Pope announces Year of Prayer leading up to Jubilee
Pope announces Year of Prayer leading up to Jubilee
24 January 2024
Pope Francis announced the start of a Year of Prayer on Sunday in preparation for the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year. Pope Francis announced the Year of Prayer from the window of the Apostolic Palace after presiding over Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica for the Sunday of the Word of God. The 2025 Jubilee Year begins on December 24 (Christmas Eve) and concludes on January 6, 2026.
In his Angelus address, the pope said that a Year of Prayer starting on Jan. 21 will be “a year dedicated to rediscovering the great value and absolute need for prayer in one’s personal life, in the life of the Church, and in the world.”
“Dear brothers and sisters, the coming months will lead us to the opening of the Holy Door, with which we will begin the jubilee,” Pope Francis said from the window of the Apostolic Palace.
“I ask you to intensify your prayer to prepare us to live this event of grace well and to experience the power of God’s hope. That is why today we begin a Year of Prayer.”
The pope said that the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization will publish resources to help Catholic communities to more fully participate in the Year of Prayer. The Holy See Press Office has also announced that a press conference on the Year of Prayer will take place on Jan. 23.
The Vatican and the city of Rome are expecting an estimated 35 million people to flock to the Eternal City for the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope — the first ordinary jubilee since the Great Jubilee of 2000.
The Holy Doors are a central part of any jubilee. These doors, found at St. Peter’s Basilica and Rome’s other major basilicas, are sealed from the inside and opened during a jubilee year.
The opening of the Holy Door symbolizes the offering of an “extraordinary path” toward salvation for Catholics during a jubilee. Pilgrims who walk through a Holy Door can receive a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions.
In his reflection on Sunday’s Gospel in his Angelus address, Pope Francis said that “the Lord loves to involve us in his work of salvation.”
“Bringing God’s salvation to everyone was for Jesus the greatest joy, his mission, the meaning of his existence … And in every word and deed with which we join with him in the beautiful adventure of giving love, light, and joy multiply not only around us but also within us,” he said.
The Year of Prayer is about preparing the groundwork for the 2025 Holy Year, so it can spiritually enrich the life of the Church and be a sign of hope for the world, the Vatican said yesterday. Source: CNS.
The year 2024 also should be about rebuilding and renewing spiritual pathways and practices so that the spiritual significance of the Jubilee can “emerge more clearly, something which goes far beyond the necessary and urgent forms of structural organisation,” said Archbishop Rino Fisichella, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelisation’s section for new evangelisation, which is coordinating the Holy Year.
The jubilee must be “prepared for and lived in individual communities with that spirit of expectation which is typical of Christian hope,” he said, unveiling several resources the dicastery is providing. It is a time to get back to basics: to discover how to pray and how to educate people in prayer “so that prayer can be effective and fruitful”.
The dicastery will release ideas, suggestions and resources as the year continues, starting with an eight-volume series of booklets titled, "Notes on Prayer," that "delve into the various dimensions of the Christian act of praying.
The Year of Prayer, the Holy Father explained, is dedicated “to rediscovering the great value and absolute need for prayer, prayer in personal life, in the life of the Church, prayer in the world.”
With the Holy Year approaching, pilgrims can learn more about the upcoming Jubilee Year at the Jubilee website www.iubilaeum2025.va
The Year, he said, is "a time to discover how to pray and, above all, how to educate the people of today in prayer, in this age of digital culture, so that prayer can be effective and fruitful."
Prayer cannot be captured in a pre-established pattern, Archbishop Fisichella recognized, "because it is a manifestation of the believer's personal relationship with God Himself within that intimate and exclusive relationship that distinguishes our faith."
The Year of Prayer, he said, "fits into this context as a way of fostering our relationship with the Lord, offering moments of genuine spiritual rest. It is like an oasis sheltered from daily stress where prayer becomes nourishment for the Christian life of faith, hope, and charity."
For this reason, the Dicastery for Evangelisation has prepared a series of materials and prayer aids for the coming months that can constitute a "symphony" of prayer forms that the Christian community and individual believers can use.
As Pope Francis writes in the introduction to the first volume of the "Notes on Prayer" series: "Prayer is the breath of faith; it is its most proper expression. Like a cry that issues from the heart of those who believe and entrust themselves to God."
https://cathnews.com/2024/01/24/year-of-prayer-preparing-the-groundwork-for-jubilee/