Jubilee means it’s time to reboot

Pope Francis has invited the entire Church to celebrate a Year of Jubilee. For all of 2025 we have been promised a unique outpouring of God’s goodness and grace, a wealth of blessings. 

In the Old Testament, a year of Jubilee was a time in which the whole community enjoyed the fruits of God’s generosity. During the Jubilee time all debts were cancelled, all land returned to its original ownership and all of society was reset to its original God-intended harmonious balance.
 
It was an invitation to restore all relationships to their original commitments. Every aspect of communal life was reinvigorated. It was a reboot. Everything that had gotten out of balance was reset and renewed.

This Jubilee Year invites us to a version of the same experience. We are invited to seek restoration in our relationships with one another and with God. The emphases for this year are reconciliation, pilgrimage and hope.

We are invited to be “Pilgrims of Hope.” We go on pilgrimage filled with the hope that we will encounter God’s abundant grace and blessings. And, we have the courage to seek reconciliation because we trust in God’s readiness to extend his gift of forgiveness and mercy. 

During these months of Jubilee, we endeavor that our lives express the renewal we find in God’s readiness to draw close to us and make all things new. 

Reconciliation is an expression of the renewal we all desire. We understand that just as Israel was offered a “reboot” and all relationships were renewed, so we too can find a new beginning with one another as we walk with God more intimately and more profoundly. 

This is a great gift for the Church. Reconciliation is one of the sacraments established by Jesus Christ to restore our lives and to make all things new. It is a gift we can celebrate with renewed appreciation during this Jubilee Year.

The painful truth is, however, we don’t always know how to be reconciled, so we don’t always look in the right place or seek the right measure. This is especially true as we begin to reflect on our own lives during this extraordinary time of Jubilee. 

To enjoy the fullest expression of this time, we ought not overlook one aspect of reconciliation – how to be reconciled to the truth of our past. 

This aspect of forgiveness often is the hardest in our society, which is why we so often can’t find the words or enjoy the expression of it in our lives. But, knowing that it is difficult is reason enough to find a renewed blessing in this extraordinary season.

We understand what it means to seek reconciliation with God as our Father, knowing the Law of God as we examine ourselves and understand our offenses against his goodness. We ask for forgiveness, we seek to repair the damage we have done, and we accept the forgiveness offered. 

It’s not always easy to open our hearts to what God offers. Our hard hearts can prevent us from accepting the grace and mercy we are given.

The same is true when we seek reconciliation with our neighbor. If they have sinned against us, we know we are called to forgive. We are bidden to lay down the resentments and burdens we carry and free ourselves from the weight of offenses we share with one another. And, if we have offended a brother or sister, we know that we are to ask for and accept the forgiveness he or she can offer. 

Our goal is clear: we strive to live as brothers and sisters, to be free of all that might damage us and our relationships. But, we are not always so clear about what we are to do as we seek to be reconciled with the truth of ourselves. 

As we look into the mirror of our lives and see the mistakes and errors and sins there, we often don’t know what to do. As we come to awareness of the truth of the sins in our lives, we often don’t know how to reconcile ourselves to what we chose or to the results of what we did. 

One of the greatest challenges in our time is to find peace with ourselves. Our Jubilee invitation is to accept the forgiveness Jesus offered to us for our sins and errors, especially those that haunt our past. 

It is often the case that what we readily forgive in another, we find it difficult to forgive in ourselves. The testimony from someone else describing their faults or sins forgiven by God is something we can marvel at or even weep for when we hear of it. But, knowing the same fault in ourselves, we may stubbornly cling to it, allowing no measure of forgiving love to penetrate or alter it. We resist bringing God’s forgiving love to our past so that it might be transformed and healed. 

This Jubilee Year is an invitation to embrace the forgiveness and healing that God offers in every part of our lives. The Sacrament of Confession is a good beginning. Fasting, prayer and almsgiving are traditional ways to open the doors of our hearts to receive the extraordinary graces of such a season of renewal. 

At this moment, when the graces of the Church are poured over us in abundance, perhaps we can find the courage to examine ourselves more closely. As we look over our lives, however, let us do so gently through the merciful eyes of Jesus. 

Only from this perspective and in his loving gaze can we find the grace to embrace the promise that all is being made new in Christ, including every part of our past. Every portion of our lives has been given the gift of forgiving love. 

In this Jubilee Year, we are invited to receive what we have been offered.