With the opening of the last Holy Door, that of the Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls by Cardinal Archpriest James Michael Harvey on Sunday, January 5, it can be said that the Holy Year 2025 has definitively begun worldwide.
– Supernatural first Holy Door The first door to be opened, as will be recalled, was that of St. Peter's Basilica on the night of December 24 by Pope Francis. Two days later, on the feast of St. Stephen, the Pontiff also wanted to exceptionally open a Holy Door in the Rebibbia prison in Rome, as a gesture of closeness to all those serving prison sentences.
On December 29, coinciding with the opening of the Holy Door of the Papal Basilica of St. John Lateran by the Cardinal Vicar for the Diocese of Rome, Baldassarre Reina, it was the turn of the bishops of the various dioceses and ecclesiastical circumscriptions to begin the Jubilee Year in their respective Cathedrals and Co-Cathedrals. On January 1, the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, the Holy Door of the Basilica of St. Mary Major, where the icon of the "Salus Populi Romani", so dear to the reigning Pontiff, is venerated, was opened by Cardinal Archpriest coadjutor Rolandas Makrickas.
Third Jubilee of the new millennium
With this year's Jubilee, we find ourselves in the third Jubilee to be celebrated in the new millennium, after the Great Jubilee of the year 2000 willed by St. John Paul II, and the Extraordinary Holy Year dedicated to Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis on March 13, 2015. As the Holy Father himself reminded us in the Call notice of the current Jubilee, "Spes non confundit", we find ourselves before "events of grace" that are essentially born to offer "the living experience of God's love". Moreover, this year's Jubilee is already looking ahead to the next "fundamental anniversary for all Christians," 2033, when the two thousandth anniversary of the Redemption accomplished by Jesus through his passion, death and resurrection will be celebrated.
Looking back at these recent "great stages" in the People of God's journey of faith, we will review the central messages that the last two Popes who proclaimed a Holy Year - Poland's Wojtyla and Argentina's Bergoglio - addressed to the Church on the occasion of the opening of the Holy Doors, drawing inspiration from the homilies of the Masses that began each Jubilee.
Mystery and unique event
We recall the Great Event of the year 2000, when the world, and with it the Church, crossed the threshold of the Third Millennium. John Paul II opened the Holy Door on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1999, and in his homily emphasized how the birth of the only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, a unique and unrepeatable mystery and event, had changed "in an ineffable way the course of human events".
This was, for the Polish Pope, the truth that had to be transmitted to the third millennium, together with the awareness "that God became Man", "to make man a sharer in his divine nature".
On that same night, some key words resounded that even today, twenty-five years later, are all too familiar and contemporary: "You are our hope", "that no one may be excluded from his [the Father's] embrace of mercy and peace".
For this reason, "at the feet of the Incarnate Word we place our joys and apprehensions, tears and hopes", in the certainty that "only in Christ, the new man, does the mystery of the human being find true light".
Artisans of forgiveness, experts in mercy
For the 2015 Jubilee Pope Francis made a first exception, opening the Holy Door in the Cathedral of Bangui, geographical and existential periphery of the Central African Republic, on November 29, at the end of his Apostolic Journey that had also taken him to Kenya and Uganda.
Before making the singular gesture in anticipation of the Holy Year of Mercy - initially set for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8 - the Holy Father compared that place to a "spiritual capital of prayer for the Father's mercy", and called for gestures of reconciliation, forgiveness, love and peace, also for all those countries "suffering from war".
Then, in his homily, he referred to the construction of a "Church-Family of God, open to all, which cares for those most in need. In a spirit of communion, thanks to which all become "artisans of forgiveness, specialists in reconciliation, experts in mercy".
Finally, he appealed "to all those who unjustly use the weapons of this world": "lay down those instruments of death; arm yourselves instead with justice, love and mercy, authentic guarantees of peace".
Hope, gift and promise of welcome
A few days ago, the new Jubilee began with the opening of the first Holy Door at St. Peter's. In his homily, Pope Francis emphasized - as his predecessor Wojtyla had done twenty-five years earlier - the good news of a God who "has become one of us to make us like him," shining through the darkness of the world.
All this proves that "hope is not dead, hope is alive and envelops our lives forever! Hope does not disappoint. A gift and a promise to be welcomed and anticipated, setting out "with the wonder of the shepherds of Bethlehem", without delay, mediocrity, laziness or false prudence.
A great responsibility, in short, "to rediscover lost hope, to renew it in us, to sow it in the desolations of our time and our world".
