Pope Francis has announced that 2025 will be a Jubilee Year, the theme for Jubilee 2025 is ‘Pilgrims of Hope’.
The Jubilee Year will run from the opening of the Holy Door in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, on Tuesday 24 December 2024 to the Feast of Epiphany 2026.
What is a Jubilee?
The Jubilee Years, also known as Holy Years, started in 1300AD and recall the great jubilee of Israel: a time for land to be rested and debts to be cancelled, when God called people to be reconciled with one another and with Him. They now occur every 25 years, although the next will be 2033 – the anniversary of Christ’s death and resurrection and the decent of the Holy Spirit.
These Years, the Church explains, are years “of reconciliation between adversaries, of conversion and receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation, ‘…and consequently of solidarity, hope, justice, commitment to serve God with joy and in peace with our brothers and sisters’”
There are several resources to support our journey through the Jubilee year:
The Jubilee Prayer
Father in heaven,
may the faith you have given us
in your son, Jesus Christ, our brother,
and the flame of charity enkindled
in our hearts by the Holy Spirit,
reawaken in us the blessed hope
for the coming of your Kingdom.
May your grace transform us
into tireless cultivators of the seeds of the Gospel.
May those seeds transform from within both humanity and the whole cosmos
in the sure expectation
of a new heaven and a new earth,
when, with the powers of Evil vanquished,
your glory will shine eternally.
May the grace of the Jubilee
reawaken in us, Pilgrims of Hope,
a yearning for the treasures of heaven.
May that same grace spread
the joy and peace of our Redeemer
throughout the earth.
To you our God, eternally blessed,
be glory and praise for ever.
Amen