Why does the Church celebrate Jubilee years?
The concept comes from the Old Testament, marking the completion of seven cycles of sabbath years, a time of rest given to the land every seven years. In the fiftieth year, not just the land but all of society would experience liberation and rest, marking a renewal of the freedom God gave his people in bringing them out of the slavery of Egypt.
John Bergsma explains the importance of the biblical Jubilee in his book, Jesus and the Jubilee: The Biblical Roots of the Year of God’s Favor (Emmaus Road, 2025):
God established this year of jubilee — a year in which God redeemed, released, returned and granted rest to his people — as a great year of favor wherein all people enjoyed not just forgiveness but the other great goods of freedom, family and fullness. These were the gifts God so desired to pour out on Adam and Eve and every subsequent generation. Every fifty years, the jubilee was celebrated as the people of Israel basked in the bountiful mercy of God. Every jubilee wiped the slate clean to bring God’s children back in line with his original design (4).
This awesome, even if rarely practiced, gift from God served as a reminder of God’s ultimate plan for the renewal and perfection of creation, free from the oppression and domination of evil.
But that doesn’t answer the original question of why the Catholic Church has adopted the practice of celebrating an Ordinary Jubilee Year every twenty-five years.
The story begins with the controversial and tragic Pope Boniface VIII, of Unam Sanctam fame, who sought to draw pilgrims to Rome by offering a rarity at the time, a plenary indulgence, the full remission of the temporal punishment due to forgiven sin, essentially remitting the need for reparation in purgatory. The year 1300 marked an enormously successful beginning to this pilgrim experience of grace and mercy, setting up a tradition that would vary in frequency but would eventually come every quarter of a century to give each generation of adults a chance to participate.
This Jubilee revival reveals something essential about the Church’s mission. Building upon the prophecy of Isaiah, which he read in Nazareth’s synagogue, Jesus proclaimed his own ministry to be the fulfillment of the Jubilee, initiating a new means of receiving its promise of liberation and restoration through his Church.
The very nature of the Christian life is to live within this promise of mercy and to share it with others. It’s something we need constantly to remember and, if necessary, to rediscover.
This is why the celebration of the Jubilee offers a deep spiritual promise for those who embrace its purpose through conversion and renewal. Bergsma explains the opportunity it offers:
The joy of the jubilee is on offer to us. Undoubtedly, we are in need of its power. Most of us have never served a prison sentence or toiled as indentured servants, but we have all experienced slavery to sin. And we’re all witnesses to the injustices and divisions that dominate our newsfeeds and public discourse. The cycles of sin, oppression, infidelity and ambivalence that the Israelites found themselves entrenched in bear striking resemblance to the societal ills of today. We are in constant need of the jubilee and all that it brings (6).
The Jubilee year may seem, on the surface, only an excuse for a spiritual vacation to Rome. Pilgrimages, of course, can lead us out of our ordinary routines to experience conversion more deeply, but it’s not the travel that per se makes the Jubilee. Taking up the entire biblical and ecclesial tradition, the Jubilee calls us to reconciliation with God and neighbor. Leaving home to visit a holy site can mark a new beginning, leaving behind old ways of thinking and living to return with a resolution to remain in prayer and engage in works of mercy. But more than an enjoyable experience of faith, a Jubilee pilgrimage should capture the radicality of the original, moving us to forgive others, renew our family life and community, and restore what sin has broken.
In order to bring inner restoration beyond the pilgrimage experience, the Church now offers the Jubilee’s plenary indulgence for engaging in acts of mercy and penance.
The Decree on this year’s indulgence exhorts us to perform acts that “bear witness to the conversion undertaken. The faithful, following the example and mandate of Christ, are encouraged to carry out works of charity or mercy more frequently, especially in the service of those brothers and sisters who are burdened by various needs. More especially, they should rediscover” both the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, which lead us into the heart of the Jubilee by experiencing and sharing God’s mercy.
In addition, we can experience inner renewal from cultural forces that oppress us by “abstaining, in a spirit of penance, at least for one day of the week from futile distractions (real but also virtual distractions, for example, the use of the media and/or social networks), from superfluous consumption.” This extension reminds us of how much we still need the liberation the Jubilee offers.
Rather than taking away from the significance of pilgrimage, these acts can give shape to the experience of the Jubilee Year as a whole, guiding us to experience its promise of mercy and freedom and to share them with others. As moments of renewal, they can bring us back to the centrality of our faith: that Jesus has come to set us free and to bring us into the perfect rest of his communion with the Father.
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Staud alludes to “the controversial the tragic Pope Boniface VIII, of Unam Sanctam fame”…
“Unum Sanctum”: the 14th-century Bull (1302 A.D.) asserting church membership as totally necessary for salvation, AND asserting the supremacy of the papacy in all things both ecclesial and secular. This, after the Church had finally re-established its own internal responsibility in things ecclesial, after the Investiture Controversy (11th and early 12th centuries) of two centuries earlier.
TODAY, a moment to remember, if only recent “synodality” had been handled with greater clarity, and less as the opposite abuse from Unum Sanctum.
About the rebranded “Ecclesial Assembly” of 2028—decades ago, Benedict XVI used this possible corrective term when he reflected on the loss of the “ecclesial assembly”—or communio— during the Middle Ages. The restoration of the sacramentally ordained priest as more than a seeming “cult-minister”, but as a bearer of sacramentality through Holy Orders, also led to an unfortunate separation of the laity from the clergy—the loss of communio—”the problem of the laity, which arose at this time and still haunts us today.” The “original meaning of the word ‘ecclesia’—that is, a ‘coming together’.” (“Successio Apostolica,” as Chapter 2 in Ratzinger, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” Ignatius, 1982/Ignatius 1987).
IF the Ecclesial Assembly of 2028 were to be decidedly NOT a misshapen “synod,” but rather a more restored ecclesial assembly or simply “coming together”—in line with the clearly distinct presentations of “Lumen Gentium” and of “Gaudium et spes” by the Second Vatican Council…THEN some historic good could come out of the evil of recent disruptions and deconstructions…
…the Eucharistic Church need NOT remain mutilated as more of a town-hall meeting with bishops (Successors of the Apostles “sent” by Christ) now as functionaries like any other speaker at a roundtable, or mic, or pulpit in a protestant congregation (“primarily as facilitators”—wording in the synodal vademecum for local dioceses). And, the “hot button issues,” segregated from the Synod on Synodality (say what?) into “expert” Study Groups, might go either to a real synod-of-bishops, or else silently into the night. Adults in the Catholic Church might still ensure that the “hierarchical communion” (Lumen Gentium), within the “universal call to holiness,” yes, listens more, as in more parish or pastoral councils, but does NOT obscure the Deposit of Faith nor cancel the distinctive role of ecclesial Holy Orders—which “differs in kind as well as degree” from the equally distinctive role of the laity in the secular domain.
SUMMARY: signaled in this Jubilee Year, the post-synodal and potentially reformed (?)“Ecclesial Assembly” need NOT subliminally displace the institutional/personal responsibilities of individual bishops: “Apostolos Suos” (On the Theological and Juridical Nature of Episcopal Conferences, May 21, 1998): https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/motu_proprio/documents/hf_jp-ii_motu-proprio_22071998_apostolos-suos.html