The Catholic News Agency reports that Pope Francis today declared a Year of Jubilee focused on mercy:
“Dear brothers and sisters, I have thought about how the Church can make clear its mission of being a witness of mercy,” the Pope told attendees of his March 13 penitential liturgy in St. Peter’s Basilica.
“It’s a journey that starts with a spiritual conversion. For this reason I have decided to declare an Extraordinary Jubilee that has the mercy of God at its center. It will be a Holy Year of Mercy…
“I am convinced that the whole Church will be able to find in this Jubilee the joy of rediscovering and making fruitful the mercy of God, with which we are all called to give consolation to every man and every woman of our time,” Francis said, and entrusted the Holy Year to Mary, Mother of Mercy.
The scripture connected with the year is Luke 6:36, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
The Jubilee, also called a Holy Year, will open this year on Dec. 8 – the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception – and will close Nov. 20, 2016 with the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.
The Pope is celebrating the second anniversary of his “unexpected” election, as National Public Radio describes it in a report on his interview on Mexican television earlier the same day.
Remembering the week that he was named pope, Francis said he had packed only a small suitcase for his trip to the Vatican, and he had already written a homily to deliver on Palm Sunday, after returning to Argentina.
In the same interview, the Pope expressed his expectation for a short pontificate – “four or five years, or two or three.”
The Vatican Insider explains the concept of a Jubilee Year, most recently celebrated by John Paul II and, before him, Pius XI:
The word “Jubilee” comes from the Hebrew “Yobel” meaning “billy goat”, in reference to the ram’s horn used in religious celebrations. The Jubilee is the year of the remission of sins and of suffering from sin, of reconciliation, of conversion and of sacramental penance. 365 days of solidarity, hope, justice and commitment to serving God in the spirit of joy and peace with everyone. Above all, however, the Jubilee Year is the year of Christ, the giver of life and of grace to humanity.
It is called “Holy Year” because it is celebrated with sacred rites and also because its mission is the holiness of human life.
It has been 15 years since the last Jubilee Year was declared:
The last Ordinary Holy Year, the year 2000, declared by John Paul II, was especially important because it celebrated the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Christ (apart from differences of exact chronological count). What is more, it will be the first Holy Year which marks the turn of a millennium: the earliest Jubilee was proclaimed by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300.
Boniface VIII had intended for a Jubilee to be held each century. As of 1475 – in order to give every generation the chance to experience at least one Holy Year – the Ordinary Jubilee was celebrated every 25 years.
Posted by Cara Ellen Modisett
Photo by Alfredo Borba, Wikimedia Commons
All Content © 2017 Episcopal Café
It would be a nice beginning if there were NO executions during this Year of Mercy. I hope the Pope will make a serious, public, SPECIFIC effort to try to make this happen. [Yeah, I don’t expect ISIS will be moved. But a *chance* with all other governments.]
I don’t find “no mercy without justice” in scripture. It’s a rough paraphrase of Thomas Aquinas. Classic and traditional Anglicanism seems to suggest mercy is ultimate and trumps justice (which should, I agree, mean something more robust than cover-up or forgive and forget. Here’s witness from the Prayer Book, Desmond Tutu, and William Shakespeare:
“…thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.” 1549 BCP and those that follow.
“No future without forgiveness” (Desmond Tutu’s book title and description of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission)
HAMLET, Act II, Scene 2
(Hamlet to POLONIUS) Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.
POLONIUS
My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
HAMLET
God’s bodykins, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.
The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I
The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: ‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown: His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much To mitigate the justice of thy plea; Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.
There is no mercy without justice. Let’s start with some towards hierarchy complicit in sexual abuse shenanigans!!