Make This Jubilee Year One of Personal Encounter with Christ

Make This Jubilee Year One of Personal Encounter with Christ

Cristina DiMarzio

+JMJ

 

As someone who has only recently begun to take her faith as a matter of lifestyle and daily practice (as opposed to just an identity claim or something I checked off on Sundays), the concept of a "Jubilee Year" is completely new to me. 25 years ago I was in my mid teens and whatever was occurring in the Catholic Church on a global scale was certainly not on my radar. 

 

I was on pilgrimage in Italy last year when I first heard the term, and already you could see the beginnings of the preparations taking place with scaffolding everywhere and churches undergoing immense preparations for the hoards of pilgrims to come this year to walk through the infamous Jubilee doors. Unfortunately, I won't be able to return to Italy again this year as a pilgrim. However, it is clear to me that this Jubilee Year is about much more than just walking through the beautiful doors. If our Mother, the Church, is taking an intentionally set-apart time to regroup and refocus her mission, then as someone looking to live my life in synchrony with her, I too need to take this year as a dedicated time of refocusing and regrouping, especially if I want to truly make this year one of personal encounter with Christ- an encounter which could change the course of my next 25 years.

 

The concept of taking a Jubilee Year has its roots all the way back into ancient Judaism and was originally ordained by God Himself when he set into motion the laws outlined in Leviticus. I love that the word "jubilee" comes from the Hebrew word "jobel" and is actually the name of the ram's horn used to proclaim a time of rejoicing... I think of the proclamation of joy as the ancient Hebrews paraded around the walls of Jericho with their ram's horns and I am not surprised (though I have not actually confirmed) that this joyful shouting and cheering would have evolved into the Latin word "jubilare" meaning to shout and proclaim with joy! The Levitical command for a Jubilee Year was to hallow the year, proclaim liberty throughout all the land, return to his property and return to one's family (paraphrased from Leviticus, Chapter 25).

 

Like all the components of our faith, they are only fully understood, and are certainly more enriched in their meaning, when they are put back into the context of their ancient roots. If we want to fully understand the significance of our faith, we truly must not separate Jesus from His ancient Jewish roots. Jesus and the ancient Jews would have understood a Jubilee Year as not just a year of checking of some boxes of laws given by God, but as an opportunity to return Home! Home to a state of Eden-like living.  In the context of the Jubilee today, that means understanding that to truly live this year out in communion with the Church, we must think far beyond walking through hallowed doors as a pilgrim, we must think far beyond the social media photo op and checking the box, and truly contemplate what it means to return to an Eden-like state of living... to walk from one place, and into another. Walking through the doors is a mere symbol for the transformation that is to take place. Symbolically we walk from the outside world into the Sanctuary, into the very place here on Earth where we get the closest to that Eden where we long to return. It is a year carved out for this transformation, because the Church, in her wisdom, knows that this is a process that must unfold within us, and that this process will take time. 

 

The ancient Jubilee had four key pillars: 

    1. All the slaves were to be set free. 
    2. The land was to rest, there was to be no work done in that year.
    3. All debts were forgiven.
    4. Everyone returns home.

As I was meditating upon the four key pillars of a Jubilee and its ancient traditions, a sort of framework began to take shape in my heart. A framework for this refocusing and regrouping, a way to focus my prayer throughout the year, and even a standard to hold myself up against as an examen of sorts throughout the year. I share that framework and some of my reflection questions with you here, in the hopes that it may also help you think more deeply about what this Jubilee year might mean for you, and how you too can walk more intentionally within the arms of the Church this year, and usher in a personal encounter with Christ.

 

1. All the slaves were to be set free.

What a radical thought this is! If you were an ancient slave to the Jews, during a Jubilee year, you would be set free! In the context of this meditation, we naturally do not have people held as slaves, but that does not at all mean that we are not ourselves slaves, nor does it mean that we are not holding others in slavery. Where am I enslaved? Where is sin or unforgiveness holding me in bondage? What in my life needs God's provision to come and break the chains of slavery in my life? What is keeping me from God?

BUT... I believe there is a giant caveat to the full understanding of this setting-free! Today everyone wants to be "free." In this "you do you" world where everyone is "free" to live life as they define it they bumble around with no real sense of meaning totally devoid of purpose. Being set free is meaningless if it is without direction. To be set free implies a motion, a movement. If you are set free that means you were once stuck and now you get to move, freely, in another direction. That directionality must be pointed at something, or more appropriately, at someone. Just like the ancient Jews in Exodus were set free from the Egyptians, they were not set free just to follow their own devices, they were set free, so that they might worship God, so that they might give right praise! So too, we must remember that when we are set free from our bonds, there must be an upward focused directionality directed appropriately to He who has set us free! It is freedom for right praise! 

 

 2. For one year, there is to be no working of the land. 

This to me almost seems the most radical of them all. An entire year of NO WORKING. Imagine the preparation that must have gone into this. No farming, no animals being slaughtered for meat, literally no working. This was a true year of rest, of sabbath. Today, we can hardly give a full day to sabbath. We fill the one day God asked us to keep for Him, for leisure and rest, with more work, more busyness, more chaos and rushing around. God asked this of us in order to keep right praise. To put first things first: God, family, friends. To make space for rest, for reflection and peace in our hearts. He commands this of us because He knows we need it. 

So in this year, of intentionally honoring the Sabbath: How can I make more space for God-  daily... weekly? How can I intentionally focus on that which God has entrusted to me? Those people right in front of me where I am meant to be a vessel of His love to them, and where I am also meant to receive His love? How can I encourage this radical sabbath in those around me?  

 

3. All debts are to be forgiven. 

Imagine waking up one day on the first day of the Jubilee year, and suddenly you are debt free! Could you imagine if suddenly you had no credit card to pay off, or house payment? Wouldn't that be something!? But again, in today's modern world, while it is extremely unlikely that Visa will send you a "debt forgiven" letter, that does not mean that this notion does not apply. These are spiritual realities that we are talking about and just as we spiritually are held in slavery and bondage, so too do we hold others in debt by our unforgiveness and our resentments. Our hardened hearts forcing others to walk on eggshells around us, living in debt to a past sin, or offense which wounded us. 

Where am I being called to radically forgive? Where is God calling me to live out His mercy? To extend His mercy onto others the way He has extended it onto me? What grudges am I holding onto? Where do I need to offer forgiveness? Where do I need to return to the sacrament of Reconciliation and forgive myself and allow God's mercy to wash my own debt clean? 


4. Everyone comes home. 

Here everything comes together full circle. The freedom we experience in being set free, in resting and in forgiving ourselves and others is precisely so that we can return Home! 

What places in my heart are in hiding? Where am I not allowing God's love to reach me? Where do I need a homecoming with the Father? Am I cultivating a home for others for the tender places God has entrusted to me? Can I imagine the joyous reunion with God as I return home? Am I grateful or resentful of those around me who are returning home? Have I/ Can I extend an invitation to those around me to spiritually come home? 



The Jubilee is an invitation to live into the Prodigal Son story! The ram's horn announces that a new dawn has come! It is a call to conversion, a call to encounter God more deeply. It is Mother Church, in her profound wisdom, asking us to take a pause, a deep and intentional pause, so that we can enter into this period of encounter and truly have a metanoia, so that we can truly live the next 25 years differently than the previous 25 years! Something big must occur if it is something the Church only calls for every 25 years. Graces pour abundantly during this time because God Himself asks this of us. It is indeed a time of deep hope, hope that the living God, the same God who encountered the ancient Judaic tribes, will also encounter us here today, and that such an encounter will transform our lives! The same four ancient pillars which were necessary for that encounter then are as relevant and as necessary today. We cannot be enslaved to sin, or to unholy ties which keep our hearts unavailable to God. We must rest. This is ever-true. If God Himself rested after Creation, who are we to not follow in His example? Our true rest is God alone. We cannot hold grudges or debts over people, we have to forgive so that we too may be forgiven, and we have to live in the freedom of knowing we have been forgiven. Finally, we are invited to return Home. Home to Abba, Father, who lovingly and jubilantly awaits us! 

 

I recently was listening to a podcast in which some of the world's most influential deep thinkers from various academic fields were discussing the various different lenses through which to interpret the Gospels. Psychologically, symbolically, cognitively, philosophically, rhetorically etc... One of the speakers (a confessed non-believer, but someone who is still deeply thinking about and searching for meaning) posed the question, "What is the through line?" In other words, what connects all these ways of thinking? Which way is the proper way to analyze the Gospels when you factor in all of these differing perspectives of analysis? As he was grasping at the complexity of the analysis, the answer seemed so simple to me. Perhaps my faith is too simple, perhaps to me the answer is clear only because I am a believer, but as he grasped, all I could think was that the through line isn't a "what," it is a "who" and that person is Jesus Christ!

 

Just as Jesus is the one common denominator through which every methodology can be analyzed, so too is He the gate, the door, of the Jubilee! Through Him and in Him we will one day enter again into Eden! He is the foundation of all four pillars! It is Jesus who breaks our chains and frees us from slavery by His love, it is in Him where we can rest, as St. John the beloved disciple rested on His breast, it is He who gives us his very own strength to forgive debts, knowing it is in Him where we are fulfilled and it is to Him that we must always return, again and again. 

 

So let us enter fully into this Jubilee! Let us go into this year contemplatively and full of hope in what God in His goodness can do in our lives, if only we surrender to Him. Let's open our hearts to metanoia this year and usher in a truly different way of living for the next 25 years! 

 

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt. Prints available here.

×