About the Jubilee Year
-
-
Declaring 2025 a Jubilee Year
The Holy Father, Pope Francis, has declared 2025 a Jubilee Year with the theme “Pilgrims of Hope.” He desires this Holy Year to be “marked by the hope that does not fade, our hope in God” (Spes Non Confundit 25). You can read Spes Non Confundit (“Hope Does Not Disappoint”), his papal bull officially proclaiming the Jubilee.
Pope Francis will begin the Jubilee with the opening the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica on December 24, 2024, the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord; the year will end with the closing of the Holy Door on January 6, 2026.
As the challenges and uncertainties of life weigh us down, we believers are not without hope. In fact, we believe with hope in “what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9). We are convinced of what Jesus will do for us because of our confidence in what he has done for us: Jesus has defeated the power of evil, sin, and death by his cross and resurrection. He promises that when he comes again, he will “make all things new” (Rev 21:5), raising our bodies to be like his in glory and restoring all creation (cf. Rom 8:18-25). We await and hasten that great day (cf. 2 Pet 3:12) by extending the kingdom on earth as in heaven through words and deeds of charity.
-
-
-
from Pope FrancisMay the Jubilee be a moment of genuine, personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the “door” (cf. Jn 10:7.9) of our salvation, whom the Church is charged to proclaim always, everywhere and to all as “our hope” (1 Tim 1:1). - Jubilee Bull of Indiction
-
-
-
History of Jubilee Years
While in the synagogue of his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus claims the words of the prophet Isaiah as his own: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19). This “year acceptable to the Lord” refers to a jubilee, which according to the Scriptures of Israel, is to occur every fiftieth year as a special time of grace in which debts are cancelled and laborers are released (Lev 25:8-22).
Since 1300, the Church has celebrated jubilee years, or holy years, to commemorate occasions of significance in the history of salvation. Ordinary jubilee years occur every 25 years, though the pope can proclaim an extraordinary jubilee year, as with the Jubilee Year of Mercy in 2016. Every jubilee is “an outpouring of divine mercy” (Spes Non Confundit 5), a time of prayer, pilgrimage, and pardon.
-
-
-
from Pope FranicsNow the time has come for a new Jubilee, when once more the Holy Door will be flung open to invite everyone to an intense experience of the love of God that awakens in hearts the sure hope of salvation in Christ. - Jubilee Bull of Indiction
-
