Brothers and Sisters,
Great news! Two months ago, Pope Francis proclaimed the year 2025 a Jubilee Year, which will begin when he opens the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 24, 2024, and close it on Jan. 6, 2026. The Jubilee Year is a special year of grace in which the Church offers the faithful the possibility of obtaining a plenary indulgence. A plenary indulgence means that by the merits of Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints, the full remission of the temporal punishment due to sacramentally forgiven sins is obtained.
After the extraordinary 2015 Holy Year of Mercy instigated by Pope Francis, the upcoming Jubilee will take place in line with the normal sequence of being held every 25 years. The most recent ordinary Jubilee took place in the year 2000, as the world and the Catholic Church prepared to enter the new millennium.
Following to a tradition that has biblical origins, the first Jubilee in the Catholic Church was proclaimed in the year 1300 by Pope Boniface VIII, and since then, a Jubilee Year has been held every 25 years with few exceptions when an extraordinary Jubilee Year was announced.
The Pope inaugurates the Holy Year with the rite of the opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica. After that occurs, the Holy Doors of the other papal basilicas – St John Lateran, St Paul Outside the Walls, and St Mary Major – are opened and remain so until the end of the Jubilee Year. A special grace during the Jubilee Year can be gained while a person is on pilgrimage to one of Rome’s churches or to the cathedral church or any other designated church and fulfills certain spiritual conditions for an indulgence.
In the document about the Jubilee Year titled “Hope Does Not Disappoint,” Pope Francis prays that this special year may provide an opportunity “to be renewed in hope” not only for millions of pilgrims who are expected to travel to Rome for this Jubilee but for the countless millions who, unable to do so, will celebrate it in their local churches or through pilgrimages to Marian shrines across the world. He presented it also as an opportunity for conversion and reconciliation with God through the sacrament of penance, obtaining indulgences through God’s mercy, renewing our faith and love through hope, and proclaiming God’s love to the many people suffering in today’s world.
As we approach the Jubilee Year, more information and an explanation of the spiritual renewal connected with the Jubilee will be provided.
In the meantime, we are in the process of preparing the replica of the Holy Doors from St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome that will be placed in our church as a visible sign of the special time of grace given to us.
May God bless you and help to build in you the virtue of hope, the real hope that “does not disappoint.”
Fr. Mark Jurzyk