As many of you are aware, 2025 is a Jubilee year in the Church, and the theme for the year is “Pilgrims of Hope”. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Jubilee year, there are lots of great resources at the U.S. Bishops’ website,
https://www.usccb.org/jubilee2025.) Our Holy Father is calling on all Catholics to be signs of hope in an alienated world. It’s not hard to look at the world around us and see plenty of reasons to despair, but as Christians, we never have any reason to lose hope, especially in the darkest times. As Pope Francis writes in the Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee Year, “Hope is born of love and based on the love springing from the pierced heart of Jesus upon the cross: ‘For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life’ (Rom 5:19). That life becomes manifest in our own life of faith, which begins with Baptism, develops in openness to God’s grace and is enlivened by a hope constantly renewed and confirmed by the working of the Holy Spirit.”
As we try to reconcile the brokenness of our world with the steadfast hope that all Christians are called to possess, one reflection I find helpful comes from the Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross (which basically serves as the rule of life for Holy Cross priests and brothers). The last Constitution is called “The Cross, Our Hope”, taken from our congregational motto, Ave Crux, Spes Unica “hail the Cross, our only hope”;
https://holycrosscongregation.org/holy-cross-resources/constitutions/8-the-cross-our-only-hope/). Perhaps this may offer you something to take to prayer during this Jubilee Year of Hope.
112. “The Lord Jesus loved us and gave up His life for us. Few of us will be called to die the way He died. Yet all of us must lay down our lives with Him and for Him. If we would be faithful to the gospel we must take up our cross daily and follow Him”.
113. The cross was constantly before the eyes of Basil Moreau, whose motto for his congregation was Spes Unica. The cross was to be “Our Only Hope.”
114. Jesus entered into the pain and death that sin inflicts. He accepted the torment but gave us joy in return. We whom He has sent to minister amid the same sin and pain must know that we too shall find the cross and the hope it promises. The face of every human being who suffers is for us the face of Jesus who mounted the cross to take the sting out of death. Ours must be the same cross and the same hope…
118. But we do not grieve as men without hope, for Christ the Lord has risen to die no more. He has taken us into the mystery and the grace of this life that springs up from death. If we, like Him, encounter and accept suffering in our discipleship, we will move without awkwardness among others who suffer. We must be men with hope to bring. There is no failure the Lord’s love cannot reverse, no humiliation He cannot exchange for blessing, no anger He cannot dissolve, no routine He cannot transfigure. All is swallowed up in victory. He has nothing but gifts to offer. It remains only for us to find how even the cross can be borne as a gift”.
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