Pope Leo’s video message for ‘thy kingdom come 2026’
Thy Kingdom Come (TKC) is a global ecumenical prayer movement that invites Christians around the world
to pray from Ascension to Pentecost for more people to come to know Jesus.
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Dear brothers and sisters,
I am delighted to welcome all those taking part in this year’s ecumenical “Thy Kingdom Come” prayer event, and I would like to assure you of my spiritual support.
During the Advent season each year, Christians address God with the words, “Come, Emmanuel.”
We cry out with great urgency for the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy of the birth of Emmanuel, whose name means ‘God is with us’.
Throughout the season, we repeat this call with ever greater urgency in our songs and carols, longing for his presence: “Come, God-with-us”.
We long for him to save us from our sins and foolishness, and from anything that might harm us.
We long for him to heal what is broken within us and within our world.
Despite knowing that God is almighty and transcendent, we are bold enough to ask him to be with us in person, close by, rather than distant.
We are bold enough to cry out with the prophet: ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down’ (Isaiah 64:1).
Although we sometimes stumble and forget about God and our need for him, deep down we know that only he can satisfy our deepest longings and inner restlessness.
Perhaps the most beautiful expression of this can be found in the words of Saint Augustine: ‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you‘.
In Jesus, God came close to us.
He revealed himself to us in the flesh, and through his Holy Spirit, he remains with us.
During these weeks of Eastertide, ‘Alleluia’ is our song, as we offer praise and thanksgiving for the resurrection of the Lord.
He is still God-with-us!
However, we learn from the Gospels that even those closest to Jesus did not always recognize him in the days following his resurrection.
Mary Magdalene, for example, initially mistook the risen Lord for a gardener.
Yet even though he was not immediately recognized, he was truly present.
Jesus remains with us, for when he returned to the Father, he did not leave us as orphans
(John 14:18 – “I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you.).
He remains with us through the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we encounter him in various ways because he is always present in the Church.
Dear friends,
Christ is everything to us!
Through him, we find the fullness of life and its meaning.
This is not something we can remain silent about.
We must proclaim it boldly because it is indeed good news that needs to be shared.
(Matthew 10:27 – What I tell you in the dark, utter in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim upon the housetops.),
God is with us, and those of us who have encountered him are called to tell others about him.
The “Thy Kingdom Come Novena” is an especially fitting time to do this, and to pray that others will also encounter God’s saving and liberating love revealed in Jesus.
Dear brothers and sisters,
I would like to conclude by sharing with you some words from my homily in Saint Peter’s Basilica on Easter night:
“Through the words of faith and the works of charity, we bear witness to the encounter to which we aspire. We do so by ‘singing’ with our lives the ‘Alleluia’ that we proclaim with our lips (cf. Saint Augustine, Sermon 256, 1).”
Just as the women rushed to tell the disciples, we too should desire to set out and bring the good news that Jesus has risen, and that, having risen with him and through his power, we too can bring about a new world of peace and unity, as ‘a multitude of people and yet […] a single person’, for ‘although there are many Christians, Christ is one’.” (St. Augustine, Commentaries on the Psalms, 127:3).
With these thoughts in mind, I invoke God’s abundant blessings upon you all.
May the blessings of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit be with you always. Amen.
