PARISH TALK ON HOLY YEAR
HOLY YEAR OF HOPE
This Holy Year 2025
Intro
The aim of this talk is to give an idea of what a Holy Year is and what it might mean for us, with some ideas for how this particular Holy Year of 2025 can be for us a useful and relevant resource. The theme for this Holy Year is Pilgrims of Hope and I’d like to help to show how this can be a reality, with positive, beneficial steps to take in our daily lives, with our hopes and fears, sorrows and joys while we live against a backdrop of a world in turmoil and crisis.
I started out by asking most of you as you came in whether any Holy Year that you have preciously lived thought has either a) made no impact on your life; b) made a small impact; or c) profoundly altered you life. The vast majority of the responses were that no Holy Year had made any impact. A few recognised a small impact, and a few recognised a life-changing impact. A Holy Year is a gift to us from the Church: let’s see what we can do with this present one!
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We’ve heard from Fr Patrick that on Sundays this year we are going through the Gospel of St Luke. He handed the baton on to Prof Esler who gave us an introduction to Luke’s Gospel. Prof Esler suggested that there is a good pathway into the gospel itself in Chapter 4. Professor Esler, please could you read those few verses just to refresh our minds? :
When Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”.[1]
When proclaiming the Holy Year Pope Francis took up that same passage from the gospel:
Jesus made those words his own at the beginning of his ministry, presenting himself as the fulfilment of the “year of the Lord’s favour” (cf. Lk 4:18-19).[2]
***
This foundational text of our following of Christ is is both inspired by God and meant to be inspiring for us. It is the bed rock of the Holy Year and I want us to try to enter into the text, get some sense and feeling of what is going on in it, let it speak to us. Luckily for us we have with us a most distinguished media reporter who has with her the Prophet Isaiah himself. While we cannot directly experience the sights, sounds and smells of the ruins of Jerusalem to which we are being transported during the interview, we have all seen on our screens far too may images of ruined cities, ruined refugee camps, warn torn countries across the world, and recalling those images we can also recall our own individual ups and downs and heartbreaks. Scholars will be able to point out that some slight license has been taken with the text, and our interviewee is probably an amalgam of two or three prophets, but we can happily allow a little leeway here in order to try to enter into the world of the yearning for the fulfilment of the Year of the Lord’s Favour – and that is our aim.
***
An Interview with the “Prophet Isaiah” |
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| *Reporter*: | Hello, everyone! Today, we have a special guest joining us: the Prophet Isaiah! Good evening, Isaiah! We are all overjoyed at your return to the Holy City of Jerusalem. We’d like to start off, though, by talking about the hardships experienced during the Babylonian Exile and the challenges faced upon returning. Welcome, Isaiah. |
| Isaiah | Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. |
| **Reporter**: | Let’s dive right in. The Babylonian Exile was a truly terrible time for the people of Judah. Can you tell us about the hardships you all faced? |
| **Isaiah**: | Absolutely. The exile was incredibly challenging. We were forcibly taken from our homeland, Jerusalem was destroyed, and the Temple was in ruins. Living in Babylon, we faced oppression and poverty. It was a constant struggle to maintain our identity and faith in a foreign land with limited freedoms. |
| *Reporter**: | That does sound incredibly difficult. How did these challenges impact your community and faith? |
| **Isaiah**: | It was a test of our resilience, but it also brought us closer together. But it really wasn’t easy. Even while our faith was keeping us going we were facing so many hardships. We held on to our firm belief that God would one day bring us back and restore our land. |
| **Reporter**: | And you did hold on! Fast forward fifty years to the return from Exile to the present time. It must be a mix of emotions for you. What are some of the practical hardships you are facing? |
| **Isaiah** | The material conditions are quite dire. The city is in a state of devastation, with many buildings in ruins and the infrastructure damaged. Rebuilding our homes, the Temple, and the city walls is a monumental task. Resources are limited. The land has suffered neglect, making agriculture and food production challenging. Many of us are facing severe poverty and struggling to secure basic needs. |
| **Reporter:** | How are the people coping with these tasks? |
| **Isaiah:** | The community is resilient, but there is a constant struggle. Many are disheartened by the enormity of the task and the slow progress. Additionally, there are internal conflicts among the people, which add to the difficulties. We need to address social inequities and ensure justice for the marginalized and oppressed. Some have lost faith, while others are determined to see the promises of God fulfilled. However, we’re filled with hope and determination. We want to rebuild Jerusalem and make it a place of joy and prosperity again. It’s not just about the physical structures though; it’s about restoring our community and our faith. |
| *Reporter*: | This gives as a real insight into your situation. Would you be able to give some more insight into the reality of building up your community and your faith? |
| *Isaiah*: | Yes indeed. This is the work of God which we can already proclaim even as we live in hope of its fulfilment: The Spirit of the Lord is upon us now, giving us the strength to bring good news to the poor, bind up the broken-hearted, proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners. We already proclaim the Year of the Lord’s Favour now as a time of divine grace and renewal that is we know will be fulfilled when the Messiah comes. |
| Reporter: | You mention the year of the Lord’s Favour: is this the same as the Jewish Jubilee year commanded in Leviticus? |
| Isaiah: | Not really: The Jewish Jubilee Year, commanded in Leviticus, came about on a regular cycle of time every 50 years. During this Jubilee debts were forgiven, slaves were freed, and land was returned to its original owners. It aimed both to demonstrate our dependence on God and because of this we must work towards social renewal through justice and obedience to God. However, this cycle tragically ended when the Ten Tribes of the Northern Kingdom were taken off, wave upon wave, two hundred years before us. Our own infidelities had destroyed our unity and without unity and fidelity we were no longer able to fulfil the Jubilee year. Unlike the Jubilee Year, which followed rules and procedures, the Year of the Lord’s Favour signifies God’s intervention to bring about justice, healing, and freedom for all, to save us and fulfil our hopes in Him. It represents a special time of abundant blessings and spiritual renewal, fulfilled through the Messiah’s coming, embodying our hope for salvation. I proclaim the Year of the Lord’s Favour as the most vivid expression of our hope in God, whose faithfulness and love we now see in our return from Exile. In a way, the Year of Favour already exists for us within God’s promise and our hope: even while we still struggle, we trust that God will send the Messiah who will fulfill this Year of Favour. |
| *Reporter*: | Thank you, Isaiah, for sharing your thoughts and vision with us. Your words inspire hope and determination. |
| *Isaiah*: | Thank you. We’re committed to rebuilding the city and the people of God and making our home Jerusalem a place where God’s Favour and joy are evident for everyone to see as we await the Messiah. |
What do we find in this interview?
First of all, we should acknowledge a society and culture which has been, and still is, undergoing going very great suffering and hardships. There situation isn’t about a absence of luxuries, but is focused on the crushing experience of refugees who lost everything, including their very identity as the beneficiaries of God’s gift of the Promised Land which was the coherent concrete sign of their existence as the People of the Covenant.
Yet returning to Jerusalem, chastised and bruised, their Trust in God and gratitude to God for God’s faithfulness and saving love were the source of their strength as they tried to rebuild in repentance and hope.
In their poverty and humiliation, and looking back on the Covenant and the Law, the people, lead by the prophets, deeply understood the need to care for each other, very specifically, and perhaps obviously, for those who were most in need of that care. The hope for the fulfilment of God’s promises, specifically for the coming of the one who proclaimed the year of the Lord’s Favour and for the Messiah himself, is articulated by Isaiah in the verses which we have heard now both from Isaiah 61
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
And then taken up by Jesus in Luke 4 ::
And Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
It is this Year of the Lord’s Favour, couple with the Jubilee Year of the People of God which feed into the Christian Holy Year, forming it with a profound meaning and power, even as it offers us a very concrete way to encounter both our own poverty and need nad the faithful love of God
At this point we can move on to the Christian Holy Year.
What is the Christian Holy Year?
The Holy Year emerged in 1300 by popular demand. Towards the end of the 13th Century pilgrims began arriving in Rome, claiming that in previous centuries the turn of the century had been a special year of grace, involving pilgrimage to Rome and Plenary Indulgence. (We will return to the difficult subject of Indulgences later.) The Pope and his officials could find no records at all of this from previous centuries, and neither encouraged nor discouraged pilgrims. Eventually, however, Pope Boniface VIII was persuaded to announce a Holy Year, perhaps with the intention that this would be a once-in-a-century recurring event.
The Holy Year didn’t emerge with fully formed theology, however, and scripture texts were not used in this first Holy Year either by way of explanation nor to claim any sort of continuity with scriptural events found in the Jewish Jubilee year.
Towards the middle of the 14th century it was decided to increase the Jubilee from 100 year intervals to 50 year intervals. This cleared the way to specifically claiming theological and social resonances and continuity with the Jewish Jubilee year.
The Holy Year developed precisely from the spontaneous pilgrimages that occurred towards the year 1300, and pilgrimage has remained the key activity of the celebrations ever since. It is fairly easy for us to get some feeling for the reality and the draw of pilgrimage, and many will have experienced it for ourselves, visiting Lourdes, Medjugorje, Compostela, – or a seclar pilgrimage say to Graceland, Wimbledon, the home ground of a football team, or similar. Pope Francis writes:
Journeying from one country to another as if borders no longer mattered, and passing from one city to another in contemplating the beauty of creation and masterpieces of art, we learn to treasure the richness of different experiences and cultures, and are inspired to lift up that beauty, in prayer, to God, in thanksgiving for his wondrous works. The Jubilee Churches along the pilgrimage routes and in the city of Rome can serve as oases of spirituality and places of rest on the pilgrimage of faith, where we can drink from the wellsprings of hope, above all by approaching the sacrament of Reconciliation, the essential starting-point of any true journey of conversion.In the course of this pilgrimage, passages from the present Document can be read
In the fifteenth century the tradition of the Holy Door was added to the Jubilee celebrations. The idea of a door in a spiritual or cultural ritual is very ancient and widespread. One can instinctively feel the the sense of arrival, the entry to something long anticipated. In the Holy Year of the encounter of hope, Pope Francis writes that Jesus is the door:
Jesus the door: For everyone, may the Jubilee be a moment of genuine, personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the “door” (cf. Jn 10:7.9) of our salvation, whom the Church is charged to proclaim always, everywhere and to all as “our hope” (1 Tim 1:1).Opening door to the vulnerable, to those in danger of being robbed of hope, who can be each one of us before the present day world
The Door is a real highlight of pilgrimage: Opening the Door, passing through is speaks of the culmination of the journey, with new opportunities now presented for reconciliation and the opportunity for spiritual renewal. It is a significant moment for pilgrims to celebrate their faith and receive blessings.