Christ is Risen, alleluia! We Christians are Easter people, who remember Christ’s life, passion, and death so that we might come to behold the glory of His resurrection, and have newness of life in Him. As a Church, we quickly transition from a Lenten season of fasting and abstinence, to a Triduum of mourning and hopeful awaiting, to an Easter octave (8 days, treated like one extended Sabbath) of feasting, resting, and remembering Christ’s saving work of reconciling us to the love of God the Father on the cross and by His resurrection offering us recreation through His kingdom, the Church. The Easter octave culminates on the following Sunday of Divine Mercy, and from there we remain in the Easter season 42 more days until Pentecost. Despite the gift of being guided through this long season of celebration, it can be easy and tempting now to remove our decorations and revert again to the ordinary practices of secular life. Even among the graces received during our Lenten struggles and Easter octave joys, we will all come to a similar realization. We will notice a tendency to fall into the old habits and pace of our pre-lenten selves and in some ways mimic the Israelites of the Old Testament who had forgotten their Father’s love and mercy towards them and were again deeply in need of God’s grace. So what do we do now? Where does the Church lead us? Is it possible that I can remain a man of the resurrection?
On the night of December 24th, on the eve of the birth of our Lord, The late Pope Francis declared a Jubilee Year of Hope for 2025. It is in this year that Holy Mother Church calls us to especially remember God’s love and mercy toward us, His children, by sabbathing for an entire year. Yes, you read that correctly, a year of rest, worship, and reconciliation! In the Old Testament book of Leviticus, God commands every seventh year to be a Sabbath for the land, where the Israelites would rest from planting and harvesting like God did on the seventh day of creation. This was “not just as a weekly occurrence for man in his imitation of God but a cosmic reality for all of Creation, so that everything can again bear the Maker’s mark” (Litke, O.P., 2025). However, in the Old Testament, there was also to be a “Sabbath of Sabbaths” every seven times seven years, a 50th year of Jubilee – translated from the Hebrew word for a rams horn, yobel. The sounding of the horn was an exaltation of God’s love for the Israelites, marking the beginning of a year where slaves were freed, debts were forgiven, and all would return home to their Father’s house for rest and play.
The Jubilee year of the Old Testament ultimately points to a person, Jesus Christ, who is in Himself the love and mercy of God the Father, the Jubilee. As the prophet Jeremiah foretold and Jesus declares in the Gospel of Luke, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim a year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn” (Is 61:1-2, Lk 4: 18-19 RSVCE). Jesus then declares that on that day, the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled in their midst, that He is the Jubilee who by his passion, death, and resurrection would fulfill in our own hearts what the ancient year of Jubilee did for others.
The Church, in Her wisdom, has always read and interpreted the Old Testament scriptures in this same light. Like the epic Bible study that Jesus led for the disciples on the walk to Emmaus, Jesus continually reveals to us that He is the Jubilee, the fulfillment of the scriptures, and rebukes their hardness of heart for not having eyes of faith to see and remember what had happened just a couple of hours ago (Lk 24: 25-27). While we now have received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and have the opportunity to run to God’s grace in the sacraments, we too fall victim to this hardness of heart and forget who God is, and subsequently who we are. From the beginning, after the fall and emergence of original sin, idolatry has been at the root of our sins. Throughout the story of salvation, God draws near to man and offers him forgiveness, makes covenants with him, and offers man a new heart so that man might love and serve God as he was created to do in the Garden of Eden. In the book of Exodus, God’s mission through Moses is not just to get Israel out of Egypt, but to get Egypt out of Israel. The reason for the Israelites journey to the wilderness to worship, the plagues, the passover, and ultimately the exodus out of Egypt was not just to attain physical freedom. God cared more about internal freedom. He was leading them to reject the pagan deities and lifestyles that enslaved them, in order to draw them freely back to himself once more. If they would repent and trust in their Father, they would now be ready to journey toward the promised land. The whole basis for the book of Leviticus, which ultimately ends with the proclamation of the year of Jubilee (Lv. 25), hinges on this theme. Israel struggled to love and worship God because they were enslaved, so God gave them a law, a handrail, that would draw them back to Himself out of slavery and into freedom. It is no coincidence that in Christ’s Catholic Church, we see the same love of a father providing boundaries for his children, that they might not turn to the world or themselves as idols.
In our lives, much like the ancient Israelites, this same repentance is the prerequisite for healing (Montgomery, 2025). Living out this year well starts with an interior search. The rest that we speak of allows us space to step back and ask the same questions that Moses would have asked the Israelites in the desert. What are the idols in my life? What am I worshiping? Is my heart free to worship God? Does my life reflect that? Or do I, like the Israelites, desire to return to Egypt? In the midst of a world that places the individual at the center, the self as the true idol, these questions can draw us into an uncomfortable reality. Yet, we should not be discouraged. Our Holy Father has announced this year’s Jubilee with the theme of hope – “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817). Therefore, this year also allows us a space to be reoriented, to look at our God who already gazes upon us with inconceivable love and hope in Christ’s promises.
The Church will never invite us into new life with God without giving us means to do so. She first and foremost encourages us to return to God’s mercy in the sacraments, especially in the Eucharist and Reconciliation. The sacraments give us access to Jubilee grace, and have power to transform us in order that we might share in God’s blessed life once again. They reorient our lives and lead us to the proper worship and lifestyle owed to God, a lack of which formed the basis of the book of Leviticus mentioned earlier. Living in this reorientation disposes us to sabbath well, which is what this year is. Proper sabbathing points us to the beauty of original creation, in which we can see ourselves as true and free sons and daughters of God the Father.
This interior conversion can also be accompanied and strengthened by external acts of faith like pilgrimages, works of mercy, and passing through Holy Doors. Important years like this are actually a call to great adventure in the masculine heart. In our Christian journey we become like the patriarchs of the Old Testament, called to “Hâlakh”, or walk with God. For someone like Abraham, this journey was deeply spiritual and also physical. The word pilgrimage comes from the latin “per ager” which means “through the fields.” A field, in Christian tradition, always represented a meeting place between the human and divine. In a field, the man tills and keeps the soil, plants the seeds, and removes weeds. But it is ultimately God who brings the rain and sun, who waters the seeds and transforms them into a fruitful harvest. We are encouraged especially in this year to make external journeys – pilgrimages – to holy sites (Rome, Medjugorje, Lourdes, even local Churches or sites, etc.) in order that God might lead us to interior changes.
This Jubilee year of Hope is a great gift to us. It is an opportunity for conversion, conformity to Christ, and communion. Its rich history is rooted in the anticipation of the Jubilee Himself, Jesus Christ. What is highlighted in this year is “The Church seeing in the events and words of Scripture what Christ intended to bring about in His Church from the beginning, and which was brought to light in the glory of His Resurrection” (Litke,O.P., 2025). We are invited by God to remember his mercy and the story of our salvation. Let us this year cultivate a heart that is hopeful, prayerful, and oriented back toward God. Let us run to the sacraments. Let us learn to sabbath well in the eyes of the Church. Let us learn to rest and play as we once did in the garden of Eden by making time for family and scheduling rest and leisure. Let us go on pilgrimage and journey toward the heart of God. Let us become like Mary: a dwelling place of God in the world and for eternity.
References
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)
Litke, F. A. D. (2025, January 1). Jubilee 2025: Pilgrims of Hope [Review of Jubilee 2025: Pilgrims of Hope]. Magnificat, January 2025, 250–251.
Montgomery, Fr. Angelus: discussion given to students at the Ohio State University on March 25, 2025
