be the generation of the dawn. Mary, Morning Star, will always walk ahead of us. In Her Son we will contemplate and serve a magnificent humanity, transformed not by delusions of omnipotence, but by the God who became flesh out of love.