PARIS — Declaring that citizens had an “overwhelming thirst for renewal,” President Emmanuel Macron urged France’s legislators in a speech on Monday to live up to the “gravity of the circumstances,” warning against the fear and cynicism wrought by poverty, terrorism, new forms of labor and ecological change.

The new president cast himself both as the agent of change France wanted and as his country’s rampart against a newly uncertain world order.

Mr. Macron has said little since his election on May 7, cultivating something of an air of mystery about his exact intentions. He broke that semisilence on Monday in a speech lasting well over an hour to a rare joint session of the French Parliament at Versailles.

He gave a lofty outline of his five-year term, setting a tone but largely eschewing specifics.

Instead, the president reverted to campaign mode: an extended, high-flown discourse centered largely on the ordinary citizen’s almost mystical relationship to political power. That relationship had been damaged, he suggested.