On May 9, 2024, Pope Francis announced to the world that 2025 would be a Jubilee year for the Catholic Church worldwide, beginning on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2024, and lasting until Epiphany, January 6, 2026. There was no way, at that time, that we could have known that the pilgrimage of Pope Francis’ life would come to an end during this Jubilee and that we would continue our own Jubilee pilgrimage in hope under his successor, Pope Leo XIV.
This is the fifth Jubilee Year of my lifetime, and the second I have experienced as a Catholic. I’m convinced in my heart that the proper response to Jubilee 2025 should be joy, hope, and excitement. While these Jubilee days have been overshadowed with mourning and anticipation, we can renew our dedication to this Journey of Hope the Church is on. I believe that, lived well, this Jubilee can be a moment of miracle and grace for all of us, a kind of year-long spiritual “Christmas Season” in which we daily awake to open the gifts of grace that God our Father gives us so lovingly.
What Is a Jubilee Year?
We need to realize that the Jubilee is not an “extra” or an “add-on” to the Christian faith but lies at the center of Scripture, salvation history, and Jesus’ mission as the Messiah.
The Church’s Jubilee years are ultimately grounded in the biblical Jubilee year, which—according to Leviticus 25—came around every fifty years and was celebrated by forgiving all debts, granting freedom to all in bondage, returning everyone to their homes and family, and allowing everyone to rest in God’s fullness. Forgiveness, Freedom, Family, Fullness—these were the goals of the Jubilee, and those goals were reached by four actions: Redemption, Release, Return, and Rest.
What Did Jesus Say About the Jubilee?
In Luke 4, we read of Jesus returning to his hometown, Nazareth, which archeologists now believe to have been populated at the time with Essenes or Essene sympathizers. The Essenes left us the Dead Sea Scrolls, which speak of a divine Melchizedek who would come at the end of time to announce a supernatural Jubilee Year, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1-2.
Shockingly, Jesus enters the synagogue of Nazareth and chooses to read and preach on that very text in Isaiah: “The Spirit of the LORD GOD is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim liberty…to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor” (Is 61:1-2 ESV). No doubt, everyone in the synagogue was electrified to hear what this famous miracle-working rabbi would say about this controversial text! Jesus pours fuel on the tinder of their expectations by announcing provocatively: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing!” In other words, “I am the anointed one of whom Isaiah speaks!”
Amazing! But talk is cheap. Can Jesus back up such stupendous claims with his actions? Immediately after this sermon in Nazareth, he departs to Capernaum and there casts a vicious demon out of a man, in full daylight, in public view, in the great synagogue that stood in that city (Lk 4:31-37). This constitutes freeing Israelites from slavery to Satan. Then, in the next chapter, a paralytic is lowered in front of him as he teaches, and Jesus declares, “Man, your sins are forgiven you” (Lk 5:20 RSV). This constitutes forgiving the Israelites of their debt of sin. So Jesus is delivering on the expectations that the Essenes had for the anointed “Melchizedek” of Isaiah 61! He brings the final Jubilee, which would forgive sin-debts and free God’s people from slavery to the devil.
Not only that, in the rest of the Gospel Jesus ensures that his jubilee powers of exorcism and forgiveness of sin would never be lost. He entrusts these same powers to the Apostles as his representatives and successors. The Apostles, in turn, will later choose men called episkopoi and presbuteroi (bishops and priests) with whom to share the authority they received from Christ. These men celebrate the sacraments of the Eucharist, Baptism and Reconciliation, perpetuating the gift of liberation from Satan and forgiveness of sins down to the present day. The age of the Church is the age of perpetual Jubilee.
How Can the Jubilee Year Renew My Catholic Life?
Nonetheless, the Church is wise to exercise her authority and set aside special years of jubilee, in continuity with this great jubilee tradition going back to Moses in Leviticus 25. In Jubilee Years, we can renew our focus on the reality of jubilee and plunge ourselves more deeply into jubilee practices like frequent reception of the Sacraments, acquisition of Indulgences, undertaking pilgrimages, and performing the works of mercy. Let’s talk about each in turn.
First, the Sacraments release Jesus’ jubilee power, which is the presence and action of the Holy Spirit. Baptism makes us adopted sons and daughters of God, giving us new birth, and washing away our sins. Reconciliation helps us to turn away from sin. Many don’t realize the powerful liberating effects of these sacraments. Those who work in spiritual warfare and deliverance ministry know that a good and thorough Confession, especially a General Confession, is the front line in the warfare seeking to deliver people from slavery to Satan. Reconciliation revokes the permissions we have given through our sins for Satan and his spirits to work in our lives. When all sin is confessed and renounced, he has to leave.
If Reconciliation frees us from slavery to Satan, Indulgences release us from the “debt” of sin. The Church teaches that every sin has two effects: guilt and temporal punishment. The Jewish and Christian tradition has typically conceived temporal punishment as a “debt” that must be “paid.” Indulgences are a release of the Church’s “treasury of merit” to assist us in “paying the debt” of temporal punishment. Indulgences are tied to a good work designated by the Church, such as certain prayers, devotional exercises, works of mercy, or (especially in Jubilee years) pilgrimages. When the faithful perform these works with the right intention and in conjunction with the usual requirements—confession, Communion, detachment from sin, and prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father—the Church unleashes her “treasury” to defray part or all of the “debt” of temporal punishment. Then it need not be paid in purgatory. Jesus seems to use this language himself: “Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny” (Mt 5:25-26 RSV). Jubilee years are times to “indulge in Indulgences.”
During the Jubilee, Indulgences are attached to making pilgrimages, whether to Rome or to the Holy Land, or to certain local churches or shrines as designated by the bishops. A pilgrimage is always a return home, even if it is to a place where we have never been. For every Catholic, Rome is home because it is the residence of our spiritual father on earth, the Holy Father. Likewise, Israel is home because it was the home of Our Lord, sanctified by his footsteps. Any holy place is home because it is like heaven on earth, and heaven is our true home.
The first Jubilee pilgrimages were made by those Israelite servants who set off for home when they heard the blowing of the ram’s horn on the Day of Atonement in the fiftieth year. The Jubilee redeemed their debt, released them from bondage, returned them to their home, and permitted them rest. This resulted in forgiveness, freedom, restoration of the family, and experience of God’s fullness—his providential and abundant provision.
We recognize immediately that these goals and actions—forgiveness, freedom, family, fullness—are right at the heart of God’s plan of salvation. We could even say that the goal of the Holy Mass—and every Sacrament—is to draw us more fully into God’s “Jubilee.”
5 Ways to Live this Jubilee with Joy and Hope
This Jubilee Year, therefore, is an astounding time of grace. For some of us, it may be our last Jubilee Year! Here are five tips to live it well:
Download this free online companion of practical tips for living out the Jubilee Year, which accompanies John Bergsma’s book Jesus and the Jubilee.
Dr. John Bergsma serves as Professor of Theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville and Vice President of Mission at the St. Paul Center. He served as a Protestant pastor for four years before entering the Catholic Church in 2001, while pursuing a doctorate (Ph.D.) in Theology from the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of over twenty books on Scripture and the Catholic faith, including his series of reflections on the Sunday Mass readings titled: The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings and Jesus and the Jubilee: The Biblical Roots of the Year of God’s Favor. Most importantly, John and his wife Dawn have been married since 1993 and have 8 children and 3 grandchildren (so far)!
