Jubilee 2025: Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

 In the decree that promulgated the texts for the votive Mass for the Care of Creation, we find the following paragraph:

The mystery of creation is the beginning of salvation history, which culminates in Christ and from the mystery of Christ it receives definitive light; in fact, by manifesting His goodness, “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1,1) God already from these origins had in mind the glory of the new creation in Christ.

This Christological orientation is reflected in the texts themselves, which can be downloaded from the website of the Catholic Bishops Conference: Mass for Care of Creation. The Prayer after Communion reflects the theme of hope of the Jubilee Year:

May the sacrament of unity which we have received, O Father, increase communion with you and with our brothers and sisters, so that, as we await the new heaven and the new earth, we may learn to live in harmony with all creatures. 

 It is reflected in the choice of the New Testament reading from Colossians 1:15-20:

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities - all things were created through him and for him.

The Jubilee Prayer prompts a reading of St Paul's words in the Letter to the Romans:

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

The "new creation in Christ" embraces both the new creation of men and women and the glory of the created world in which they live. As such, it needs to be distinguished from an environmentalism that does not take account of this full reality of our world and therefore becomes, to a greater or lesser extent, an ideology.

A Man for All Seasons

 I had a "birthday treat" opportunity to see the production of Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons at the Harold Pinter Theatre last week. The stage set and costumes were very much true to the Tudor setting of the play, and the dialogue was very faithful to the published text of the play. 

Since seeing the play I have read again the Preface written by Robert Bolt for a 1961 publication of the play. In that Preface, Robert Bolt offers an "explanation and apology for treating Thomas More, a Christian saint, as a hero of selfhood."

... Thomas More, as I wrote about him, became for me a man with an adamantine sense of his own self. He knew where he began and left off, what area of himself he could yield to the encroachment of his enemies, and what to the encroachments of those he loved. It was a substantial area in both cases for he had a proper sense of fear and was a busy lover. Since he was a clever man and a great lawyer he was able to retire from those areas in a wonderfully good order, but at length he was asked to retreat from that final area where he located his self. And there this supple, humorous, unassuming and sophisticated person set like metal, was overtaken by an absolutely primitive rigour, and could no more be budged than a cliff.

The other aspect of Thomas More that was attractive to Robert Bolt was what he termed "his splendid social adjustment". After briefly surveying the range of Thomas More's social and political life, Bolt observes:

He parted with more than most men when he parted with his life, for he accepted and enjoyed his social context.... But why did a man so utterly absorbed in his society, at one particular point disastrously part company from it?

For a Catholic, the explanation can readily be seen in Thomas More's faithfulness to the universal Christian Church. But for Bolt, writing his play, that Christian faith can only be a metaphor representing a larger context into which a man can be excluded when he no longer enjoys the regard of society. 

More's trust in the law was his trust in his society; his desperate sheltering beneath the forms of the law was his determination to remain within the shelter of society. Cromwell's contemptuous shattering of the forms of law  by an unconcealed act of perjury showed how fragile for any individual is that shelter. Legal or illegal had no further meaning, the social references had been removed.

 I was interested to see that the revived production currently running in London (until early September) did leave the play in the original historical setting of its narrative. But it is interesting to ask how it might have been translated into a contemporary narrative. Where today would Robert Bolt be able to find a leading character who combines the selfhood amidst the ebbs and flows of a society that he discovered in Thomas More?

Witnesses to that hope which urges us toward the good things yet to come

Pope Leo XIV met on 23 August 2025 with members of four female religious institutes with dedications to the Holy Family and to the home of the Holy Family in Nazareth. The four congregations were marking their General Chapters, and this was the occasion for their meeting with Pope Leo. 

You are holding your assemblies during this year, the Jubilee of Hope. This hope, as Saint Paul says, does not disappoint; it is the fruit of proven virtue and is animated by the love of God poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom 5:5). These words aptly describe the richness you bring here today, in this hall. You bring the charismatic gift that the Paraclete once bestowed upon your Foundresses and Founders, a gift that continues to be renewed. You bring the faithful and providential presence of the Lord in the histories of your Institutes. You bring the virtue with which those who came before you — often enduring severe trials — responded to God’s gifts. All this makes you, in a special way, witnesses of hope, especially of that hope which constantly urges us toward the good things yet to come, and of which, as religious, you are called to be a sign and a prophecy (cf. Phil 3:13–14; Lumen Gentium, 44).

 Pope Leo went on to refer to the work that many in these four institutes have carried out in favour of the family:

... there is an aspect that unites many of you: the desire to live and to transmit to others the values of the Holy Family of Nazareth, the hearth of prayer, forge of love and model of holiness. I would like to reflect for a moment on this point.

Saint Paul VI, during his journey to the Holy Land, speaking to the faithful in the Basilica of the Annunciation, expressed the hope that, by looking to Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we might come to understand ever more deeply the importance of the family: its communion of love, its simple and austere beauty, its sacred and inviolable character, its gentle pedagogy and its natural and irreplaceable role in society (cf. Address at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, 5 January 1964).

 

Mary: " ... sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim people of God"

 Pope Leo XIV, in his Angelus address for the Solemnity of the Assumption, suggests that this truth of our faith is perfectly in line with the theme of the Jubilee 2025.

Mary, who the risen Christ carried body and soul into the glory, shines as an icon of hope for her pilgrim children throughout history.

How can we not think of Dante’s verses in the last canto of the Paradiso? Through the prayer put on Saint Bernard’s lips, which begins “Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son” (XXXIII, 1), the poet lauds Mary because here among us mortals she is “the living fountain-head of hope” (ibid., 12), that is the living spring, gushing with hope.

Sisters and brothers, this truth of our faith is perfectly in line with the theme of the present Jubilee: “Pilgrims of hope.” Pilgrims need a goal that orients their journey: a beautiful and attractive goal that guides their steps and revives them when they are tired, that always rekindles in their heart a desire and hope. On the path of life, our goal is God, infinite and eternal Love, fullness of life, peace, joy and every good thing. The human heart is drawn to such beauty and it is not happy until it finds it; and indeed it risks not finding it if it gets lost in the middle of the “dark forest” of evil and sin.

Let us consider this grace: God came to meet us, he assumed our flesh fashioned from the earth, and has carried it with him into the presence of God, or as we commonly say “into heaven.” It is the mystery of Jesus Christ, who became flesh, died and rose for our salvation. Inseparable from him, is also the mystery of Mary, the woman from whom the Son of God has taken flesh, and of the Church, the mystical body of Christ. It concerns a unique mystery of love, and thus of freedom. Just as Jesus said “yes,” so also Mary said “yes;” she believed in the word of the Lord. All of her life has been a pilgrimage of hope together with her son, the Son of God, a pilgrimage which, through the Cross and Resurrection, has reached the heavenly homeland, in the embrace of God.

After praying the Angelus, Pope Leo recalled how the proclamation of the dogma by Pope Pius XII in 1950 occurred at a time when memories of the Second World War were still recent. In entrusting a prayer for peace in the world to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Pope Leo likened these earlier times to those of today.

Jubilee 2025: The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

 The Liturgical texts for the celebration of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary echo rather nicely the words of the Jubilee Prayer, and so perhaps encourage us to pray that prayer with a particular intensity on this feast day.

The Collect at Mass during the day:

Almighty ever living God, who assumed the Immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of your Son, body and soul into heavenly glory, grant we pray, that, always attentive to the things that are above, we may merit to be sharers of her glory.

Compared to:

May the grace of the Jubilee reawaken in us, Pilgrims of Hope, a yearning for the treasures of heaven. 

From the Preface at Mass:

For today the Virgin Mother of God was assumed into heaven as the beginning and image of your Church's coming to perfection and a sign of sure hope and comfort to your pilgrim people. ..

Compared to:

Father in heaven, may the faith that you have given us in your son, Jesus Christ, our brother, and the flame of charity enkindled in our hearts by the Holy Spirit reawaken in us the blessed hope for the coming of your Kingdom. 

From the Prayer after Communion at the Vigil Mass:

Having partaken of this heavenly table, we beseech your mercy, Lord our God, that we, who honour the Assumption of the Mother of God, may be freed from every threat of harm.

Compared to:

 May your grace transform us into tireless cultivators of the seeds of the Gospel. May those seeds transform from within both humanity and the whole cosmos in the sure expectation of a new heaven and a new earth, when, with the powers of Evil vanquished, your glory will shine eternally.

 

Jubilee 2025: The Hope of the Bride

In Dom Anscar Vonier's book The Spirit and the Bride there is a short chapter entitled "The Bride's Hope". The chapter suggests that, through the living presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church, there is a perfection of hope that is intrinsic to the Church and is more than the sum total of the individual hopes of believers or local communities.

What we may truly call the official hope of the Church is an overwhelming reality; there is simply no vestige of hesitation in any acts and movements of the Church concerning her power to obtain eternal life. This is manifested before all men through the Church's way of praying. Ecclesiastical prayer is the visible sign of the Church's hope; she hopes as she prays, and she prays as she hopes.  Now of the Church's prayer there is no end; it is an unceasing stream, unfathomable in its depth, though all eyes can behold its surface. If the Church ceased to pray, her life of hope also would come to an end.... More truly than Moses on the mountain, the Bride is stretching forth her arms in supplication, and she is not in need of any supporters, as she know of no lassitude, for the power of the Spirit is in her.

If you are familiar with Edith Stein's essay "The Prayer of the Church", Anscar Vonier's chapter is a natural jumping off point to a re-reading of that essay. In English translation it is published in the Institute of Carmelite Studies collected works of Edith Stein vol. 4 The Hidden Life. The essay makes some striking comparisons between the Jewish liturgy and the Christian liturgy, reflecting Edith Stein's own lived experience, and is worth reading for those insights alone. 

... it is not a question of placing the inner prayer free of all traditional forms as "subjective" piety in contrast to the liturgy as the "objective" prayer of the Church. All authentic prayer is prayer of the Church. Through every sincere prayer something happens in the Church, and it is the Church itself that is praying therein, for it is the Holy Spirit living in the Church that intercedes for every individual soul "with sighs too deep for words". This is exactly what authentic prayer is, for "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit". What could the prayer of the Church be, if not great lovers giving themselves to God who is love!

Anscar Vonier places the expression of hope within the Church's prayer since that prayer shows an absolute confidence in the ability of the Church to gain eternal life for the persons who are the object of that prayer. A connection can be made to the words of the Jubilee prayer:

May the grace of the Jubilee reawaken in us, Pilgrims of Hope, a yearning for the treasures of heaven.

Jubilee 2025: Therese of Lisieux - today it is important to revive hope.

In 1973, Pope St Paul VI wrote to the Bishop of  Bayeux and Lisieux to mark the centenary of the birth of St Therese of the Child Jesus. In one paragraph of that letter, Paul VI refers to the "little way" in terms of "dependence on the mysterious Love of Christ" in a way that Pope Francis has more recently expressed in terms of "confidence in the merciful love of God". He also casts that confidence in terms of hope, thereby offering an appropriate meditation for the Jubilee 2025.

So today it is important to revive hope.  Many people have experienced harshly the limits of their physical and moral strength.  They feel powerless before the immense problems of the world, with which they rightly feel solidarity.  Their daily work seems to them overwhelming, obscure, and useless.  Also, illness sometimes condemns them to inaction; persecution spreads a suffocating fog over them.  Those who are more lucid are even more aware of their own weakness, their cowardice, their smallness.  The meaning of life can no longer be made clear; the silence of God, as some say, can be oppressive.  Some resign themselves passively; others focus on their selfishness or on their immediate gratification; others become hardened or rebel; still others finally despair.  To each and every one, Thérèse “of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face” proclaims: learn to rely not on yourself, whether on your virtue or on your limitations, but instead to depend upon the mysterious Love of Christ, which is greater than our hearts and which unites us with the offering of his passion and with the power of his Life.  She can teach us all to follow the “royal little way” of the spirit of childhood, which is the opposite of childishness, of passivity, of sadness!  Cruel trials within her family, scruples, fears, and other difficulties seemed very likely to thwart Thérèse’s development; she was not spared severe sickness in her youth; moreover, she experienced profoundly the night of faith.  And yet God made her find, in the midst of this very night, confident abandonment and courage, patience, and joy--in a word, true freedom.  We invite all people of good will, especially the little and the humbled, to meditate on this paradox of hope.

The original text of Pope Paul VI's letter, in French. is available on the website of the Holy See: Lettre du Pape Paul VI. An English translation can be found here: Letter of Pope Paul VI. Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation, written to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of St Therese, is here: C'est La Confiance.