Dear Sisters, dear brethren, We are now nearly two months into this year of our Lord 2025, which means that in only one month from now the Holy Year will be a quarter of a year old. Therefore it’s high time for me to say something about the meaning and purpose of the Holy Year. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the Holy Year originates with an ancient custom of the Israelites who celebrated a special year ‘of the Lord’s favour’ once in every fifty years. First of all, why fifty? The number fifty to us means five times ten or half of one hundred; but the Jews considered it in an entirely different way – as forty-nine plus one. But what, I hear you thinking, what on earth can be the significance of forty-nine plus one? Well, you may know that the Jews were the original people to count in sevens. Our seven-day week comes from the Jewish way of counting days. This period of a week corresponds to one phase in the cycle of the moon as seen in the sky at night. The phases of the moon are from new to the first half, when the moon is waxing, then the full moon, then the half-moon when it is waning, before returning to the new moon once more, a cycle of four phases making a month in the Jewish calendar.
In the account of creation at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, we are told that God created the whole world in six days and then rested on the seventh in order to take His delight in His work, thus giving us our seven-day week. The number seven therefore represented the fullness of time, because it contained within itself the complete days of one week. This meant that seven plus one, which is eight, came to mean something quite mystical to the Jews. It represented to them ‘fullness plus’ – superabundant fullness. So the most important religious ceremonies were celebrated over a period of eight days, or an ‘octave’, a custom which we also observe in celebration of the greatest feasts of the religious calendar, Easter and Christmas, which consist of eight days of continuous celebration continuing from the first day. This is ‘completeness plus’.
Now think of Eastertide, the greatest season of the year, (into the preparatory period of which we are soon to enter in just over a week from now). Eastertide lasts for seven weeks, each week being seven days long. Seven times seven gives us forty-nine, which you can think of as completion multiplied by itself. That is almost the length of Eastertide, but not quite! Because there is yet another day beyond the forty-nine days of those seven weeks. What is one day beyond forty-nine? Fifty! The Greek word for ‘fiftieth’ is ‘Pentecost’! So Pentecost represents completion multiplied by itself and then some more! It is the super-superabundance of time! It is time flowing into eternity!
Well, the Jews didn’t only observe days and weeks in sevens, but also years. At the end of six years the seven was called the sabbatical year. And even in secular circles this idea is still found, when people take time away from their duties, like the ‘sabbath day’ in a week. However, a sabbatical is not usually given every seven years; that would be a lot of free time! Still, if you take seven years and multiply them by seven you get, yes you’ve got it, forty-nine years, the fullness of the fullness of time. Hence, the forty-ninth year plus one is the super-abundance of the fullness of time, the fiftieth year, and this is what the Jews came to call the ‘year of the Lord’s favour’. I spoke briefly about this a few weeks ago when our Lord quoted the passage in Isaiah where ‘the year of the Lord’s favour’ is mentioned. But the year of the Lord’s favour didn’t simply happen by rote, so to speak, it had to be ‘proclaimed’. This is what our Lord said He had come to do, and His whole public ministry was just such a proclamation. But I am running on too quickly. How was this ‘proclamation’ of the fiftieth year made? The Jewish religious festivals began with the appearance of the moon according to its phases, usually either the new moon or the full moon. The signal that the moon could now be seen, and therefore the festival could begin, was the sounding of the trumpet. Psalm 80 tells of this custom: ‘Blow the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed on the solemn feast day.’
This was also the manner in which the fiftieth year, the year of the Lord’s favour, was proclaimed: by the sounding of the trumpet. Now the Hebrew name for this trumpet was ‘yobel’, and from it comes the word ‘jubilee’. So the original ‘jubilee’ was the fiftieth year from a beginning. In the case of the year of the Lord’s favour this was fifty years since the last such year. So the custom was that a jubilee year was celebrated solemnly every fiftieth year. We still observe the same custom in celebrating fiftieth years as jubilees of marriage, of religious profession and of ordination.
But now I must say a few words about what kind of year the Old Testament jubilee year was. The custom, solemnly laid down, was that during this year all injustices were to be righted. All slaves and prisoners were to be freed. All land or property which had been stolen or alienated was to be returned to its rightful owners. Debts were cancelled. Buying and selling was strictly controlled so that no one charged too much. It was a time of grace and forgiveness of all debts, including those of sin by which charity had been wounded. Quarrels were mended, enemies reconciled. The people and the land rested, work was kept to a minimum, much as happened on the Sabbath Day in each week. So this was the ‘Year of the Lord’s favour’, proclaimed every fiftieth year. The instructions are found in the Book of Leviticus chapter 25, in a passage which ends with these words: ‘You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the Lord your God.’ Thus, it brought about the restoration of God’s order, which man’s malice and sinfulness had disturbed and disordered. Now God was decreeing the return of good order and justice.
So we come to the Jubilee years of the Christian era. It may interest you to learn that this practise is not all that ancient in the Church. It was not until the year 1300 that a Pope was persuaded by the prayers of the faithful to celebrate a year of Grace, a year during which extra-ordinary means of grace were to be offered to those who sought them with prayerful humility, especially by undertaking a pilgrimage to Rome. This was no easy task in the Middle Ages, as a pilgrim had to endure many hardships in order to qualify for the kind of graces that were offered by the Pope. These typically involved the granting of a special indulgence in order to take away such punishment as was due to anyone for their past sins, including sins forgiven in the sacrament of Penance. For everyone has to make satisfaction, to make retribution to God whose justice is offended by sin and who, though always abounding in mercy, will only grant such cancellation of the debt of sin to those who show themselves willing to receive it by acts of self-discipline and restoration of what has been done amiss. In this way the new Christian ‘jubilee’, also called a ‘Holy Year’ on account of the special graces imparted during it, was similar to the old Testament jubilee. But whereas the old jubilee was concerned primarily with human restoration of justice, the Christian jubilee was principally concerned with the outpouring of extra graces and imparting gifts of holiness.
So the practice of the Holy Year began to take its present shape: a pilgrimage to Rome to gain the indulgences and graces which were offered to the penitent Christian in greater abundance than in usual times. Gradually the conditions for gaining the indulgences of the Holy Year were broadened to enable more people to enjoy them. The jubilee was held not just every fifty years, but every twenty-five years so that fewer people missed them. Moreover, the indulgence came to be gained not only by going on pilgrimage to Rome, but could be gained by pilgrimage to other places nearer home which were designated by the Pope and bishops. In this way the Church wished that more and more people should have the opportunity to gain this indulgence in more and more ways.
Next week, the last Sunday before Lent, I will continue with an explanation of the character, purpose and method of the Holy Year and how we can benefit more fully from it during this Holy Year of 2025.
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