Jubilee 2025: Journeying into the future – with hope

The Year 2025 is fast approaching, and many may wonder what the year has in store for them.

Some may be looking ahead in fear or in longing. Some may have big plans for the year, while others might be bored with the thought of 2025.

Though none of us can see precisely what’s around the bend, we can have hope, Archbishop George J. Lucas assures us.

The archbishop – along with Pope Francis and the worldwide Church – have called people to be Pilgrims of Hope, the theme of the 2025 Jubilee Year.

The archdiocese officially opened the Jubilee Year with a Dec. 29th ceremony that began in a chapel at Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart in Omaha. There a small gathering of people listened to Scripture, prayed and proclaimed in the introductory rite: “Blessed be the Lord our hope.”

The group then walked in a procession for a couple blocks, singing along the way, to St. Cecilia Cathedral. After entering the cathedral, a cross was raised as the archbishop prayed “Hail Cross of Christ, our only hope.”

He moved to the baptismal font to lead a rite of the commemoration of Baptism before sprinkling those in the sanctuary with holy water and beginning the Opening Mass.

Pope Francis had officially begun the Jubilee Year a few days earlier, on Christmas Eve, in Rome. Local opening ceremonies, like the one in Omaha, were held in cathedrals around the world on Dec. 29 – the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Hope is not something we can acquire on our own, but a gift from God received at Baptism and renewed in the sacraments, Archbishop Lucas said in his homily at the 2 p.m. Opening Mass. Archbishop Emeritus Elden Francis Curtiss and Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo of Rome were concelebrants.

Hope is “God-given, but we need to put it on and understand it and live it,” Archbishop Lucas said.

WATCH ARCHBISHOP’S JUBILEE HOMILY BELOW

The virtue stirs up an anticipation of what’s coming, of seeing God’s promises fulfilled, he said. “This holy year invites us to be pilgrims of hope, to look at the future as an invitation, to entrust our lives more fully to the plan of God.”

Our journey as pilgrims involves a search for Jesus, like Mary and Joseph did when they looked for days for their Son, after becoming separated from Him when He was 12 years old.

“If we find Him, we find the Way,” the archbishop said. “If we find Him, we’re filled with hope for what our future can be in Him, in this life and in the life to come.”

The Church has long been envisioned as a pilgrim, not sitting still but moving forward in hope, “trusting that the Lord is with us, trusting that the Holy Spirit gives us the gifts that we need to stay close to the Lord, to be His living Body,” the archbishop said.

“Today we’re invited to be pilgrims of hope … to step out in faith into the future that the Lord Himself has prepared for us.”

“Jesus Himself is the Way.”

READ MORE FROM THE CATHOLIC VOICE: