Read a brief introduction to the holy year of 2025.

Pope Francis opened the Holy Door of Saint Peter's Basilica this past Christmas Eve and began the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope. “With the liturgical gesture of the Door's opening at the start of the Christmas Mass during the Night, as explained in the papal bull for the Jubilee Spes non confundit, the Pope inaugurated the Ordinary Jubilee, a historic event taking place every 25 years. The Ordinary Jubilee will conclude with the closing of the same Holy Door on 6 January 2026, the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord” (Vatican News).

We are now in a Jubilee Year. What is a Jubilee? It is a time for spiritual rejuvenation and renewal. It is a time to rededicate ourselves to God. It is a time to grow in holiness through deeper prayer and a refocusing of life on faith, hope, and love. Indeed, the theme of Jubilee 2025 is pilgrims of hope. Hope! We are living in a world on the brink of many disasters. We need to know that disaster, despair, poverty, war, and death do not have the last word. We hope, based on the Risen Christ, that God’s generous mercy has the last word. Pope Francis writes, “‘Hope does not disappoint’ (Rom 5:5). In the spirit of hope, the Apostle Paul addressed these words of encouragement to the Christian community of Rome. Hope is also the central message of the coming Jubilee that, in accordance with an ancient tradition, the Pope proclaims every twenty-five years” Spes non confundit, 1.

How do we participate in the Jubilee? Pope Francis calls us to participate in the Jubilee year 2025 through prayer and pilgrimage. Above all, we participate in the Jubilee through prayer. This year is an opportunity to go deeper: pray in contemplative silence, pray the Rosary, read and reflect on Scripture, or practice the presence of God throughout the day. Jesus invites us to pray as much as we can. All the saints and mystics say that prayer gets easier and sweeter the more we engage in it. Jubilee 2025 is a time for turning everyday life into prayer.

We also share in the Jubilee by pilgrimage. “The Jubilee calls for us to set out on a journey and to cross boundaries. When we travel, we do not only change place physically, but we also change ourselves. Hence, it is important to prepare ourselves well, to plan the route, and learn about the destination. In this sense, the Jubilee pilgrimage begins before the start of the journey itself: the starting point is the decision to set out. The etymology of the word ‘pilgrimage’ is quite telling and has undergone little change in meaning over the years. The word comes from the Latin ‘per ager,’ meaning ‘across the fields,’ or perhaps from ‘per eger,’ meaning ‘border crossing’: both possible origins point to the distinctive aspect of undertaking a journey” (Jubilee 2025 website).
Pope Francis calls us to renew our participation in the sacraments. Sunday Eucharist is paramount. But besides Mass, Pope Francis invites us to celebrate Confession more often. He writes, “The sacrament of Penance assures us that God wipes away our sins…The sacrament of Reconciliation is not only a magnificent spiritual gift, but also a decisive, essential and fundamental step on our journey of faith. There, we allow the Lord to erase our sins, to heal our hearts, to raise us up, to embrace us and to reveal to us his tender and compassionate countenance. There is no better way to know God than to let him reconcile us to himself (cf. 2 Cor 5:20) and savor his forgiveness. Let us not neglect Confession but rediscover the beauty of this sacrament of healing and joy, the beauty of God’s forgiveness of our sins!” (Spes non confundit, 23).

Pope Francis invites us to live the Jubilee by reviving a sense of trust in God in daily life and letting this Gospel faith lead to being a sign of hope for others. “During the Holy Year, we are called to be tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardships of any kind” (Spes non confundit, 10). Fostering peace, forgiving others, visiting the sick, offering assistance to the needy, and helping immigrants are ways Pope Francis asks us to be signs of hope.
Finally, during the Jubilee, we have the opportunity to gain indulgences. These are, perhaps, a misunderstood practice. Rather than a way to earn or even buy oneself into heaven, Pope Francis explains that “the indulgence is a way of discovering the unlimited nature of God’s mercy. Not by chance, for the ancients, the terms ‘mercy’ and ‘indulgence’ were interchangeable, as expressions of the fullness of God’s forgiveness, which knows no bounds” (Spes non confundit, 23).

Even though God forgives our sins, “every sin ‘leaves its mark.’ Sin has consequences, not only outwardly in the effects of the wrong we do, but also inwardly, inasmuch as ‘every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures’…In our humanity, weak and attracted by evil, certain residual effects of sin remain. These are removed by the indulgence, always by the grace of Christ, who, as Saint Paul VI wrote, ‘is himself our ‘indulgence’” (Spes non confundit, 23). Sin leaves a negative effect in our lives. Indulgences are ways to remove the negative consequences of sin. A plenary indulgence removes all the pain and consequences of sin (that have been forgiven through Confession) in our lives, while a partial indulgence removes only a portion of that pain.

We gain a plenary indulgence by, first, satisfying general conditions and then, second, by doing a Jubilee practice. Here are the general conditions for gaining a plenary indulgence: You have turned away from sin and do not want to sin but want to love God and neighbor. You are repentant and free from any affection for sin. You are moved by a spirit of charity. You go to the sacrament of penance and receive Holy Communion within 20 days before or after the event. You pray for the intentions of Pope Francis with an Our Father and a Hail Mary.

Once these conditions are met, we do one of the Jubilee practices by which we gain a plenary indulgence during the holy year: visit a sacred place like a cathedral or a basilica and participate in Eucharistic adoration and meditation, concluding with the Our Father, the Profession of Faith, and invocations to Mary; attend a retreat or adult faith class; do an act of charity; donate money to the poor; or abstain for a day from some form of distraction or from unnecessary consumption.
Let us commit to a deeper living of the Gospel this holy year, to being signs of hope for the world, to spreading the love of God in Christ to all. Let us hear Pope Francis’ summons: “The coming Jubilee will thus be a Holy Year marked by the hope that does not fade, our hope in God. May it help us to recover the confident trust that we require, in the Church and in society, in our interpersonal relationships, in international relations, and in our task of promoting the dignity of all persons and respect for God’s gift of creation. May the witness of believers be for our world a leaven of authentic hope, a harbinger of new heavens and a new earth (cf. 2 Pet 3:13), where men and women will dwell in justice and harmony, in joyful expectation of the fulfilment of the Lord’s promises” (Spes non confundit, 25).