Summing up Jubilee year 2025: A reflection

By Precious Nihorowa* CSSp

The jubilee year 2025, which run from Christmas Eve (24 December 2024) and ends on Epiphany Sunday (6 January 2026), was first announced by Pope John Paul II in the year 2000 at the closure of the Jubilee year 2000. The jubilee was announced in advance because it is the tradition of the Church to have a jubilee year after every 25 years. This means that, the next jubilee will be in 2050.

However, the Pope can call for an extraordinary jubilee at any time as recently witnessed by the extraordinary jubilee of mercy convoked by Pope Francis in 2015. At the close of the 2000 Great Jubilee, Pope John Paul II spoke to the children of the world, noting that the children and young people of that time would be the leading players at the next Jubilee in 2025.

The Jubilee Year 2025 was proclaimed by Pope Francis with a papal bull entitled Spes non confundit (Latin for “Hope does not disappoint”). Since the Jubilee year 2025 was themed “the year of hope”, throughout the year, the Church has been rekindling hope among various groups constituting the Church and society at large.

As the Jubilee year draws to its conclusion, the Church finds herself invited not to look backward with nostalgia, but forward with hope. Jubilees have always been moments of pause—sacred interruptions in the rhythm of time—where God’s people are reminded of who they are and where they are going. This particular Jubilee has been marked by a profound and timely call: to rediscover hope, not as wishful thinking, but as a theological virtue rooted in God’s faithfulness.

Jubilee of the World of Education (Photo Credit: Internet)

We live in an age where hope is often in short supply. The daily news is saturated with stories of war, division, environmental crisis, and social fragmentation. Many people carry quiet anxieties about the future: economic uncertainty, fragile relationships, declining trust in institutions, and a sense that the world is moving too fast for the human heart to keep pace. In such a climate, hope can feel unrealistic or even irresponsible. Yet the Jubilee reminds us that Christian hope is not born from favourable circumstances. It is born from the Resurrection.

Biblically, the Jubilee is a proclamation that the future does not belong to despair. In the ancient tradition of Israel, the Jubilee year was a time when debts were forgiven, captives were freed, and the land was allowed to rest. These acts were not merely social reforms; they were signs of trust. They declared that God, not scarcity or fear, was the ultimate source of life. The Jubilee was a collective act of hope—an affirmation that history could be reset, relationships restored, and dignity reclaimed.

The Church’s celebration of the Jubilee today carries the same prophetic meaning. It announces that no situation is beyond redemption and no person beyond God’s mercy. Throughout this year, the faithful have been invited to pass through Holy Doors, to seek reconciliation, and to rediscover the joy of being forgiven. Each of these gestures is an act of hope. To confess one’s sins is to believe that change is possible. To seek forgiveness is to trust that the future need not be imprisoned by the past.

At the heart of this Jubilee’s message is the conviction expressed by Saint Paul: “Hope does not dis-appoint” (Romans 5:5). This is not because life never wounds us, but because God remains present within those wounds. Christian hope does not deny suffering; it passes through it. It acknowledges grief, failure, and uncertainty, yet refuses to grant them the final word. In Christ, even death itself has become a doorway rather than an end.

As this Jubilee Year ends, an important question emerges: what kind of hope have we been nurturing? There is a fragile form of hope that depends on outcomes—a hope that things will improve if circumstances align or people behave as we wish. But the hope the Jubilee calls forth is deeper. It is a hope anchored in relationship, not results. It rests on the promise that God walks with His people, even when the path ahead remains unclear.

This distinction matters because the world does not need more shallow reassurance. It needs witnesses to resilient hope—hope that remains honest about pain while still daring to believe in goodness. The Jubilee invites the Church to become such a witness. It calls us to be communities where discouraged hearts can rest, where questions are not silenced, and where no one is reduced to their failures.

Hope, however, is never passive. It carries a moral weight. To hope in God is to cooperate with His work of renewal. As the Jubilee concludes, we are asked to carry its hope into ordinary time—in our families, workplaces, parishes, and societies. Are we people who help others imagine a future again? Do our words and actions widen the horizon of possibility, or do they reinforce fear and cynicism?

The Jubilee has also reminded us that hope is deeply communal. It cannot be sustained in isolation. Pilgrimages, shared prayer, and acts of mercy throughout this year have made visible a truth we often forget: faith is strengthened when it is shared. As the Jubilee ends, the challenge is to preserve this sense of accompaniment. Hope grows when we walk together, especially with those who struggle to hope on their own.

In a particular way, the Jubilee’s message of hope speaks to the young, the poor, the weary, and those who feel unseen. To them, the Church must not offer abstract optimism, but concrete signs of care: listening ears, open doors, and consistent compassion. Hope becomes credible when it is embodied.

Perhaps the most important question to carry forward is this: what must now be released? Jubilees are about letting go so that something new can emerge. As individuals and as a Church, we are invited to release habits that dull our faith, structures that exclude, and attitudes that harden our hearts. We are invited to trust that God can do more with our openness than we can do with our control.

Jubilee of the Sick and the World of Healthcare (Photo Credit: Internet)

In the end, the Jubilee Year does not truly “end.” Its calendar may close, but its grace continues wherever believers choose mercy over judgment, hope over fear, and love over indifference. Standing at this threshold, we ask not simply to remember what has been celebrated, but to embody it. May we step forward from this Jubilee as a people renewed—not perfect, but more attentive to the God who makes all things new, and more willing to participate in that work, one ordinary day at a time.

As we stand at the close of this Jubilee Year, the temptation may be to treat it as a spiritual high point now receding into memory. Yet the deeper invitation is to allow it to become a beginning. Hope, once awakened, must be practiced. It must shape our prayer, soften our judgments, and enlarge our sense of responsibility for one another.

The Jubilee ends, but its grace remains wherever believers choose trust over fear, mercy over indifference, and faith over resignation. If we leave this Jubilee more attentive to God’s quiet presence in our lives, more patient with the slow work of growth, and more willing to hope on behalf of others, then its purpose has been fulfilled. May we step forward from this sacred year as a people marked by hope—not a hope that ignores the darkness, but one that knows the light has already entered it, and will never be overcome.

*Fr Nihorowa is a regular contributor to The Lamp magazine.