2025 Jubilee Year: Pilgrims of Hope By Father Byrd

On the first Sunday of Advent, December 1, we will seal the interior center doors to our Church in preparation for the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope. The doors will remain sealed during Advent, December 1st to December 24th.

In the Old Testament (Leviticus 25:8-13), the Lord commanded that every fiftieth year should be a Jubilee Year. The Catholic Church has celebrated Jubilee Years for 725 years, since the year of 1300AD, the first Christian Jubilee Year. They are years of mercy to seek reconciliation, pursue deeper conversion, and reflect more upon the debt that Christ has paid for our liberation from the slavery of sin.

Pope Francis Pope Francis and the Vatican focused the 2025 Jubilee Year on the supernatural virtue of Hope (or Spes in Latin). There is a sense of hopelessness in our world and age, so we, as Catholics, must be a sign of Christ’s Hope. Pope Benedict XVI said, “The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.”

The Biblical Jubilees were occasions to return to one’s family and homeland, so 2025 could be a “Jubilee Year of Family Reunions.” Maybe you decide to visit Rome and walk through the great holy doors there. Maybe this year we try to reconcile with others with whom we might be estranged, forgiving them and asking for forgiveness. Whether we go or we stay, we all need to mark the Jubilee Year as special in our own ways, in our own prayers, and among our own families, so let’s begin now to pray on how we can best anticipate this holy year of grace for ourselves and for our families.