by Joannie Watson | September 19, 2025 1:00 am
We all could use a little hope.
It’s easy to forget, in the middle of the news cycle, that we are celebrating a Year of Hope in the Church this year. Maybe even that phrase seems to fall a little flat right now. Whether it’s events in the world, our family, our country, or economy, the words “hope” and “freedom” and “jubilee” might feel very distant.
That’s precisely why we cannot forget that we are living a Jubilee Year. Because we need the hope. We need the freedom. We need the release, the forgiveness, the jubilee.
Over a decade ago, Pope Benedict called for a special Year of Faith. It wasn’t a Jubilee year, but a year dedicated to celebrating and studying the Faith. When I delved deeper into the idea, preparing how I was going to help my diocese celebrate it, I found that the previous Year of Faith had been celebrated in 1967-1968. To put it mildly, this was not a quiet, calm year in the global landscape. Particularly in America, we experienced the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy, racial division and deadly riots, heightened Vietnam War protests, and incredible social unrest. Many cultural historians mark these years as the end of an era. As Cardinal Stafford has powerfully written[1], 1968 was “a bitter cup.”
So as we began the Year of Faith in 2012, I held my breath. What was going to happen? Were we going to face another cultural monsoon of tragedies? Thankfully, the year won’t go down as a cultural turning point marked with tragedy and dissolution. But I could definitely list a number of adversities, and the spring of 2013 was full of multiple difficult crosses for me personally.
In a similar way, perhaps 2025 hasn’t felt like a Jubilee Year to you, a year full of hope.
But we don’t celebrate these years by being protected or sheltered from the fallenness of the world. We celebrate them by exercising the virtues and growing in holiness.
This year has been a reminder for all of us that we need hope. And that hope is not going to come from a political leader or a government. We need a hope that is not going to be found in society or culture. Our hope is only found in God.
I desire that this Jubilee Year has been a time of great grace, a return to the sacraments, and a reception of the freedom and release that only God can give. Not necessarily freedom from worldly headlines or tragedies, nor from personal sufferings or crosses, but freedom from the despair and the burden of sin.
Believe me, I still have Jubilee graces I’ve been waiting for and praying for, and there are a few months left for these to arrive. I have open arms ready for them… but I’m also aware that the grace might be that those particular prayers aren’t answered, and that the Lord invites me to continue to carry this Cross with him. If that is the case, I know he will give me the grace not only to carry it, but to hope in it.
Looking for help hoping? My book Opening the Holy Door: Lessons of Hope from St. Peter’s Basilica[2]helps you to pray with the Scriptures to discover a hope that extends long after the Jubilee Year.
Image credit: Photo by JOHN TOWNER[3] on Unsplash[4]
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