A Hopeful Year
Jack Heitman looks ahead to the jubilee year of 2025.
At St. Moluag’s Coracle, we hope you had a Merry Christmas and will have a hopeful New Year. His Holiness Pope Francis has proclaimed 2025 as a Jubilee year, running from December 24th, 2024 to January 6th, 2026. This Jubilee year is themed: “pilgrims of hope”, and it calls Catholics of all ages to renew our hope in Christ and to be signs of hope to those in need.
For first timers and those needing a quick reminder, Jubilee’s in Catholic tradition refer to a “Holy Year”, normally celebrated every 25 or 50 years. Originating from the ancient Jewish custom (Leviticus 25), Catholic Jubilees are a time for spiritual renewal through reconciliation and forgiveness. It all begins when the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican is opened, and the year aims to impact catholic communities on local and global levels, inspire pilgrimage, and cultivate prayers of intention for a particularly important cause as determined by the current pope.
Pope Francis has done exactly that. “Everyone knows what it is to hope,” he wrote in this year’s Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee. “In the heart of each person, hope dwells as the desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future will bring.” This is why, through God, “spes non confundit” (Romans 5:5), hope does not disappoint.
Even set against the backdrop of growing wars and technological turbulence, there has been plenty to bring hope. This year saw the catholic revival movement in the United States and historic reinvestment into youth communities during 2024’s World Youth Day. Closer to home, St. Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh raised over one hundred thousand pounds to repair its roof, and Scotland hosted Cardinal Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, to encourage prayer for the holy land.
Looking forward to 2025, the coming year is an opportunity to take hope to an entirely new form of practicality—we can define our communities by faith and transform our own lives to pursue an optimistic future. However, key to ensuring long-term success of these endeavors is to review how hope is, in fact, the very heart of the Church itself, and how it can and should always be a source of hope in our lives, no matter the calendar year.
Hope at the Heart of the Church
In preparation for the coming Jubilee, Pope Francis has encouraged us to review the four products of the Second Vatican Council: Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (“Sacrosanctum Concilium”); Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (“Lumen Gentium”); Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (“Dei Verbum”); and Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (“Gaudium et Spes”). It’s easy to see why he’s asking this of us. By reading these, you can begin to grasp just how central hope is to the Church and the message of Christ. Indeed, hope is mentioned over 50 times across these four constitutions, presenting a bold message:
‘…the Church of Christ, present in the midst of the anxiety of this age, does not cease to hope most firmly. She intends to propose to our age over and over again, in season and out of season, this apostolic message: "Behold, now is the acceptable time for a change of heart; behold! now is the day of salvation."’
- Gaudium et Spes 1-82
It’s clear that each and every moment is an opportunity to change your heart towards hope, but how do you do it? Is it easier said than done?
Well for one, hope is what lies at the very core of our life. It’s the thing that, when all else fails, is always there to lighten our hearts and help us look forward to a new day. Many of us might place our hope in a football team or political party, but let’s face it: these things are temporal and are bound to let us down from time to time. Not that it’s wrong to hope in these things, but they should be spokes of hope radiating out from your core, not the core of your hope itself. The only way to truly plant a seed of hope in your life, one that roots in the sunshine of good times and weathers the bad, is to place the Church at the center of our lives instead. And what’s at the center of the Church? The Eucharist: the always-present hope for all mankind.
As discussed in Article 1085 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Paschal mystery of Christ “is a real event that occurred in our history, but it is unique: all other historical events happen once, and then they pass away, swallowed up in the past. The Paschal mystery of Christ, by contrast, cannot remain only in the past, because by his death he destroyed death, and all that Christ is — all that he did and suffered for all men — participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times while being made present in them all.” That means that the hope living in the heart of the Church is eternally present. It is everlasting and can lay as the foundation stone of hope in your own life as well, never to be shaken or destroyed. Keep this at the center, renew your trust in Christ, and you will always find and emanate hope.
Signs of Hope
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the Pope has also called on Catholics to be signs of hope for those in need. It may not be immediately obvious how to do this, but the surest and easiest way to do so is to simply live out our faith—we must love others.
Once again looking back to Vatican II, we read:
‘… the Father wills that in all men we recognize Christ our brother and love Him effectively, in word and in deed. By thus giving witness to the truth, we will share with others the mystery of the heavenly Father's love. As a consequence, men throughout the world will be aroused to a lively hope—the gift of the Holy Spirit—that some day at last they will be caught up in peace and utter happiness in that fatherland radiant with the glory of the Lord.’
- Gaudium et Spes 2-93
By expressing love to our neighbors and recognizing Christ in others, all that we do will be for the glory of God and the growing hope of our communities. This is not just for the Jubilee year; it is a seed that can last a lifetime.
The Greeks have an extremely common saying that speaks to the never-surrendering virtue of hope: “η ελπίδα πεθαίνει πάντα τελευταία”, meaning “hope always dies last”. But what we find when we place Christ at the core of our life is that hope is always present and always available to us. If we can be signs of hope to others in need by living out our faith, then the flame of hope that was kindled within us can spread throughout the community as well. Perhaps, when this Jubilee brings hope to Catholics and non-Catholics alike around the world and when it lives on inside of us beyond 2025, we might say instead, “η ελπίδα δεν πεθαίνει ποτέ” — hope never dies.
Jack Heitman
I just have some house-keeping regarding where you can access the information we have compiled on Scotland’s saints. We have brought the Calendar of Scotland’s saints and also some more indepth articles on individuals to this site now, rather than link you with our charity site (Mary’s Well). So have a look on the main page task bar and you will see those two items listed.
God Bless, have a good Hogmanny and see you on the otherside.
The Editor - Eric Hanna, and the rest of the team at the Coracle.