While the Jubilee Year of Hope officially began in Rome Dec. 24, in our diocese, Bishop Barry C. Knestout celebrated the opening Mass for the Jubilee Year the evening of Dec. 28 at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Richmond. The special Mass featured solemn introductory rites, including the blessing of the restored baptismal font.
Bishop Knestout compared the Jubilee Year to a pilgrimage. As with a pilgrimage, the Jubilee Year will be a journey with God.
“On occasions of pilgrimage, things don’t often go exactly as planned. There is uncertainty and anxiety along the way,” said the bishop. “Every pilgrimage I’ve experienced has come with moments of sacrifice, but these are intended by God to be moments of grace and growth in faith.”
In 1300, Pope Boniface VIII instituted the first Jubilee Year, a special year set apart to renew one’s relationship with God. The Catholic tradition draws on the jubilee celebrations of the ancient Israelites, in which debts were forgiven and fields lay fallow every 50 years.
The Church celebrates a Jubilee Year every 25 years, although sometimes an Extraordinary Jubilee Year is proclaimed, like the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2016.
The theme for this Jubilee Year is “Pilgrims of Hope.” Pope Francis invited Catholics to travel to Rome and experience the Holy Year by visiting sacred sites in the Eternal City. Those who cannot travel to Rome are encouraged to make a pilgrimage to their diocesan cathedral.
As in the Jewish tradition of jubilee years, Holy Year 2025 is a special time to rectify our relationship with God.
“Although debts of property and material goods are not canceled, there are greater debts that are wiped away – the debt of sin, offenses against God and neighbor,” said Bishop Knestout.
During the ceremony at the cathedral, the faithful were given candles that were lit at the beginning of Mass. The bishop greeted the congregation with a special blessing, and Deacon Andrew Clark read from the Gospel of John 14:1-7, which includes the famous passage: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
An excerpt from “Spes Non Confundit,” the Bull of Indiction that declared the Jubilee Year, was then read aloud. “Spes Non Confundit,” Latin for “Hope does not disappoint,” comes from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans 5:5.
“For everyone, may the Jubilee be a moment of genuine, personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the door of our salvation, whom the Church is charged to proclaim always, everywhere and to all as our hope,” declared the lector, quoting the pontiff.
After the reading from “Spes Non Confundit,” the clergy and the congregation together chanted the Litany of Saints. Then the bishop raised a special crucifix, saying to the people, “Hail, Cross of Christ, our only hope.” The crucifix was later placed near the cathedra, the bishop’s throne, where it will remain until the close of the Jubilee Year.
Finally, the bishop blessed the restored baptismal font and sprinkled holy water on the congregation as he processed to the altar. Once the organ struck up the first notes of the Gloria, the Mass proceeded according to the normal rubric.
The special occasion fell on the vigil for the Feast of the Holy Family, and the readings from Sirach and the Letter of St. Paul to the Colossians offered a prescription for an ideal Christian family life. The Gospel, Luke 2:41-52, recounted the story of the Holy Family losing, and then finding, the 12-year-old Jesus in Jerusalem.
The bishop noted that, like the Holy Family, we can expect the unexpected on our own journey in the Jubilee Year.
“The Holy Family encountered challenges throughout all their experience as a family, and especially on their pilgrimage to Jerusalem,” he said.
Throughout Mass, the new gallery organ provided a powerful score to the solemn proceedings, and incense rose frequently from a swinging thurible. The Mass was concelebrated by Father Michael Boehling, vicar general; Father Tony Marques, cathedral rector; Father Matt Kiehl, vicar for vocations; Father Timothy Kuhneman, vicar for clergy; Father Ken Shuping, episcopal vicar for the Central Vicariate and pastor of St. Bridget, Richmond; Father Tochi Iwuji, director of the Office for Black Catholics and pastor of Holy Rosary, Richmond; retired Msgr. Walter Barrett; and Father Daniel Cogut, pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Salem, currently on medical leave.
The pews were more crowded than at a typical Saturday vigil Mass. Phillip and Dorcas Bgwanya, parishioners of Church of the Epiphany, Richmond, were two among many who made a short pilgrimage to the cathedral for the occasion. In the spirit of celebration, Phillip wore a gold suit that matched his wife’s beautiful dress.
“We have to hope in the Lord, that we may have the perseverance to reach a better place,” said Phillip. “Where we’re coming from, we’ve faced a lot of difficulties, trials. But hope, as the bishop says, is all about making the baptismal renewal.”
He also pointed to the cross as a symbol of hope, calling it “ever salvific in the Christian life.”
Ellen Kroll said she found out about the celebration when she learned her son, seminarian Martin Kroll, would be serving at Mass.
“Sometimes, we get little surprises,” said Ellen. “We have the way we want things to go, but God has something even better than that.”
For Ellen, the theme of hope was resonant as she watched the priests, deacons, and seminarians on the altar, and even as she heard the cries of an infant in a nearby pew, whom she said “will keep us going in the future.”
“It was such a treat,” she said.
Martin noted that, in our diocese, there are “many signs of renewal” which give him hope, including the strength of the diocesan Church, the conversion of souls and the return of Catholics to the sacraments.
He also noted “an awareness of our need to evangelize and embrace the radical nature of Christianity.”
“Our Lord tasked us as Christians with proclaiming the good news, and being a witness to the nations,” said Martin. “It gives me personally great hope to see an newfound awareness of this in the Church universal.”
In the final paragraph of “Spes Non Confundit,” Pope Francis quoted Psalm 27, urging the faithful to look to God and to bring him to others.
“Let us even now be drawn to this hope!” wrote the pontiff. “Through our witness, may hope spread to all those who anxiously seek it. May the way we live our lives say to them in so many words: ‘Hope in the Lord! Hold firm, take heart and hope in the Lord!’”
See more photos from the opening Mass at the cathedral Dec. 28.
Read about the opening of the Jubilee Year in Rome Dec. 24.
Lee en español sobre la ceremonia en Roma que abrió el Año de Jubileo.
Read about the opening of the Holy Door at Rebibbia prison in Rome.