2025 is a Jubilee year of hope, declared by Pope Francis. With such years, there are special graces which may be obtained by going through Holy Doors, praying for the Pope’s intentions, making a pilgrimage, and more. I love indulgences because I need all the grace I can get. So when I read up on the opportunities for this coming year, I felt surprised the only place designated in the United States is the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception Basilica in Washington, DC.
Don’t get me wrong, I love that church. It’s beautiful and grand and provides a quiet solace I would expect to feel in a smaller place. It’s just, only one in all of the United States designated by the Pope seems a small number of places to find that extra consolation. Bishops will designate additional places. The USCCB’s page on this Jubilee Year of Hope provides additional resources on this matter.
However, why did the Pope make a year of hope more about the every day?
Jubilee Years aren’t ordinary. All the every day opportunties echoed back to 2015. the year of mercy. The Pope came to the United States that year and visited the Shrine, offering a mass at the Basillica and walking some of the streets of the capital. He wanted people to engage in the Corporeal and Spiritual Acts of Mercy, to know them, to make them second nature, first nature, like breathing. In that light, his limited offerings of something big or flashy made sense. Pope Francis’ heart is rooted in mercy. He doesn’t desire grand gestures or lavish efforts. Despite being a Jesuit (which usually lean to the scholarly), his ministry is essentially, Teresian in nature.
Little things, great love, full presence, full assent of the will, do what makes others feel loved, healed, helped, whole, holy.
Photo by Kelly –pexels.
We are to be the means by which others are able to endure their cross.
The Holy Father’s call to be ministers to “the Calcutta” before us was reflected in Saint Mother Teresa’s and in Saint Theresa of Lisieux’s lives. You would think after twelve years of being the Pope, we’d know, he loves when people respond to the Holy Spirit in this fashion. He understands the link between how we serve others and how much we love God. Both are developed through the other. One is the vertical, and the other, the horizonal part of the cross. Embracing the cross means accepting that both are necessary for our and others salvation.
Each year, I pick a spiritual theme for myself, and over and over again, I find myself staring at the crucifix, and it has become a center piece of prayer for me, so I know this year’s theme is –“Embrace the cross.” I know this because my first reaction is, “Oh no, that’s going to be a tough one.” It’s scary to hold onto the crucifix.
To embrace the cross is to embrace all, to submit to all, to accept all, to surrender one’s will to what will happen out of love of the One who redeems us. It is a radical act of trust, a fiat for a year to God in light of unknown yet to happen things. This year, since even before December 3rd, it’s been crucifixes. I received one from my mom’s room –one of four she kept, and the rosary she held in the casket. At Christmas mass, my eyes kept being drawn to His hands and His feet.
The cross, the crucified Jesus keeps persuing me. My granddaddy used to say, “sometimes you just have to bawl like a baby in front of the cross.” and I have. I cry at mass, I cry at adoration, I cry at four in the morning, and I cry when startled back into the hard reality, it’s been one month and a day since my mother died, and ten years since I lost my father. In the pews, my kids don’t know, not all the tears are for my parents’ deaths. There are lots of tears for all those far from Christ, far from comfort or consolation, for all my students who struggle, some of whom I know their struggles. Teacher tears for all I fail to reach, and all those who choose to fail, fall. I weep for all the little deaths of every day I hear on the news or online. Tears are a daily but not constant companion. I have not despaired, but grief walks with me, making me aware of all the ways in which the world itself is always grieving.
Somehow, the realities of sin, pain and death keep shocking me, because they were never part of God’s plan, only embraced by Him because of the gifts He’d given, free will. “Embrace the cross.” To embrace the cross is to be captured by Christ and I know, it is better to be found. The alternative, is to be lost.
My brain keeps turning back to the reality, we are given the opportunity to be of the Body of Christ, or choose to be the cross upon which it is crucified —and most of the time, we are both. As terrifying to consider, as the reality of sin is, (and to recognize we are the cross upon which Christ is crucified, is a scary reality), we know Christ’s precious blood soaks the cross, so even if we are mostly the cross or even all cross, we can be redeemed through His sacrifice. We can become splinters through which God gives grace. It gives hope, which is the theme of these Jubilee year. It is a radical act, to be hopeful in this world, a rebellion against the original rebellion, against despaire, against sin, against evil, against complacency.
Hope is active and engaged and unwilling to quit.
And I think, I want that. I want to be that. Embracing the cross is embracing hope. Let us begin this great Jubilee.
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