“Hope Does Not Disappoint!”  (Rom 5:5)

Let us even now be drawn to this hope! Through our witness, may hope spread to all those who anxiously seek it. May the way we live our lives say to them in so many words: “Hope in the Lord! Hold firm, take heart and hope in the Lord!” (Ps 27:14). May the power of hope fill our days, as we await with confidence the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and glory, now and forever.  (Closing paragraph of Spes non confundit, Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025, written by Pope Francis and published on May 9, 2024)

I have encountered many people who have told me they have been married for years — 70 years, 60 years, 50 years. Upon meeting them, I will often ask how they met their spouse. Sometimes, the first encounter was in a school setting; other times, it was through a common friend or work environment. I enjoy listening to spouses recall those first encounters. After hearing their stories, I usually ask if it was love at first sight when they met.  Sometimes, the response to this question is an immediate and emphatic “yes.” Other times, couples will share with me that their love grew over a period of courtship. Sometimes, the husband will share that he had to woo his future wife over time. Often, this involved gaining the confidence and approval of future in-laws. Each “love story” is unique, and the emotions shown through the eyes and faces of the now older couple recalling those first encounters and ensuing courtship are heartwarming to me.

As we inaugurate the Ordinary Jubilee of 2025, Pope Francis invites us to experience it as a pilgrimage of hope, referring to us as pilgrims of hope. “Hope is born of love,” (Spes non confundit #3) writes Pope Francis as he reminds us of the compelling verse from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:35, 37-39).

Realizing that we are loved gives us hope! God loves us in an unconditional manner. God needs nothing from us — we aren’t useful to God. Also, when our first parents lost the glory of paradise by committing the Original Sin, God had no obligation to redeem us in Christ.  Salvation in and through Jesus Christ is a pure gift, just as our creation, our being, is a gift from our Heavenly Father. This may all seem remedial to readers, but it is sometimes an overlooked or unrecognized truth. How many of our brothers and sisters believe they are not “good enough” to be loved by God? How many of our brothers and sisters stay away from the church community because they feel they are not worthy due to past sins and waywardness? Here, it is good to be reminded of the very popular verse from the Gospel of John: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). I want to add verse 17: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” These verses contain timeless truths. Realizing that we are loved gives us hope! Recognizing that our creation and redemption in Christ are acts of unconditional love on the part of God our Father motivates us to be pilgrims of hope.

By inaugurating this Ordinary Jubilee of 2025, Pope Francis is asking us to be “pilgrims of hope.” He recognizes in Spes non confundit that the cares and anxieties of the present moment, such as problems that we may have in our relationships, economic difficulties, health issues, a listless spirit due to the lack of love we experience in our world so broken by war, may tempt us to embrace a survivalist’s individualism. We may grow to feel that we have to survive this life alone because we feel no one cares, we can’t trust anyone else, or we need to take care of ourselves first. Pope Francis proposes that this jubilee offers us an opportunity to recover the joy of living (Spes non confundit #9). Hope allows us to overcome the individualistic mode of existence that can overtake us when life becomes overwhelming. Hope can restore or give us, for the first time, a real belief that we are not alone in our struggles.

In this Ordinary Jubilee of 2025, the Church continues a tradition rooted in the life and times of the Chosen People of God of the Old Testament. The Israelites, by God’s instruction, marked years of jubilee. These would be times of restoration and forgiveness. Since 1300, our Church has been observing jubilee years, and now we do so every 25 years. However, there are times when a pope may declare an extraordinary jubilee year, as Pope Francis did in 2016.

Please allow me to make some jubilee suggestions to hopefully help foster active and conscious participation in this jubilee year, which begins on December 29, 2024, and ends on January 6, 2026. Following Pope Francis’ wisdom from Spes non confundit, I would like to suggest that we seek the sacrament of reconciliation/confession before or shortly after the Jubilee of Hope begins. In the bull, Pope Francis writes: “The sacrament of reconciliation is not only a magnificent spiritual gift, but also a decisive, essential and fundamental step on our journey of faith. There, we allow the Lord to erase our sins, to heal our hearts, to raise us up, to embrace us and to reveal to us his tender and compassionate countenance. There is no better way to know God than to let him reconcile us to himself (cf. 2 Cor 5:20) and savor his forgiveness. Let us not neglect confession but rediscover the beauty of this sacrament of healing and joy, the beauty of God’s forgiveness of our sins!” (Spes non confundit #23) As he continues to write about the power of forgiveness in our personal relationships, he says: “Forgiveness makes possible a brighter future, which enables us to look at the past with different eyes, now more serene, albeit still bearing the trace of past tears.” (#23) Forgiveness gives us hope. Forgiveness helps us to know and communicate love.

This jubilee can be for us, pilgrims of hope, an experience of reconnecting with or more deeply rooting ourselves in our First Love, God our loving Father. If this happens, we will not be disappointed. Blessed Jubilee 2025!