Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP opened the Ordinary Jubilee Year of Hope for the church in Sydney with Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral on the 29 December feast of the Holy Family.
It followed the launch of the Jubilee by Pope Francis in Rome on Christmas Eve. Beginning in the cathedral crypt, the archbishop said the ancient rite to launch the year was a “prelude to a rich experience of grace and mercy.”
“We are always ready to respond to whoever asks for the reason for the hope that lives in us, especially in this time of war and disorder,” he said.
“May Christ, our peace and our hope, be our companion on the journey is this year of grace and consolation. May the Holy Spirit who today begins this work both in us and through us, bring it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ.”
The archbishop then proceeded into the cathedral for Mass, symbolising the journey of hope that all the faithful will take part in this year.
In his homily, Archbishop Fisher referred to the Pope’s intentions for the jubilee year, expressed in his Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025 which reminds Christians of the centrality of hope in Christian life.
“It is this sustaining hope, envisioning glory to come, that allows us to continue amidst the sin and cruelty that darken our age and sometimes our own relationships closer to home,” the archbishop said.
“It empowers us to bear fruit as peacemakers, life givers, lovers of the poor, sick and suffering, protectors of the vulnerable unborn, elderly or persecuted.
“In attending to them with those acts of love commended in our epistle (1Jn 3:1-2,21-24), we become, the Holy Father notes, “tangible signs of hope for our brothers and sisters”.
“As we embark on a year of pilgrimage in hope, we ask that, like Jesus, we might “increase in wisdom, in stature and in favour with God and men” (Lk 2:52).
The church celebrates a jubilee year every 25 years, when people are encouraged to make a pilgrimage to Rome or to dedicated local churches, pray and approach the sacrament of reconciliation.
Pope Francis proclaimed an extraordinary jubilee year of mercy in 2015 to encourage all to know the “merciful face of God.” This year he has also invited the faithful of the Eastern churches, especially those already in full communion with the Roman church, to take part in a pilgrimage to Vatican city.
The Jubilee year will conclude in Sydney and the other particular churches on 28 December 2025, and in Rome with the closing of the Holy Door in St Peter’s Basilica on 6 January 2026, the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord.