The First Jubilee
This is the first in a five-part series on the Jubilee Year of 2025.
Pope Boniface VIII, the first pope in Church history to proclaim a jubilee in the year 1300, was not a model of papal holiness. He was fickle, arrogant, and many reckon he overstepped his authority in trying to force the secular rulers of the day to bow to him. Yet we can thank him for initiating the practice of calling the first jubilee, a special year of God’s favor dedicated to the forgiveness of sins and the gaining of graces for faithful Christians who come on pilgrimage to Rome to venerate the tombs of Sts. Peter and Paul. God writes straight with crooked lines!
The year 1299 had brought wars and plagues to the European continent, prompting an outpouring of faith and supplication to Almighty God. There was a belief that the change of century brought a unique opportunity to beg God’s favor and gain indulgences, graces given through the Church that remove some of the punishment of Purgatory in this life. So, many journeyed to Rome to pray before the tombs of the saints and they were granted a plenary indulgence (remitting all purgatorial punishment) if they visited the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul for 30 days in a row. Imagine all that walking (and the faith to persevere for a whole month)!
The Jubilee pilgrimage continued to be an important aspect of Catholic devotion hosted once every twenty-five years. The whole idea of pilgrimage is that you journey to a place special to God in order to encounter him and carry that encounter with you into your daily life. Conversion is the foundation and prerequisite of all pilgrimage. Without it, the graces we are trying to gain through indulgences are more like gumballs from a divine machine than encounters with the living God.
We are about to enter a Jubilee Year in 2025 that commemorates the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea which gave us the Nicene Creed. Pope Francis will ceremonially open the Basilicas of Sts. Peter, Paul, Mary, and John Lateran during the Christmas season. Today, December 29th, he opens the holy door of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, his own cathedral. Each basilica’s holy door is sealed shut and bricked up in between the jubilees and ceremonially unsealed with a silver hammer and trowel (awesomely weird Catholic trivia). Pilgrims walk through the door and pray to receive God’s mercy and favor during the year. While you may not have the opportunity to travel to Rome to venerate the tombs of the saints, we can all still call upon God to grant us the graces we need to live this extraordinary new year. I’ll be exploring in the coming weeks where this idea of jubilee came from, and how Jesus himself is the key to understanding the year of God’s favor that he wants to visit upon us in 2025! So stay tuned!