Jubilee

On Christmas Eve, Pope Francis solemnly opened the Holy Door of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, thereby formally inaugurating the Ordinary Jubilee of 2025. Yesterday, in cathedrals all over the world, diocesan bishops were directed to open the Holy Year locally, along with the announcement of the Jubilee Indulgence. In the course of the coming year, the Pope proposes, "every effort should be made to enable the People of God to participate fully in its proclamation of hope in God's grace and in the signs that attest to its efficacy" [Spes Non Confundit, Bull of Indiction for the Ordinary Jubilee year 2025, 6].

I remember well the Great Jubilee of 2000, when I went on pilgrimage with parishioners from New York, walking through the opened Holy doors of the four papal basilicas in order to receive the Jubilee Indulgence. While the Holy Doors were a later addition, the Jubilee itself dates back to 1300 and Pope Boniface VIII. The practice of celebrating a Jubilee every quarter-century goes back to 1475 and Sixtus IV. With a few inevitable exceptions, the custom has continued ever since. It is a time-honored opportunity to highlight the kindness and generous love of God our Savior (Titus 3:4), which the Christmas liturgy proclaims

Having opened this Jubilee Year of Hope, Pope Francis, in his Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi message, referenced the Holy Door, which he said:

 

represents Jesus, the Door of salvation open for all. Jesus is the Door; the Door that the Father of mercies has opened in the midst of our world, in the midst of history, so that all of us can return to him. We are all like lost sheep; we need a Shepherd and a Door to return to the house of the Father. Jesus is that Shepherd; Jesus is the Door.

Brothers and sisters, do not be afraid! The Door is open, the door is wide open! There is no need to knock on the door. It is open. Come! Let us be reconciled with God, and then we will be reconciled with ourselves and able to be reconciled with one another, even our enemies. God’s mercy can do all things. It unties every knot; it tears down every wall of division; God’s mercy dispels hatred and the spirit of revenge. Come! Jesus is the Door of Peace.

Often we halt at the threshold of that Door; we lack the courage to cross it, because it challenges us to examine our lives. Entering through that Door calls for the sacrifice involved in taking a step forward, a small sacrifice. Taking a step towards something so great calls us to leave behind our disputes and divisions, and surrendering ourselves to the outstretched arms of the Child who is the Prince of Peace. This Christmas, at the beginning of the Jubilee Year, I invite every individual, and all peoples and nations, to find the courage needed to walk through that Door, to become pilgrims of hope, to silence the sound of arms and overcome divisions!

Coming at this genuinely depressing moment in world history, when the immediate future appears so bleak and dangerous, the Pope's invitation to pass as pilgrims through the Jubilee Year as people of hope is yet another reminder that a morally meaningful existence extends well beyond the tawdry boundaries of our impoverished politics.