From 28 to 30 November, Castel Gandolfo will be host to ‘Restarting the Economy’, a global meeting promoted by The Economy of Francesco. The international event will be aimed at rethinking the economy in light of the Jubilee, focusing on social justice, care for
By Rita Sacramento Monteiro
Since the beginning of our story, human creativity and ingenuity have allowed us to overcome limits and to create and shape new realities. Our contemporary world bears witness to this in the advances brought about by technique and technology. Overcoming limits is part of who we are: co-creators alongside God. It belongs to our deepest desires — we search for possibilities, we long to express ourselves. Overcoming limits has always led us to discover and reveal new realities, but in a world marked by ecological disruptions — on the Earth, in living beings, and in human lives — limits carry a meaning and a force that must be rediscovered in our present times.
Usually associated with something negative that seems to restrict our freedom, a limit does not cancel possibilities — it opens new ones. From the Latin limes, limitis — which evokes a frontier, an edge, a line of separation — in the Roman Empire, it was a path marking a boundary, not a wall: a trail traced across the land to indicate where something begins and ends.
Limits bring an important sense of enoughness, acceptance, and welcome. Before a limit, we can contemplate what transcends us and, recognizing ourselves as vulnerable, acknowledge how much it surpasses us. And it is there — recognizing reality as it is — that choices can be made, creativity can arise, something new can emerge. Yet our societies seem to have become obsessed not only with overcoming limits but with eliminating them. Nothing is ever enough: growth, speed, material and digital consumption, working hours, and so on. The more we know, the less we know — and still we refuse to accept limits. We have even created the illusion that science and technique can solve every aspect of our existence — even death — and are the source of life and meaning. And this, indeed, limits our freedom and our integral human development.
This year’s Jubilee is a trail traced across the land to indicate where something begins and ends. A line that draws a limit: it opens, within time and space, an opportunity for liberation, restoration, and rest. One that urges us to end what should no longer continue: inequalities, poverty, war, the exhaustion of resources, a restless digital rhythm that is not ours and the unchecked accumulation that wounds human dignity and the Earth. It is an invitation to rediscover the value of limits as a path to freedom by knowing what is essential and a challenge to an economy of enough — one that places the common good at the center, that generates hope and opens horizons instead of closing them. An economy in which limits exist — and these limits are drawn to safeguard justice for all living beings. It is not only an invitation to look at growth or resources differently, nor is it merely about limiting accumulation, power, or inequalities. Limits are not simply technical or material: they are, above all, human and spiritual. It is a call to rethink all our relationships.
As we seek to restart the economy in this favorable year of the Jubilee, approaching it from the perspective of limits means reconciling our relationship with God and with the Earth. We are limited creatures — dearly loved, yet limited. We did not create the world; it was given to us by God as a gift through which we may be fruitful and generate fruit. If we continue to see it as an “it” that we dominate, we will continue exploiting it without end, including people. We need to rediscover it as a living home to which we belong. From this experience, and from placing ourselves in the right position that recognizes our boundaries, it becomes possible to root an attitude of responsibility and care. From this root, it becomes possible to grow better relationships with one another and with ourselves.
An economy of enough can be a gateway to a simpler lifestyle in which we share more, knowing that neither we nor anyone else is defined by material goods but by who we are. It is not about living worse or being unhappy, but about resting in gratitude, liberating ourselves from the idea that things — and ourselves — are never enough, and about becoming guardians of one another. It is about creating time and space for what truly matters. A hug, for example, is a limit that allows us to experience love!
The Jubilee calls for what is not always possible and sometimes seems impossible — forgiveness, release… but what if this could become possible more often? What if our economy could truly restart and become not a place of struggle, insatiable desire, exhaustion, but a space with limits that encourage flourishing, rest, the contemplation of beauty, and relationships?
As this favorable year draws to a close, the invitation to rediscover limits — our own, those of the Earth, and those of the economy — does not end with the Jubilee. Instead, it grows stronger. What limits does our life need today?
Let us draw them.