Pilgrims of Hope
On December 24th at the Christmas Eve Mass, Pope Francis opened the Holy Door in Saint Peter’s Basilica and proclaimed the Jubilee Year of Hope.
Celebrating the Jubilee Year is an ancient tradition, very well documented in the Old Testament. Judaism celebrated every 50th year as the year of the Lord. It is written in Leviticus chapter 25, “on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan” (9 – 11). Since God is the creator and the owner of all that is existing, freeing the land, slaves and debtors was a mere gesture of acknowledging and accepting God’s authority over everything.
The Catholic church revived the ancient biblical tradition of celebrating the Year of Jubilee in AD 1300 with the Papal Bull ‘Antiquorum habet fida relatio’ by Pope Boniface VIII. An unusually large number of pilgrims gathered at Saint Peter’s to celebrate Christmas, with the hope of getting an indulgence of remission of sins. Though Pope Boniface VIII had not planned to grant anything, looking at the vast numbers of crowds, he granted them an indulgence and established the Year of Jubilee. From then, every 100 years was designated as a year of jubilee.
Many thought that 100 years is a big gap between the jubilees, so in 1342, Pope Clement VI, reduced it to 50 years and celebrated it in 1350 AD. For the next hundred years there were many variations in the number of years between jubilees. Finally, Pope Paul II extended the inter-jubilee period to 25 years, and in 1475, a Holy Year was celebrated by Sixtus IV.
“Pilgrims of Hope” is the theme for our Jubilee year 2025. Pope Francis invites all to participate in the Year of Hope, inviting them to be drawn to this hope. He then expresses his vision for the Year of Hope: “We must fan the flame of hope that has been given us and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and far-sighted vision.”
Let this Jubilee Year rekindle hope in us.
-Fr. Ranjan D’Sa OCD