Pope Francis' Jubilee Prayer seems an appropriate way to mark the forthcoming Jubilee 2025 in an everyday way. A particular phrase of that prayer is perhaps relevant to the early part of the Advent season, when the liturgy encourages us to look towards the Second Coming of Christ.
May the grace of the Jubilee awaken in us, Pilgrims of Hope, a yearning for the treasures of heaven.
A paragraph from the Bull of Indiction (n.20) echoes this phrase, suggesting that an appreciation of the gift of Baptism opens to us a perspective towards eternal life:
The reality of death, as a painful separation from those dearest to us, cannot be mitigated by empty rhetoric. The Jubilee, however, offers us the opportunity to appreciate anew, and with immense gratitude, the gift of the new life that we have received in Baptism, a life capable of transfiguring death’s drama. It is worth reflecting, in the context of the Jubilee, on how that mystery has been understood from the earliest centuries of the Church’s life. An example would be the tradition of building baptismal fonts in the shape of an octagon, as seen in many ancient baptisteries, like that of Saint John Lateran in Rome. This was intended to symbolize that Baptism is the dawn of the “eighth day”, the day of the resurrection, a day that transcends the normal, weekly passage of time, opening it to the dimension of eternity and to life everlasting: the goal to which we tend on our earthly pilgrimage (cf. Rom 6:22).
According to the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n.387):
Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire and await from God eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit to merit it and to persevere to the end of our earthly life.
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