2025 Jubilee: A Once-in-a-Lifetime Gift of Mercy! (Ken & Fr Cristino)

🌟 The 2025 Jubilee Year is here! Are you ready to receive God’s extraordinary grace? 🌟 Every 25 years, the Catholic Church celebrates a Jubilee Year, a special time of forgiveness, renewal, and spiritual revival. But what does this mean for YOU? How can you receive the graces of this holy year, including a plenary indulgence? And what is the significance of the Holy Doors being opened once again?

Transcript

Father Cristino I hear it's the a jubilee year is that right yes yeah so tell us what does that mean well it's it's actually uh something really beautiful because I think uh you you really in a normal lifespan could expect to experience two jubilees uh in the course of of one's life because the church has adopted the tradition of observing an ordinary Jubilee every 25 years but it actually has its roots way back in in ancient Israel uh and it's it's recounted in quite great detail in in the first five books of the Bible actually specifically in the book of numbers and Leviticus uh the description of what God wanted for his people by declaring jubilees and that was in the Old Testament every 50 years the idea behind a jubilee was that it was a period of time that would probably occur probably only once in a person's lifetime where for an entire year it was like having a big reset so there was a number of things that were stipulated about how the Jubilee was to be observed all slaves were to be set free so if you had been living in slavery or you were in that class of people you were restored to Freedom uh that you were to begin preparing for the Jubilee year in advance so that you had enough food and grain put aside that you had to let the fields lie fallow for the Jubilee year you were to do no farming and do no work uh for reaping a harvest okay you had to live off of what was already available obviously some elements of that like with Liv stock and whatever would have to be a bit different but the the idea that even the even the Earth was supposed to be given a break uh that all debts were to be cancelled whether a person was able to repay them or not so the Jubilee was coming you knew that if you were deep in debt that that was going to be forgiven uh and then essentially you were to seek to strive and have a Reconciliation among your people among your kin and you know those around you with with whom there might have been some form of of division or tension and so in God's Vision that there was this this need that he saw for his people that at some point in everyone's life they needed to enjoy this experience of everything getting to start fresh uh and so in a way it's a manifestation of God's mercy uh that the Jubilee would be called and so the concept in the church was taken up many centuries into the life of the church uh in the 14th century there was a pope who in keeping with the original concept of having a jubilee decided to call for a jubilee I I don't remember now the dates of the top of my head but it had to do with a significant turn I think it was the turn of a century okay and so the decree that he issued was that we would now observe this Jubilee and then a subsequent Pope to him decided that not only should that practice continue but that in the Catholic faith we would observe a jubilee every 25 years and so that's what put in motion this tradition and custom of observing Jubilee years and now we have maintained being on that uh depending on the age of of some of your uh viewers uh you will remember that the last great Jubilee the last ordinary Jubilee was at the turn of the Millennium and in the year 2000 we celebrated in a very pronounced and prominent way in the Catholic Church uh this Jubilee of the of the New Millennium yeah I remember that uh with John Paul II exactly and uh I do remember the sense of like I don't know what it was just like focusing on God's generosity and his Mercy towards us I back then I was just starting off in Ministry it would have been my second year but I that was kind of the beginning of my full-time service in the church and uh yeah it does stick out in my mind but as we go to 2025 somebody's listening they be think well how is this applicable in my life why does this matter to to me because that's why people kind of tune in they want to know relevance right mhm well first I think it's it's relevant because it's something for us to participate in universal with with the whole church uh there's lots of I don't know what to call them kind of like little flashes in the pan and sort of these gimmicks every once in a while that I think come out from the Vatican and I don't know that we even pay any attention to them you know we hear oh this year is the year of such and such and an entire year that whole year might go by like do you recall that we had the year of St Joseph not that long ago corre yes it was the year of St Joseph St Joseph is the universal patron of the church he's the patron saint of Canada oh and then we also had Co that year whoops and so like what happened poor St Joseph he had a whole year dedicated to him and I don't recall a single meaningful thing happening during the year of St Joseph so we kind of have these things all the time and they just don't they often don't take off or get much attention yes the Jubilee though is a wellestablished rhythm and routine in our life as Catholics and because of it having this significance on really trying to immerse oursel in the gift of God's mercy it's important for us to realize that in the course of of a lifetime uh our faith is uh the Catholic church is saying we want people to experience it at least twice I think that's the point about having it every 25 years instead of 50 years because it gives you really that capacity to say this year I want to be a year where I'm really going to enter in in a more intentional way at the beginning of every year people always have their New Year's resolutions and I'm going to lose weight and I'm going to learn this language and I'm going to travel to this country and then those things happen or they don't and if they don't we might just shrug our shoulders and say oh well I don't know what I was even thinking but a a jubilee year I think calls forth from us not a response of uh what am I going to do for myself this year but what do I want to receive from the Lord this year how am I going to allow the Lord to impact me in a more intentional way because he's giving me this year this is something he has decreed from divine revelation that he wants his people to experience so how am I opening myself to receive something from him uh this is symbolized very uh in a very pronounced way at the Vatican uh at St peters's Basilica at the Vatican there is a set of doors that are known as the holy doors which are only opened during a jubilee year and in fact not only are they not clo kept closed outside of a jubilee year but they actually have a concrete wall put over top of on either side of the door so that they cannot be accessed and they're very beautiful they're works of art in them themselves and they're hidden from us every 25 years we go this long span of time where you just don't see them and then the concrete is broken down and taken away and there are the doors and the Holy Father at the start of the Jubilee opens the doors and then invites Pilgrims from everywhere in the world to come and pass through those doors it's a it's a very powerful and and symbolic representation of what it means to to enter into the gift of God's grace that he's opening a new doorway for us that he wants to make something new for you all you have to do is pass through it now obviously the vast majority of Catholics are not able to make their way to Rome during the Jubilee year and walk through that set of doors and so the pope actually decrees that every cathedral in the world is supposed to designate the doors of their Cathedral as Jubilee doors during the Jubilee year and the same uh privileges in fact we have something called a plener Indulgence there's plenary indulgences attached to passing through the holy doors during a Year of Jubilee uh so that you can even just make a little pilgrimage you and your family could make a pilgrimage into Saskatoon and and when you pass through the Jubilee doors of your Cathedral to have tried to enter into that mentality that you want to walk through whatever God has planned for you this year what is the new thing that he wants to reveal to you during the Jubilee in terms of the Indulgence that you mentioned can you uh walk us through what sort of preparations one should do prior to do that because there's conditions to open ourselves to The Graces of that Indulgence isn't there mhm so a plenary Indulgence actually means the full and complete pardon and remission of all of your sins and the effects of sin in your life pretty big deal so it's like going back to the the state of grace that you received on the day of your baptism uh and it's like a completely fresh start but in order to ex be able to receive that Grace you have to meet some conditions and those conditions are always the same that you uh free your yourself from attachment to sin which means that anything in your life that you know is keeping you caught in sin that you free yourself from whatever that might be that you go to confession that you receive Holy Communion within 8 Days on either side of of that confession and that you pray for the intentions of the Holy Father and when you've met those conditions and then performed whatever the action is that has the plenary Indulgence attached to it so in this case passing through those doors you can then be completely immersed in that sense of having really renewed yourself in God's grace saying we're making a fresh start this is we're turning a new Leaf this is this is a new reality for us and leading up to participating in that is meant to be a time of anticipation uh and the realization that that God is providing away for me and to really make a fresh start I think so many people go through their life feel feeling like they don't even know where to begin they don't know how to change the things that are causing them uh trouble I think the Jubilee gives us a reminder that this is God's will for us he wants us to experience his Mercy in a new way and so he opens literal Pathways for us to be able to receive that some might be wondering well like where's the church's authority to do such a thing can you speak to that well sure I think part of the reason why when we have the uh a condition for a plenary Indulgence to be that you pray for the Holy Father is because we see this associated with uh Christ in the Matthew's gospel when he declares to Peter you are Peter and Upon This Rock will build my church I will give you the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven whatever you bind on Earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on Earth will be loosed in heaven we we symbolize the authority of the papacy by th by these two keys and the idea being that the pope possesses by virtue of his office as the successor of St Peter the capacity to unlock the treasury of of God's Graces for us in a way that he has deemed meaningful and important for the life of the church and for the life of the faithful and so it is his unique prerogative to be able to do that uh some might remember that Pope Francis even called for an extraordinary Jubilee back in 2016 that was known as the year of Mercy uh but it wasn't just one of these thematic years like the year of St Joseph he made it a jubilee year by which he extended the same Graces that are happening this year by virtue of it just being every 25 years what I think is more meaningful and and especially exciting about this Jubilee year at least for the generation of Catholics that I would say are my age and older is that this feels a little bit like participating in something that our beloved Pope John Paul II uh has left behind for us his entire pontificate was ordered towards the great Jubilee He was elected Pope in 1978 and he was already then talking about preparing the church for the third millennium his his whole 22 years leading up to that as Pope was geared towards ushering the church into the third millennium he he talked about it continuously uh and then during that Jubilee year he gave us a beautiful document noo millennio inun the the encyclical that he wrote during the Jubilee year calling for this what sometimes now we would just more simply refer to as the new evangelization but what he was really calling for was that Catholics would Embrace their identity what it truly means to be Catholics not members of a club but as we now very more popularly refer to it missionary disciples who go out to share the good news of their faith and to give witness to their faith uh and I I feel like this Jubilee is kind of like one of our last vestages of of that closeness to him of that feeling connected because he reminded us that you know I will not be with you for the next Jubilee and in fact he died in 2005 uh but he he really put it in the minds of of the vast majority of of adult Catholics that are alive today that this mattered that this was important that this was significant for the life of the whole church and for the whole world uh and one of the ways that I think it's going to be most beautifully realized this year will be with the canonization of blessed pure Giorgio Fadi and he will be declared a saint in August and he died 100 years ago in 1925 okay and it was a jubilee year uh and in one of the last journal entries we have uh in his in his diary that he reflects upon how important and significant he thought it was that he had this this privilege of living in uh a jubilee year he was born in 1901 so he had just missed the Jubilee of 1900 and he only lived to be 24 years old and so that was the only Jubilee of his life and at the time that he wrote that I don't think he even realized that he was soon going to die uh but he was reflecting upon uh the grace that it was to live in a jubilee year and what that meant for him and and he had this vision for the revitalization of uh his college peers and uh University students for especially the rebuilding of Italy after the first world war and so he really dreamed big and and so I I think he captured and understood the significance of what I meant to live in a jubilee and I just think it's so beautiful that exactly 100 years later in another Jubilee we're going to witness his canonization and I'm I'm very very grateful that I will be there uh leading a group of of young people and University students to Italy for the Jubilee year uh and to participate in that canonization of someone who is just such an inspiration to me yeah I'm getting a sense that you're really behind this yes and I I want get to get people excited about it yeah you know cuz I think a lot of times right now in the state of the church people hear something coming out of the Vatican or like w w w like it's just something another thing yeah uh particularly after like this long drawn out C on cidality just really for many places people was a Miss in terms of how does this apply to me there was some participation but really I think people kind of started to tune out yeah and so by default then you just kind of get oh this is just another thing um but you're cautioning against that aren't you very much so I'm trying to say so I'm grateful that we're having this conversation and that hopefully your your viewers and listeners will will be blessed by it because this isn't just another thing to sort of roll our eyes out and say oh yeah another thing that the Vatican wants us to do this isn't the Vatican God has given his people a concept of rejoicing in the gift of freedom and healing and Reconciliation in a jubilee and so so we need to take advantage of that this year which is why you began we began the conversation with you explaining the historical context of going right back to the Old Testament where where this this happened on a very practical level with uh God's chosen people right right and so this this history of Grace there's a pattern of this right and so we now this is this is not a novelty this is not just an idea this is a Church dipping into the treasuries uh of the church the pope exercising his rightful authority to say let's open wide these doors calling forth a deeper grace of God into our life and should not we expect this if this is what the Vicor of Christ has declared using his lawful Authority fulfilling what Jesus you know you know he gives the keys to bind and loose and should not we expect Grace in this year right exactly and and but we not only should we expect it but then we have to be active participants in receiving it right to to go back to the image of of of Pope John Paul II uh we many of us will remember the the the very moving sight of him uh already very burdened under the weight of his Parkinson's almost leaning onto the the Jubilee door uh that night that he opened up the Jubilee doors and and you can see that he he pulled the whole weight of the church with him to try and open those doors but all he was really doing was showing us the Fulfillment of the very first words he preached to us as Pope uh in the homy that he gave after his election as Pope in 1978 uh he he said open wide the doors to Christ he was reminding us of that that this was a a literal thing that he was doing in front of us now but is what he was asking us to do and to see was our responsibility that we open the doors of our hearts uh he actually he used an interesting word when he preached in the Italian he says open and then he says no span that means more like like burst the doors off their hinges don't just like you know turn the door knob and and gently leave it a jar he was saying bust this door off off open wide the door of your heart to Christ SP let this this this burst of of energy and enthusiasm and so I hope that we can take him up on that invitation in this Jubilee year and really open our hearts uh to The Graces that God wants to give us uh throughout

2025 I wonder how can a family participate in this like when's the best time for me to take my family through those Cathedral doors and in what ways I can prepare my family to do this I don't know if you necessarily have the answers but this is what immediately comes to my mind like should we wait until the day when does the year end it'll run until the Feast of the Epiphany January 6th 2026 let got a ways away yet here so like do we do it in the summer you know when you're in Rome or do we do it before Christmas like when do you have any thoughts on that I think it's that's something a family should really be intentional about trying to discern especially Mom and Dad they should try and and discern with each other when would be a way that we can make this experience feel like something meaningful that we've given our family time to prepare that we knew that that we were doing this and maybe if there was some kind of special uh family celebration uh or some some occasion when when the family was already going to be celebrating anyhow and then attaching to that celebration this extra ra special way so that moving forward every other time you celebrate this thing you remember but remember in 2025 when we celebrated this by going through the Jubilee doors I think helping parents helping their children also cultivate this imagination uh because if they're your children now God willing we would hope and pray that in all likelihood they will live to see another Jubilee and to be able to reflect back on that just as we're remembering what it was like at the turn of the Millennium in the year 2000 and this just real Spirit of excitement that was filling the church we want to we want to replicate that for our children and not just make it seem like some kind of church field trip yeah I can't help but think back to that time actually you know as we're talking I just feel like my memory is just like racing through some certain things and I don't know if I'm reaching to connect dots or not but like that grade Jubilee in 2020 2000 sorry 2000 my apologies yes like for me I that was my first year a full-time service within the church um and you know it was like I was just starting I failed my way forward but as I look at 2020 to 2022 2023 it's like this unbelievable Grace that I witnessed started to happen and I had nothing to compare it to you know I look back at that period of time which is the beginning of what is known as face tace Ministries an organization had the privilege of starting still continues here in western Canada but the amount of fruit that we saw was mindboggling like we expected conversion every weekend and it was lasting like there's PE like what we saw was just kids coming to these events bringing their parents their parents having conversions um vocations coming out I know that uh you spent some time last night with Father Colin like he I mean he was a part of that um father Dan was a part of that like so there there's so many just lasting fruits like it's just not a flash in the pan forget about oh just another weekend no there was just it was just this constant roll of grace before for your eyes and I just thought well this is how it's supposed to be mhm it almost seemed at that time effortless mhm we go do a Youth Event hundreds of kids would come great participators in the sacrament of reconciliation people encounter in Christ them telling their parents about it the word spreading the kids evangelizing their peers the next event comes they're bringing more people like we would show up to towns of like you know like 30 people 50 people little villages in saskat when and the could be 200 to 300 participants show up pretty significant to a little town we're talking about little town and rur Saskatchewan and just and now now I look back so I'm saying this I'm now I look back and like was it the Jubilee the great Jubilee was it the pushing flinging open those doors and this great ushering of Grace coming in because I get emotional when I think back to that but it's like there's this great great expectation in the hearts of people at that time to look onto the Horizon and to expect good things like as I began to work within a church you I started to get to know people from across Canada who were doing kind of the same work as I was and I would see there was this Unity of vision there was a Unity of expectation there was a Unity of like evangelization and when you looked forward we thought good things and we saw so much fruit like I I don't want to take up this but like it it was just so fruitful General I's relationship develops through that like uh and still wonderful things are continuing to happen to this day uh it led me to speak more internationally just it was I'm so grateful but it's different now I'm sorry to say it's like for many the wind has come out of the sails MH and you and maybe it's just me but when I look at the Horizon it just isn't as hopeful as that was initially yeah in that the great Jubilee when you look at the church and its divisiveness and like unclear teaching or just like there there isn't a sense that we're all in this together right now right like there was a 2000 yeah it's very different and that's why we need a jubilee that's that's what I think God is is trying to say to us the Jubilee year the events are managed by the Vatican the Jubilee comes from God he declares this to be a jubilee year and and that's why this is something that we can feel is coming directly from the hands of our father I think he wants to Blow The Wind back into our sails again and especially as he points us towards the next great and extraordinary Jubilee which is the Jubilee of 2033 the bimillennial the 2000th anniversary of our Salvation when we will remember our Lord's sacrifice for us that saved the world uh that we I should hope most of everyone who will be listening to this we would hope unless the world is ended by then that we would all still be around here 8 years from now and participating in this pivotal moment in history 2,000 years since our salvation and all these little things that are are going to fill up the time in between there in 2031 will be the 500th anniversary of Our Lady of Guadalupe uh in in in 2030 it will be the 2,000th anniversary of Our Lord beginning his public Ministry you know there's there are ways in which I I see that we are taking these steps towards the great Jubilee of 2033 and the Jubilee year of 2025 I feel is is is God just ramping things back up again and so instead I I would say and I understand all of what you just described instead of looking back to the year 2000 and saying at that Jubilee we were in such a better position than it feels like we are now I would I would say what if instead we say I know things don't look great right now but imagine where we'll be because of the the push and the start that has been afforded to us in

2025 I hope it to be true me too