“Let us Seize the Hope Set Before us...”- The Jubilee Year 2025
- CFR Sisters
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
There was something in her eyes which I never saw before: hope.
This youth group member held new confidence in her. She shared of how she was participating more in school, of realizing her love for art and beauty, and how she was going to receive the sacrament of Confirmation in just a few months. I must admit, I believe I felt something of the delight of Our Heavenly Father’s heart for her as she spoke. Her growth over the last two years was obvious. Where there was fear before, there was now a gentle confidence. When she would have withdrawn before into isolation, I now witnessed her reaching out to others and serving. Confidence, grace, generosity, purpose, faith, security – all of these virtues and gifts were now visibly present. Above all, the precious gift of hope was now active in her.
Hope is the great gift which our Holy Mother Church is inviting us to especially receive this Jubilee year of 2025. “Spes non confundit.” – “Hope does not disappoint” – is the title of our Holy Father Pope Francis’ Bull of Indiction for this jubilee year. The hope that God gives us will not, cannot not, disappoint. This is a truth our whole world needs to encounter and receive. It is a truth which comes forth from the heart of God Himself, as the catechism tells us:
“Hope is 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 in the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.” (CCC 1817)
It is a theological virtue – meaning that it is given to us through the grace of our baptism. These are the virtues, faith hope and love, which are a total divine gift, and thus when we exercise them, we are encountering God Himself and entering into communion with Him! It’s a looking ahead of the things of this world and putting our trust in Christ’s promise of eternal life. It is this promise of eternal life which transforms our hope into a living anchor.
As Our Holy Father said in his Bull of Indicition for the Jubilee:
"The image of the anchor is eloquent; it helps us to recognize the stability and security that is ours amid the troubled waters of this life, provided we entrust ourselves to the Lord Jesus. The storms that buffet us will never prevail, for we are firmly anchored in the hope born of grace, which enables us to live in Christ and to overcome sin, fear and death. This hope, which transcends life’s fleeting pleasures and the achievement of our immediate goals, makes us rise above our trials and difficulties, and inspires us to keep pressing forward, never losing sight of the grandeur of the heavenly goal to which we have been called." (Pope Francis, Spes non Confundit)
I have been praying for the grace of a renewed, firm and trusting hope. It is only this hope which "will not disappoint." Only if I am rooted in Christ, anchored and united to Him will I then, by His grace, bring Him into the world as a bright light in the darkness. May the abundant graces of this jubilee year renew the grace of hope in my heart and indeed in the hearts of every baptized soul in throughout the world!
Sr. Rosa, CFR
This Jubilee Year of Hope is truly an gift of great grace! We wanted to share a few excellent resources so as to fully enter in and receive:
1) The gift of mercy: Indulgences
"Previously, in the Bull announcing the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2015, Pope Francis underlined how the Indulgence acquired "an even more important meaning" in that context, since God's mercy becomes the "indulgence on the part of the Father who, through the Bride of Christ, his Church, reaches the pardoned sinner and frees him or her from every residue left by the consequences of sin" (ibid.). Similarly, now the Holy Father declares that the gift of the Indulgence "is a way of discovering the unlimited nature of God’s mercy. Not by chance, for the ancients, the terms ‘mercy’ and ‘indulgence’ were interchangeable, as expressions of the fullness of God’s forgiveness, which knows no bounds". The Indulgence, therefore, is a Jubilee grace....All the faithful, who are truly repentant and free from any affection for sin who are moved by a spirit of charity and who, during the Holy Year, purified through the sacrament of penance and refreshed by Holy Communion, pray for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff, will be able to obtain from the treasury of the Church a plenary indulgence, with remission and forgiveness of all their sins, which can be applied in suffrage to the souls in Purgatory..." -From "The Decree On the Granting of the Indulgence During the Ordinary Jubilee Year 2025Called by His Holiness Pope Francis"
(The following is a flyer for the Archdiocese of New York- see below for more information on pilgrimage sights throughout our country!)
2) Experience the Grace of Pilgrimage:
3) Learn more about this Holy Year:
The Archdiocese of New York Jubilee Year Website: https://archny.org/jubilee2025/
View this excellent podcast with Dr. Scott Hahn and Dr. John Bergsma:
"But have reverence for Christ in your hearts, and honor him as Lord. Be ready at all times to answer anyone who asks you to explain the hope you have in you..." - 1Peter 3:16
May we fully receive the graces of this blessed Jubilee Year!