“The Holy Spirit is indeed at work in Los Angeles! I wish to express my gratitude to you for joining the Pilgrimage of Hope last Saturday. We welcomed nearly 6,000 pilgrims to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, offering our city a beautiful and powerful witness of faith, prayer, and Christian community along the way. It was a joy to walk with you as a fellow pilgrim in the company of the saints, with eyes fixed on Jesus. He alone is our hope!”

With these words Fr. Parker Sandoval, Vice Chancellor and Senior Director of Ministerial Services for Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said thank you to all the Pilgrims that joined him and Archbishop Gomez through the streets of Los Angeles. The event consisted of a seven mile pilgrimage that started from the City of Alhambra and concluded in downtown LA at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angeles.

The community of CL joyfully embraced and participated in the Pilgrimage. It is with so much gratitude that now I can identify the simple and correspondent words that Archbishop Gomez told us as true of my own experience: “He (Jesus) loves us more than we can imagine. In this Jubilee He calls us to be His instruments…we are called to be missionaries of hope, this is how we are going to make a difference in our families and society…”

Jesus gives me His people, this “sacramental” community, as Father Giussani would say, so that I can walk in the midst of the streets of my own circumstances in the living memory of His presence. I experienced this in each step of the seven miles. When my eyes are fixed on Him and my heart is simple and open to Him, the stranger becomes a friend, my finite self opens to His Grace and my cry becomes a prayer and offering to Him. I can walk with hope every day. Not the hope that things will be better…but Christian hope as Pope Francis reminded to all of us in the Bull of Indiction for this Jubilee Year: “Christian hope does not deceive or disappoint because it is grounded in the certainty that nothing and no one may ever separate us from God’s love: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or the sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” ( Rom 8:35.37-39).”

Guido, Los Angeles