“New year, new me.” I confess that I have a back-and-forth relationship with this phrase. In principle, I like it. It’s filled with hope, conviction, and a deep desire for growth. But I often hear people use this phrase sarcastically, with an accent of half-heartedness and discouragement. It’s as if the phrase is too grand or an ideal too impossible to be true.
I find the weeks around any new year have a particular aura to them. We are almost instinctively thrust into deep thoughts and reflection. We spend time thinking and praying about where we’ve been and where we’ve come. We retrace our steps and begin casting our sights ahead. Many of us feel moved to make changes, create resolutions, go on diets, exercise healthier habits, pray more often, etc. Renewed, the New Year is the much-needed “reset” we’ve been looking for.
But the honeymoon ends. The same old problems arise, and our motivation dies out. Before we can make any progress, we’re engulfed once again by the rip current of daily life. The anxieties and challenges we face come back to haunt us as if they never left, drowning our hope in despair and disappointment. The life we’re longing for seems too good to be true, and the story repeats itself in the same disappointing way as always.
Many of us live this out year after year. But what if, this year, the script could finally be rewritten? What if I said there is a reason to hope? Let me tell you a different story.
The Jubilee Year
The Jubilee Year is an ancient biblical tradition that proclaimed a year of great rest, celebration, and abundance for the whole Earth and its people (see Leviticus 25). Every fifty years, the Israelites would commemorate God’s wonderful act of creation. They recalled how God, after giving birth to a world filled with beauty and love, rested on the seventh day of Creation. God looked over all the Earth, found it “very good,” and rejoiced in admiration and joy. We know that the Jewish people mimicked this divine “day of rest” by developing a weekly celebration of the Sabbath. But the Jubilee Year was different. It was no ordinary once-a-week Sabbath but a whole year of Sabbaths.
The Israelites awaited the Jubilee Year with great expectation. When the Jubilee came, a special horn resounded throughout the whole land. When the people heard it, they knew it was time to rest. Captives were set free, debts forgiven, and lands restored. This was the Jubilee: a glorious celebration uniting all peoples in the joy of belonging to a merciful, loving, and faithful God who gives rest and restoration.
But the Jubilee Year would end, and life would go back to normal. Yet, the people held onto the hope of the coming Messiah, who was prophesied to declare not just a Jubilee Year but a Jubilee eternity. Not knowing when the day would come, they held onto hope until finally, in the strangest and most unexpected way, it arrived.
At the beginning of his public life in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus comes home to Nazareth and finds himself in the Temple on the Sabbath. Invited to read from the scriptures before all present, he’s handed a scroll, instructed to choose a passage, and decides to read this:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Isaiah 61)
To all in that synagogue, this reading was familiar. This was the Messianic prophecy foretold in Isaiah about the Jubilee. So, of all the passages Jesus could have chosen, why choose this one? Once finished reading, he rolled up the scroll and sat down. Without a word being said, all eyes were on him, everyone waiting to be relieved of their suspicions. The silence finally breaks, and Jesus declares, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, “I am the Jubilee!”
The long-awaited Messiah had arrived. The eternal Jubilee was here. The story was forever changed.
The Invitation: Renewed in Hope
Since the fulfillment of that prophecy all those years ago, the Church has had a long-standing tradition of declaring a “Jubilee Year” about every 25 years to spark renewal in the hearts of all, reminding us that we are a Jubilee people. This year, Pope Francis and the Church have announced 2025 a Jubilee Year of hope. It is an opportunity to reclaim our identities as God’s chosen people and make the Jubilee story your own. But why should you?
If one sentence were to summarize the invitation of the Jubilee Year, it would be this: “May the Jubilee be a moment of genuine, personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, the ‘door’ of our salvation, whom the Church is charged to proclaim always, everywhere and to all as ‘our hope.’” (SNC 1) In other words, we are being invited to a renewal of “hope.” – a hope that emerges from the life-changing encounter with the one our hearts most long for, Jesus.
But let’s face it: hope is hard. We look at the world around us, and we see war, poverty, division, injustice, brokenness, hatred. We look at our own lives and find suffering, anxiety, confusion, and fear. It’s not always easy to feel Jesus near or see his love at work in the world. It’s often easier to throw in the towel and give up on hope, settling for something we think might satisfy: work, money, status, success, pleasure…
But as Christians, we know there’s more to life than this. Pope Francis reminds us that “Christian hope does not deceive or disappoint because it is grounded in the certainty that nothing and no one may ever separate us from God’s love.” (SNC 3) Nothing…no one…may ever separate us from the love of God. We have reason to hope, and that reason has a name. Jesus is the reason for our hope. Despite what might be surrounding us, He is the rest for the weary, the liberty to the captives, the healing for the sick. He seeks us out, meets us where we’re at, and sets us free saying, “Come to me, all who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”
This is the good news of the Jubilee Year! It’s the good news that Jesus is the Jubilee. It’s the good news that he wants to enter into those places of pain within us and bring restoration, crying out, “Come home! Be healed! You are mine!” Encountering this truth of our belovedness, we are renewed with a “hope that does not disappoint.” (Rom 5:5). This hope strengthens us with the courage to stand before fear’s face and cry out, “You have no power over me!” Empowered by hope, we confront the injustice, poverty, war, hatred, and emptiness reigning in the world and our hearts shouting out, “This is not our story!”
It’s Time to Come Home
Like our ancestors from long ago, we have an invitation to rejoice in the hope and freedom of the Jubilee Year! It’s time for us to come home. It’s to reclaim our story. God awaits us with open arms, ready to embrace and fill us in the ways we need. Are you ready to “fling open” the doors of your heart and let God in? I invite you to spend some time in prayer reflecting on what that would mean for you:
What do you need to be set free from?
Where do you need to come back home and truly rest?
How do you need to be renewed in hope?
Who can you proclaim Jubilee hope to?
May these questions be a guide for us. Remember, the Jubilee Year is about journeying home. We journey as “pilgrims” longing for renewed freedom, purpose, and, most especially, hope. As pilgrims, we walk together. Filled with its highs and lows, twists and turns, excitements and disappointments, we embrace the wonderful adventure that is our life in Christ. “Arriving” isn’t what’s important; the journey itself is. So, if you haven’t quite “made it,” welcome to the club. What matters is we have a God who did make it…and who wants to make the Jubilee your story. What if this year, you finally let it be?
Whoever you are. Wherever you are. It’s time to come home–It’s time for Jubilee!