The 2025 Jubilee will be the Church’s first ordinary jubilee since St. John Paul II led The Great Jubilee of 2000. The Jubilee of Mercy opened by Pope Francis in 2015 was an extraordinary jubilee.
Archbishop Fisichella leads the Vatican dicastery entrusted with the event’s organization, the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization.
“There is so much work to be done,” he said.
The 2025 Jubilee will include the opening of the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica. Pilgrims who pass through the door – which is only opened during Jubilee years, ordinarily every 25 years or when a pope calls for an extraordinary Jubilee – can receive a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions.
The four major basilicas in Rome all have Holy Doors. During the Extraordinary Jubilee of 2015, Pope Francis also granted cathedral churches around the world permission to establish and open a Holy Door.
Jubilees have biblical roots, as the Mosaic era established jubilee years to be held every 50 years for the freeing of slaves and forgiveness of debts as manifestations of God’s mercy.
The practice was re-established in 1300 by Boniface VIII. Pilgrims to Rome were granted a plenary indulgence. Between 1300 and 2000, 29 jubilee years were held in Rome.
“To pass through the Holy Door means to rediscover the infinite mercy of the Father who welcomes everyone and goes out personally to encounter each of them. It is he who seeks us! It is he who comes to encounter us,” Pope Francis said as he opened the jubilee Holy Door on St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 8, 2015.
“In passing through the Holy Door, then, may we feel that we ourselves are part of this mystery of love, of tenderness. Let us set aside all fear and dread, for these do not befit men and women who are loved. Instead, let us experience the joy of encountering that grace which transforms all things,” he said.
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The Knights of Columbus announced the selection of this icon of St. Joseph holding the Child Jesus as the centerpiece of this year’s KofC prayer program. / Courtesy of Knights of Columbus
CNA Staff, Nov 9, 2021 / 16:14 pm (CNA).
As the state deputies of the Knights of Columbus gathered for their semi-annual meeting last weekend in Nashville, Tennessee, Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly encouraged the order’s leaders to grow in faith, expand the Order’s membership, and advance the Knight’s mission.
Kelly also introduced the Order’s new pilgrim icon prayer program, which features an icon of St. Joseph holding the child Jesus from St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, Canada.
The Knights of Columbus (KofC) is the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization, with more than two million members in 16,000 councils worldwide.
The pilgrim icon prayer program is a longstanding tradition for the KofC, in which every few years a new icon of a saint is selected to inspire the Knights and their communities. The icon is distributed to each of the Knight’s more than 75 jurisdictions and travels from council to council.
Councils at parishes will use the icon as centerpieces for “rosary-based” prayer services, a press release said. Our Lady of Guadalupe was the first icon during the conception of the program in 1979. Since the initiation of the program, almost 175,000 council and parish prayer services have been held with about 22 million participants.
Past images commissioned by the council have been icons of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Our Lady of Częstochowa, Our Lady of Pochaiv, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Charity, Our Lady Help of Persecuted Christians, and the Holy Family.
Following a Votive Mass in honor of St. Joseph on Saturday, Nov. 6 celebrated by Supreme Chaplain Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, Kelly announced the featuring of the St. Joseph icon, which is inspired by Pope Francis’ Apostolic letter, Patris Corde. Pope Francis’s letter announced the year of St. Joseph that stretches from Dec. 8, 2020 to Dec 8, 2021.
Kelly, who received a private audience with Pope Francis last month, said that the Holy Father was grateful that the Knights chose St. Joseph to be “a central focus of our spiritual efforts.”
Kelly was accompanied at the meeting by his predecessor, Past Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, as well as Lori.
The choice for the newly commissioned icon of St. Joseph is no surprise, as Kelly has advocated for devotion to the saint since his installation as the Supreme Knight.
During his June installation, Kelly consecrated his administration to St. Joseph. “The example of St. Joseph teaches us how to be Knights of the Eucharist. He was the guardian of the first tabernacle — beginning with Mary herself when she bore Christ in her womb, and then in the home where he and Mary lived with Jesus,” he said at his installation address.
Also, in October, the Knights released a new documentary on St. Joseph, inspired by Pope Francis’s declaration of the Year of St. Joseph.
The Knights of Columbus’s pilgrim icon prayer program is a longstanding tradition, in which every few years a new icon of a saint is selected to inspire the Knights and their communities. This year, the Knights have chosen an icon of St. Joseph holding the child Jesus from St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, Canada. Jeffrey Bruno, Courtesy of the Knights of Columbus.
During his address on Saturday, Kelly encouraged Knights and their communities to again entrust themselves to St. Joseph. Kelly implored the men to “give thanks to God for the gift of his fatherly example and ask St. Joseph to be a father to us” as we seek to “grow in our own imitation of St. Joseph’s quiet strength, integrity, and fidelity.”
Lori said that St. Joseph’s obedient faith and trustworthiness are “two virtues [that] ought to stand out in us as Knights of Columbus, and especially in us who are leaders among our brother Knights in the Order.”
“St. Joseph’s vocation to foster the earthly life of Jesus is, of course, unique, but all of us have been called to the obedience of faith,” Lori added. “Father McGivney envisioned his Knights, above all, as men of obedient faith, who, with their wives and children, would live their vocation to the fullest.”
“In choosing Joseph to care with a father’s love for the Incarnate Son of God, the Eternal Father recognized in St. Joseph a man of utmost integrity, a man who perhaps had no idea what God had in mind for him but nonetheless went about his daily life and work with honesty and reliability,” he said.
“A lot of men, especially young men, are looking for meaning and answers,” he said. “We offer both — a life of service and a life of meaning. Don’t just encourage men to adopt our initiatives; explain to them why our initiatives matter, and how the Knights can help them be the kind of men God is calling them to be,” he said.
Speaking of the Knight’s founder, Blessed Michael McGivney, Kelly told the state deputies on Friday, Nov. 5 that McGivney was a “man of action.” He said that McGivney “rose to meet the struggles” of his parishioners and community “head on,” and that by establishing the Knights of Columbus, he “gave men a place to stand as brothers, bound together in charity, unity, and fraternity.”
Kelly implored the Knights to fulfil the mission that McGivney started in his time. Kelly also called on the men to expand the Order’s membership by growing “deeper, as men of faith.”
On Nov. 7, at the meeting’s closing session, Kelly presented four Knights with the St. Michael Award for exemplary service to the Order.
The four recipients were: former director of chaplains for the KofC, Augustinian Father John Grace; former Supreme Warden George W. Hanna; Supreme Master Dennis Stoddard; and Col. Charles “Chuck” Gallina (USMC-Ret.), the supreme knight’s advisor for military and veterans affairs.
Washington D.C., Aug 6, 2021 / 15:01 pm (CNA).
A new center at the University of Notre Dame seeks to bring Catholic social teaching into current-day political and constitutional debates.In May, the un… […]
St. Louis, Mo., Feb 10, 2023 / 17:45 pm (CNA).
Lawmakers in Missouri have announced at least two official investigations into a children’s transgender clinic in St. Louis, after a whistleblower revealed… […]
4 Comments
Pilgrims compare to a Synodal Church on a forever journey as like unto like. Catholic pilgrims historically visited holy sites, monasteries and the like. Recent Synod on synodality discussions confirmed there is no definitive agenda, no expected findings consistent with Apostolic tradition [quite the contrary] no Magisterial confirmation. A voyage of discovery seeking enlightenment from the Holy Spirit.
With no process of confirmation that purported revelations are from the third person of the Trinity this will be challenging. There’ll likely be many such revelations, many at odds discussions as endless as the journey. Onlookers, the attendant Mystical Body if such unfolds will likely assume our revealed faith is more a matter of perspective than permanence. Seminaries, if they were still thought useful, would presumably turn from Thomas Aquinas to Heraclitus. My advice to the remaining faithful is store up on the Fathers of the Church.
“…store up on the Church Fathers”…Yes, and as such, “ressourcement” (including the Scriptures) was one pillar of the much-maligned (and, yes, less than perfect) and then betrayed Second Vatican Council. The other pillar was “aggiornamento,’ or engagement with the modern world without accommodating and blending synodally (?) into the streamflow of Heraclitus.
But wait! Somewhere in the venadecum there’s a warning of fully two or three words not to buy into “passing opinion.” So there! All is well.
“Fisichella revealed that the motto approved by the pope “can be summed up in two words: Pilgrims of Hope.’”
Um, I was never great at math, but I’m pretty sure “Pilgrims of Hope” numbers three words, not two.
Not important, you say?
Okay, maybe not. But if it’s the good archbishop’s job to introduce this weighty, portentous theme for this very significant event, shouldn’t the very first thing he says about it be, like, accurate?
Why is it that I always have the feeling that I’m expecting too much from this papacy?
Jubilee celebrations have long been too spiritualized to consist mainly in pilgrimages and the original biblical and Christological meaning of the Jubilee lost. Leviticus 25 had economic rebooting dimensions with the release of slaves and return and rest of lands which was expounded in Isaiah 62 and became Jesus’ vision-mission statement in Luke 4:18-19. I wish and pray in this 2025 Jubilee we return to these scriptural roots and the Holy Spirit move the Church to speak and act more and more against global economic inequity and ecological devastation.
Pilgrims compare to a Synodal Church on a forever journey as like unto like. Catholic pilgrims historically visited holy sites, monasteries and the like. Recent Synod on synodality discussions confirmed there is no definitive agenda, no expected findings consistent with Apostolic tradition [quite the contrary] no Magisterial confirmation. A voyage of discovery seeking enlightenment from the Holy Spirit.
With no process of confirmation that purported revelations are from the third person of the Trinity this will be challenging. There’ll likely be many such revelations, many at odds discussions as endless as the journey. Onlookers, the attendant Mystical Body if such unfolds will likely assume our revealed faith is more a matter of perspective than permanence. Seminaries, if they were still thought useful, would presumably turn from Thomas Aquinas to Heraclitus. My advice to the remaining faithful is store up on the Fathers of the Church.
“…store up on the Church Fathers”…Yes, and as such, “ressourcement” (including the Scriptures) was one pillar of the much-maligned (and, yes, less than perfect) and then betrayed Second Vatican Council. The other pillar was “aggiornamento,’ or engagement with the modern world without accommodating and blending synodally (?) into the streamflow of Heraclitus.
But wait! Somewhere in the venadecum there’s a warning of fully two or three words not to buy into “passing opinion.” So there! All is well.
“Fisichella revealed that the motto approved by the pope “can be summed up in two words: Pilgrims of Hope.’”
Um, I was never great at math, but I’m pretty sure “Pilgrims of Hope” numbers three words, not two.
Not important, you say?
Okay, maybe not. But if it’s the good archbishop’s job to introduce this weighty, portentous theme for this very significant event, shouldn’t the very first thing he says about it be, like, accurate?
Why is it that I always have the feeling that I’m expecting too much from this papacy?
Jubilee celebrations have long been too spiritualized to consist mainly in pilgrimages and the original biblical and Christological meaning of the Jubilee lost. Leviticus 25 had economic rebooting dimensions with the release of slaves and return and rest of lands which was expounded in Isaiah 62 and became Jesus’ vision-mission statement in Luke 4:18-19. I wish and pray in this 2025 Jubilee we return to these scriptural roots and the Holy Spirit move the Church to speak and act more and more against global economic inequity and ecological devastation.