Opening of 2025 Jubilee Year “Pilgrims of Hope”

St. John’s Cathedral, 29 December 2024

Homily Notes of Bishop Brendan Leahy

Every diocese throughout the world is today marking the beginning of the Holy/Jubilee Year with its theme: Pilgrims of hope. We do so on this day when in the liturgy we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family that invites us to reflect on our own family life and, indeed, God’s plan for humanity to be a family.

Pope Francis formally launched the Year when he opened the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve. It’s expected some 30 million will go through that Holy Door. We’re here in Limerick. We don’t have a Holy Door as such but we are invited to pass through a Holy Door during this year, the holy Door of our heart, opening our heart to a deeper belief that God is with us, God is working for us, God is close, tender, full of compassion, bringing ahead my history and that of the world in ways we do not always understand. God is not far away in the clouds, out of touch with our lives.

This is the basis of our hope. Hope is not simply optimism, “I hope I’ll pass the exam”, “I hope the weather will be okay for the wedding day”, “I hope I’ll win the lotto”. It’s something much deeper. It’s deep down believing God has a plan for my life and for the world and he knows best how to bring it forward. And that he is working for my good in all things.  The one thing I have to do is to trust in him, believe in his involvement in my life, his faithfulness to me come what may. We don’t know the details of what awaits us in life, but with hope we know and believe that in general terms that our life will not end in emptiness. There is a purpose to my life and God is leading me. As Pope Benedict put it some years ago: “To hope is to savour the wonder of being loved, sought, desired by a God who has not shut Himself away in His impenetrable heavens but has made Himself flesh and blood, history and days, to share our lot.”

In the Bible we read of the tradition of the people of Israel to mark a jubilee every fifty years when they would “re-set” their relationship with God, with one another and with the land.  All those who were in slavery were set free to return to their communities and it was to be a time when injustices were removed, debts were forgiven and both the people and the land get things back in order for themselves, including taking time to rest as like on the Sabbath.

Since 1300 the Church has celebrated a jubilee year every now and then. It now celebrates it every 25 years. What Pope Francis proposes is that it will be a year of prayerful hope for a world suffering the impacts of war, the ongoing effects of COVID-19 pandemic, and a climate crisis.  As we go through this Holy Year, Pope Francis has asked us to focus on three things – go on pilgrimage, pray more and reach out more to those in need. As a Diocese, we’ll have a few pilgrimages to Rome this year, one in March, a youth pilgrimage to Rome at the end of July/early August and then a teachers’ pilgrimage in October. In terms of social outreach Pope Francis suggests working for peace, even in small gestures; promoting life from its conception to its natural end; reaching out to our sisters and brothers who experience hardships of any kind, for instance, prisoners, the sick, young people, migrants, refugees, the elderly, grandparents, the poor (some of whom might be living very close to us).

This is also a year to remember the example that comes to us from our rich heritage of martyrs and saints. The young saint Carlo Acutis will also be canonised this coming year. It’s also a year to make a good confession, trusting more in God’s mercy and strengthen our belief in the new life given to us in Christ and the eternal life he promises. And there’s a jubilee year which I will recite shortly as I bless this candle.

So, for this year again, can I suggest we all take this focus on hope in three ways:

Look out each day for signs of hope. Go into training in doing this. It’s easy to see the negative, the sinfulness, the selfishness. But each evening it would be good to go back over the day and see where during the day we have witnessed signs of hope. It might be a simple smile from someone you didn’t expect, an act of kindness you witnessed at work or school, a helping hand offered in some difficult situation…

Be grateful. Let’s express our gratitude to those who spend themselves, quietly and faithfully, in doing good and in serving others, not least for the gift of our parents, educators and teachers, who have the great responsibility of forming future generations as well as healthcare workers, those who look after our security and all those men and women who carry out works of charity, especially missionaries throughout the world.

Keep hope alive. Our world has great developments in technology and science. Wonderful. But we have to ask ourselves: how will our future be? How will the Ireland in the 2050s be in terms of faith in God? The risk is that with all the progress we’ll be left with a desert of meaning in a flat work without horizon. We need the big vision, the big horizons. We need to recognise there’s a greater goal that what we simply do day by day. Hope points to a new world, a world in which this world with all its achievements, but also its ambiguities, will be transformed. It’s hope that keeps our world going and we are to be messengers of hope, keeping hope alive for those around us. We are the ones who can remind our world that our lives and that and history in general, despite ambiguities and failures, are held firm by the indestructible power of Love, and that this gives meaning and the courage to persevere.