The Jubilee Year | Fr. Bonaventure Chapman & Fr. Joseph-Anthony Kress
January 2, 2025
Fr. Bonaventure: This is Father Bonaventure Chapman.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: This is Father Joseph-Anthony Kress.
Fr. Bonaventure: And welcome to Godsplaining. Thanks for all those who donate on Patreon. Please subscribe to us on any of the places where you find your podcasts. Father Joseph-Anthony.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, how you doing, bud?
Fr. Bonaventure: Not bad, yourself?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, we’re hanging in there. We’re getting it done.
Fr. Bonaventure: That’s fantastic. We want to talk about this episode about pilgrimages a bit, although that’ll be between Jubilee and Hope.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, yeah.
Fr. Bonaventure: Jubilee, pilgrimage, pilgrims, and hope. But first off, what was the first pilgrimage you ever went on?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Great question. Thank you for asking. I think the first pilgrimage that I can recall was when I was in college, I studied abroad at Franciscan University I studied abroad in Austria. We got two 10-day breaks in that. One of them was a kind of planned, guided 10-day break to Rome in a Assisi. The other one was a free 10 days that you could travel anywhere you wanted to. I took and I helped to lead a group of students to Lourdes, France. And you know, every, we did a bunch of other kind of visits to different cities in Europe and things like that. And we would see holy things and holy sites. But that was the first one where I was like, okay, this is a pilgrimage. You know, we’re going to a pilgrim site, you know, the, Lourdes where the Blessed Virgin appeared. And that was the first one where it really kind of took on the character of a pilgrimage, like we’re going here for a certain reason to encounter the Lord in a particular way and increase our devotion. So yeah, I think looking back, that would be the first kind of one that wasn’t just, it wasn’t like spiritual tourism.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yes.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: It was like, there’s a spirituality here making a sacrifice and I’m going to this holy site for one particular reason that’s to grow on my faith.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, it’s a distinct kind of practice I suppose in America, we don’t have as many pilgrims sites. Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Not a real culture of pilgrimage.
Fr. Bonaventure: No, we’re not good at pilgrimages and processions, we don’t generally do a lot of them, in Europe, it seems like it’s a bigger thing.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Fr. Bonaventure: I think the first night it was a day pilgrimage to Mariazell in Austria.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Oh yeah.
Fr. Bonaventure: To the, it’s a big church there. It has a, just a little statue of Mary, but the pilgrimage is, it’s beautiful walk through the countryside, goes through the villages and everything, it’s really gorgeous. And then I was doing a pilgrimage leading a pilgrimage to Poland in Poland this year. This last summer to do Faustina sites in JP II’s sites.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Oh, that’s nice. Because in pilgrimage, you can have, as you say, this element of kind of suffering and sacrifice involved there. So if you’re just doing tourism or on vacation or something and things don’t go well, then you think, “Oh, what’s going on?” But the pilgrimage, you can kind of suffer this and take it up into a particular practice.
Fr. Bonaventure: I mean, I think one of my hot takes I’m able to get into this later, but one of my hot takes is that a lot of things are kind of touted as a pilgrimage and it just kind of boils down to spiritual tourism. It’s like, okay, we’re gonna do five days one day here, one day here, and it’s just like, so jam-packed that you just feel more like a tourist and less like a pilgrim and things like that. And we’ve done other episodes on what makes a pilgrimage or things like that. But yeah…
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Have you lead a pilgrimage before? Yeah, we’ve done a few, you know, for students at UVA. We did a pilgrimage to Rome a spring break ago. We’ve done pilgrimages to Poland and things like that. So, they’re certain elements that we are very intentional about, intentional about keeping part of that to kind of reinforce that this is not just spiritual tourism. This isn’t a vocation that we’re going to kind of sprinkle in our pepper in kind of spiritual thangs.
Fr. Bonaventure: Now, and they’re worth doing, this is again, this episode is about pilgrimage, but they’re worth doing because they do give you the sense of like, you know, you can suffer things and you can put up with things for a period of time and that’s valuable in and of itself and also with the pilgrims, which we’re gonna get to in a second. Okay, so let’s jump into that then. So Pope Francis called for last year, he said in 2025, there’ll be a Jubilee Year for pilgrims of hope. So Jubilee year, pilgrims of hope. So I think we should take those each individually. First with a Jubilee year, what’s that? And then think about what pilgrims are. We talked a little about that, but pilgrims of hope and how, what hope might be and why he’s bringing that up. So first off, tell us a little about Jubilee Years and what you know about them.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony Yeah, great question.
Fr. Bonaventure: In case people don’t know about these things, they only come about so many times.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, they’re a unique thing and I don’t, I don’t know. We don’t really talk about it. It’s not super familiar to our kind of daily life as Catholics, but yet they still pop up and they’re kind of a common experience from time to time. And so when we look at what a jubilee year is and why do we have those, they’re actually, it’s very scriptural. And it goes all the way back to Old Testament. In Leviticus, it gives out the actual guidelines for what a jubilee year is according to the Lord. And he says, you know, every, what breaks down to the 50th year, it’s 49 and then the 50th year would be a year of jubilation or a year of the Lord in a way that the day of atonement, right, would be the beginning of this, but it would be an extension of that day of atonement for an entire year, where debts would be forgiven across the board, and there would be this kind of real plunging into the depths of God’s mercy and then by an extension of human forgiveness and human mercy as well. And so it was an encouragement to the Israelites and to the people of God to begin to take on the kind of attributes of God but to do so in an intentional way and it would put before the eyes of the people every 50th year. Talking about, okay, this is going to be an extension and a continuation of the Lord’s mercy, his atonement, his forgiveness, in both of a vertical relationship of the people of God to their God, but also amongst each other in that way.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, it seems 50 years seems a fitting time to do that because it’s long enough where it’s not like you can wait out to the next one, basically. But it’s not too long that you wouldn’t see one of these things once in your life. There’s some deep, kind of phenomenological human aspect to this that, you know, making life is difficult and there are some breaks and some kind of restarts and refreshers. And for a, you know, I mean, we live longer today, but very few people live, you know, do a hundred years. So you might only see one or max maybe two, did you believe years to kind of refresh and restart? And again, not to say that, you know, you get to restart everything on these things. But the sense of a mercy, a societal structure of mercy that is baked into this, such that we recognize that all of our relationships to God and with each other need renewing in this way.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: I think that’s important because you look at it and what is it? A generation is like every 40 years. It would be along those lines and so we can see that our experience on the Catholic life of a jubilee year is very much rooted in scripture in kind of the our older brothers and sisters relation in continuation into that we see historically we see the first jubilee year was announced for, I think, at the year 1300, you know, was a first one. And then there was a period where it was supposed to be like every 100 years and then that got reduced down to 50 and then, you know, through different uh, promulgations and things. We’re in a rhythm at this point where it’s every 25 years.
Fr. Bonaventure: It’s like the, it’s like fasting before the Eucharist. It’s getting smaller and smaller. Pretty soon it’ll be about 12.5. Every 12 years.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: But that’s the rhythm where we’re at right now that it’s every 25 years. And so that puts us at 2025. So the last one we had was the Great Jubilee of 2000.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, so I mean, I wasn’t Catholic at this time, but you were Catholic. So what was the, did your family and did you do any practices for the jubilee year?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: You know, you’re right, I was Catholic. I wasn’t like super practicing in my faith at that point. I mean, I was just the normal rhythm of things. And I think I was kind of aware, but no more aware of it than everybody else was about the significance of the year 2000 and things like that. I think it was just in my eyes, like, “Oh, of course, the Church is talking about this along those lines.” Because, frankly, everybody was talking about it at that time. So I didn’t really grasp that understanding of it being a Jubilee, but also the Great Jubilee of the year 2000. But looking at that, St. John Paul II inaugurated the Great Jubilee of the year 2000 in order to help us enter into the third millennium and all these things, well now 25 years later, obviously the world’s in a very different place. And yet we still have this opportunity to have a year of Jubilee in this way. So I think it’s a nice reflection to also look at the chronology of it at home and to see like, okay, this is the first one of the third millennium in that unique way.
Fr. Bonaventure: And in 25 years is a long time, so a lot of things change between that. So now what any particular practice is, what does the Church offer in these Jubilee years?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: So the church takes on a lot of those same elements that we find within Scripture and within Leviticus about the problemation of those Jubilee years and seeing that it is a year of mercy. And I say that year of mercy and all of I think all of our mental rolodex are going back to the year of mercy that we had a handful of years ago. But that was an extraordinary Jubilee. This is more of an ordinary Jubilee. But it takes on the same characteristics, right? It is a year of forgiveness. It is a year of mercy. It is a year where debts are repaid in this way. So the emphasis of a Jubilee year is to do just that. So you find that there’s an emphasis on the plenary indulgences and the treasury of mercy through the church that’s available to the world and her members. And so you see that in the Jubilee year and precisely in the year 2025, that there’s going to be this emphasis on kind of the forgiveness and mercy of God and also entering into that kind of those depths of the oceans of mercy and the forgiveness of not just our sins but also the temporal punishments, and so…
Fr. Bonaventure: The particular practices and indulgences through, usually the doors of, well, obviously St. Peter’s in Rome and going through these doors especially, but also the local basilicas, cathedrals, these kinds of things in terms of how often these opportunities as well for communal practices of these reconciliation and penances.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: And so what she does is actually expands the attachments of plenary indulgence to more and more activities than what is typical. And so in a jubilee year, the primary action that is indulgence-d, I think is a pilgrimage. And there’s this encouragement to go on pilgrimage in any way that you can to enter into as a spiritual practice to renew one’s faith, but also as a way to enter into the forgiveness of our sins and our temporal punishments. And so you do find that there’s this emphasis on pilgrimage as primarily to Rome is the kind of step one, but there’s this attachment of like, well, make a pilgrimage in any way that you can. So maybe it’s to your local cathedral, you know, if you can’t get overseas, so you can make it to the cathedral of your diocese. And that would carry the same kind of attachments of forgiveness, mercy, and indulgence in that way.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, so maybe it’s a good year to, if our listeners have not done a pilgrimage in a while, it’s a good year to do a pilgrimage for that. Okay, so it’s a jubilee year. So forgiveness, mercy, and all of this stuff, have a particular social dimension to it. And this one is specifically focused on being pilgrims of hope. We’ll talk about pilgrims in a second, I suppose. But what about this, this hope aspect? What do you think were why, why pilgrims of hope? Why hope, not pilgrims of charity, yeah, it’s a faith, this sort of thing.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah. I think it’s important to see like I like I mentioned earlier, you know, the last typical Jubilee, the last ordinary Jubilee, even though it was extraordinary for 2000, was the year 2000, it was this preparation entering to the third millennium. But as Pope Francis writes about it, it is about preparing ourselves for what lays ahead. And is that not the very nature of the virtue of hope, right? Hope is about future arduous goods, right? We don’t hope for things of the past, or goods of the past, we don’t hope for goods that are present to us. We remember the goods of the past and we rejoice or we delight in the goods that are present to us, but the goods that are in the future that may be difficult to attain, that it demands the virtue of hope in order to prepare for that. So I wanna read a little quote from the Holy Father’s letter promulgating this and this is how he introduces the theme “Pilgrims of Hope”. He says this, “We must fan the flame of hope that has been given us and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and a far-sighted vision. The forthcoming Jubilee can contribute greatly to restoring a climate of hope and trust as a prelude to the renewal and rebirth that we so urgently desire. That is why I have chosen the motto of the Jubilee, “Pilgrims of Hope.’” And I think that’s very beautiful articulation that he’s saying, this is kind of a precondition, this culture of hope being men and women who see themselves as living this earthly life as pilgrims, but that are a far-sighted vision on God as our end. And thus it demands us to be hope. And thus if we are those men and women, those pilgrims of hope, then it creates this renewal and rebirth within us that we are constantly in need of.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, it’s a good combination of hope and as part of a Jubilee or any way about this kind of rebirth and restart, you could say. But especially I think today, after the millennium, there’s a lot of promise, you think of the last Jubilee in 2000. And since then, we’ve had of course lots of good things, but also there is a kind of despair aspect.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Oh my gosh, absolutely.
Fr. Bonaventure: …in our, in our world, not only are there still wars about, right? I don’t know why I thought…but they weren’t going to go away, but still wars about, we just came out of a pandemic and then people are concerned about that. Technology is not always our friend here. I think people with AI and things, people are concerned about, I mean, I don’t know what the future for some jobs will be, this kind of stuff. Also, I think we were more polarized and then everyone seems partly because we have a, we have access to everything we say and do. And so there’s this lack of charity and forgiveness sometimes. So I think there’s a hope… is a hope is something that we desperately need. I find it sometimes hard to have it, whether it be in internet, academic settings or in American political settings or something or global settings or I mean all the sort of stuff. So I think it’s at some point hopes sometimes feels like sort of pollyannaish virtue or something. It’s like thing you tell children, but real adults, they don’t hope. Adults are realists in a cool about things. And then you know, you just kind of here’s what you are and this sort of thing. And I think the Holy Father is right to say, and like this is the, this is a good time to remind ourselves, but not only the virtue of the theological virtue of hope about salvation, like this matters for us. This is what the indulgence aspect is about is for others and for ourselves that we might actually be saved that we can hope in that. But also in the in the more secular sense, you could say, about a good future, the trust in God’s providence, the trust in that that he still loves us despite all of these messiness, all the messiness and all the depressing things and the reasons for despair, that we shouldn’t let that take over. And we shouldn’t put hope entirely just in the next life, but also know that he wants us to work here for building up the Kingdom of God.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: No, it’s really a fascinating thing because once again, let’s just look at the timeline of things, right? The last Jubilee was in 2000. That was before the September 11th attacks. So then global travel and the globalization world changed overnight. And that put us in a weird relationship to humanity. And then you have a pandemic that hits. And that doesn’t even account for the radical progression of technology and social media and the internet…
Fr. Bonaventure: And the damage there, the dangers there. I mean, all the screen stuff and looking for what people, how people are when you work at your college campus and such, how to– What does the future look like when everyone’s addicted to this new addiction to phones, this kind of stuff?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: I mean, the iPhone wasn’t in existence. I mean, how has that, you can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube, you know, so what are we gonna do with this? And then you introduce machine learning and AI and all of this. And you’ve seen that probably in the last 25 years, we’ve seen the most radical progression of the depersonalization of society. And so what are we now progressing towards in the next 25 years? And I think Pope Francis’ introduction of hope is to say, no, no, we still have hope for humanity. And I think it’s a really beautiful thing to say, not just hope as virtue at distance, but we become pilgrims of hope. So how am I a man or a woman? How am I this person, you know, in living in a very depersonalized experience in society, but still claim my humanity, which is hopeful.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah. And hopeful is good mention this. I like this pilgrim aspect of hope because a pilgrim is, as we talked earlier, and now can such synthesize a bit. Is the is taking on a particular task, which requires some sacrifice, it will take time, it might be kind of painful or arduous or suffering, not exactly… But it’s a task, it’s an activity that requires a constant effort, you could say, towards a particular goal. And like this, this pilgrim of, pilgrimage of hope or pilgrims of hope kind of aspect during this renewal is saying like, hey, we might actually have to do something here. This is not going to be a snap of the fingers total forgiveness. We’re… fresh clean slate, this kind of thing. But rather than something, we’re going to have to think about, for a year, we’ll have the opportunity to have a year to think about how am I embodying or working on developing the virtue of hope, both in theological sense and then just the more natural sense. Like, how am I undertaking this pilgrimage to be more hopeful for the future, not just as an individual, you know, like a feeling better as some sort of mental state condition, but rather acting out of my life, loving people and treating people with a sense of hope, acting out of my life, loving people and treating people with a sense of hope, planning my own day, my own experience, my own future, preaching about hope, this kind of thing, like taking hope seriously, because it’s being honest, you just want the virtue, especially theological virtue like that I skate over, I suspect, faith and charity, fantastic, but hope just kind of is in between there. So, drawing attention to it, and especially the pilgrimage aspect, the aspect of inactivity that I undertake daily, even if, you know, when you’re on a pilgrimage, it’s like five days in or something, you think, you know, I haven’t really slept and it’s a nightmare in here, we’re gonna have to do this another five days, but you have to push on. And so the same way, like hope as a task, of course the Lord is the one who provides the end there and he provides the means and the assistance to do so, but still that it’s part of our project working with him in this way.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: And I think to like recognize him that whole concept of being a pilgrim, right, when one is a pilgrim, they’re kind of always aware they’re a pilgrim, you know, especially with more intense pilgrimages such as the Camino or somebody who goes to the Holy Land or Rome as they’re going through that, that you kind of embody that identity. Like I’m out of my comfort zone, I’m not at home. Like I’m going to this place once again as pilgrim. And I have kind of a goal in mind is to…
Fr. Bonaventure: It’s a different attitude, different kind of life. It’s sense of life and sense of what you’re up to.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: And it takes you out of your comfortable experience. Even like we said, here in the United States, we don’t have a culture of pilgrimage, but like you can still take pilgrimages to like we’re talking about our local cathedral and there. There are also different shrines that we can go on pilgrimage to. But when you do that, even if it’s for a day trip, like you, while I’m here, I am pilgrim. And that’s a very different mentality. And I think that’s a important to see as we’re talking about this jubilee year, it could have been anything, but the Holy Father precisely hones in on being pilgrims of hope. And saying, we have to take on this identity of me as a pilgrim. And not just task oriented in the sense of, I have, this is a task of my work. So I’ll point a checklist it off and that thing. And there are different kind of tasks and things to do as pilgrims, but it’s more about that identity of seeing myself almost as transient and a foreigner. If you would want to say that.
Fr. Bonaventure: I know that this is a good point, especially because hope is the virtue for our salvation. And the sense that despite we talked about how building up a kingdom of God here and being hopeful for the future here, in this way that it is also a reminder for us about the place we’re going to and ultimate hope resides in being with the Lord for eternity after this, let’s say that this whole life of pilgrimage, not only this time, but also our seeing, our life as pilgrimage, not holding tight to things and holding control of things, but rather being dependent upon him and knowing that the future lies with him in a way.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah. There’s a unique aspect of these Jubilee years that are very clear. They only happened during Jubilee years. For me, I have struggles to wrap my head around like, why the hell is this so important? But it’s the Holy Doors. There are Holy Doors in Rome at certain basilicas and then there are by extension Holy Doors of different cathedrals and things throughout the nation here in the United States, throughout the world. And it’s like, that one of the kind of tasks of the pilgrimage during the jubilee years to go through the Holy Doors and I’m like, I do not. I do not. Our Catholics are weird. This is one of those Catholics are weird moments. We walk through doors and like, I accomplish something. But I think there’s a beautiful significance of that as pilgrim. Right, you cross a threshold.
Fr. Bonaventure: You finish something.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: You are crossing a threshold and we could talk about, okay, last 25 years we finished now, we’re preparing for something new and as Holy Father spoke about to prepare for what is coming down the road, having a far-reaching or far-sighted vision about entering into the next kind of phase of things as pilgrims of hope. But we do that to cross a threshold, not to necessarily forget what is gone behind us, but to really symbolically say, I’m entering into this new phase, this new period as a pilgrim, pilgrims cross over thresholds, you know, and you do that as a Christian, and you do that as a man or woman of faith, but also as an individual of hope, saying, I’m going to enter into this new space, not to fabricate it, not to force it to be something, but enter into this new place to receive it. And think about walking into a grand basilica. Once again, think of Rome. That’s precisely what we’re talking about, St. Peter’s or all the major basilicas in Rome. But you enter into that basilica. And what’s the first thing that everybody does? You look up and you stop. Once you cross that threshold, you actually pause to receive what’s in front of you. You don’t walk in and try to force anything. You don’t say, “Oh, this is, I would be better if it was decorated this way,” or it’s so grand that it arrests you once you’ve crossed that threshold. And to a certain sense, we should look at what lays in front of us the next years or whatever it may be, with a pause to receive it and not to try to force ourselves to be. And I think with, like we were talking about the progression of technology and all these other things, like we want to kind of fabricate our future, pick ourselves up from a very American, right? We want to, you know, work hard and create our own future, but a year of Jubilee forces us to receive and kind of pause the providence of God and to rejoice on the mercy of our past. And that’s where that like the whole year of forgiveness and forgiving the temporal punishments in the plenary indulgence represents the crossing of the threshold of leaving that behind in God’s hands so that he has merciful hands and love will forgive that but also stepping with confidence to receive His providential will and mercy for what lays ahead.
Fr. Bonaventure: Yeah, I like that image too of going in and crossing the threshold and then looking up in the way this big basilica, these cathedrals, why we have the doors in these places, because they kind of represent the tabernacle of Heaven. You can say the temple of here, and so you’re trying to just practice in a small way what our life is about, which is on the journey, the pilgrims in faith and hope and love to eternity. And that this gives us a concrete realization of this is what it’s like. Yeah. So, so maybe this is a chance this year to take on a pilgrimage, particularly to one of these ways places that has these beautiful doors, even if it’s even if you have a cathedral in your own area, if you’re on your own city or something, you’re in neighborhood, if you live in the city, opportunity to just walk there and spend time there. But to have this sense of remind, that remind again that we’re on Pilgrim, Pilgrimage, we’re all Pilgrims in this life. This is not our home. There were Pilgrims and that we have this sense of trust and hope in our Lord. And that we’re asked by the Holy Father and for the Church to focus on these aspects of forgiveness, the jubilee year, also being on pilgrimage and finally pilgrimage for hope.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, and I think too, just recognizing that this year is about a year of forgiveness and mercy. And just as the ancient Israelites were supposed to receive that in radical abundance from God himself on these Jubilee years, that’s still available to us and to take advantage of that. But maybe in small ways to imitate that with our own forgiveness and our own mercy that we show to each other…
Fr. Bonaventure: If we’ve kept something for a while, this is a good year…
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: This is a good year to begin to imitate that, or at least try. If you have not perfect at it…
Fr. Bonaventure: But if you’ve been holding off forgiveness with someone, this gives you an excuse to say, “Well, you know, it’s a Jubilee year, so I should… have done this 10 years ago or something, but that’s right.”
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: I don’t think the IRS takes on that reality. So just be aware that’s not everybody does this, but for you as a listener, might be appropriate to try it. –
Fr. Bonaventure: That’s great. Well, turning to you listeners. Thank you for tuning in for this episode. Feel free to look on the website for any upcoming events, we do have the Day of Recollection in Nashville, at the cathedral, which has a special door, of course. January 18th, we’d love to see you there for that Day of Recollection in Nashville, Tennessee. You can go to the website to find merchandise, all this sort of thing, other events that are coming up in the summers retreats and such. Also if you would like and subscribe on wherever you find your podcasts, if you’d like to donate to this podcast on Patreon, a monthly donation, you can find that in the show notes and links down there. But most importantly, know of our prayers for you. Please pray for us. I’m gonna catch you next time on Godsplaining.