Next year 2025 will be a jubilee year. The theme chosen for this jubilee is “Pilgrims of Hope”. We are called to pray in hope for this world of ours suffering because of the impact of wars, poverty, homelessness and the climate crisis. We recall that our true and only hope is found in the Lord Jesus.

The Jubilee Year will run from the opening of the holy door at Saint Peter's Basilica on Christmas Eve to the feast of the Epiphany in 2026. More locally, the jubilee will begin on Sunday 29 December, the feast of the Holy Family with Holy Mass in the Metropolitan Cathedral and the Co-Cathedral and conclude on the 28 December 2025

What does a jubilee mean to you and me?

The answer lies in the origins of a jubilee year. It’s an opportunity for us to consider our Christian life. The jubilee in 1300 offered to those who fulfilled its conditions a fresh start with “a clean slate”. Jubilees have been historically used to mark a point in the life of individuals; debts were released, slaves were freed, property was given back, and a full restoration took place. We can recall the “stop the debt” campaign in jubilee 2000 as a reminder of this desire to release from burdens and reset lives.

I would like the Jubilee here in Liverpool to allow us the opportunity to be set free from burdens: one way we can do this is through going to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, to reset our relationship with God and with each other. I would like us all, including myself to come and know and love the Lord Jesus more through prayer, through service of each other and the community and to become more as a family and as a local church.

The theme provides us with a great opportunity to discover afresh what it means to be a pilgrim not just by taking part in walks which are being arranged to some amazing places of pilgrimage and shrines within our archdiocese, but also in recalling that each human life is a pilgrimage journey towards the Kingdom of Heaven. The community of the Church is the pilgrim people of God. To enable us to live the jubilee in a tangible way, I enclose with this letter a decree I have issued establishing “Jubilee Churches” across the archdiocese as focuses for pilgrimage for Jubilee 2025.

The theme of hope

If we look for signs of hope in this diocese, in our parish communities, and in our schools, we will be surprised by what we see, and we can be confident that we are “witnesses of hope”, and that our churches, schools and communities are places of hope. The annual pilgrimage to Lourdes

every year is such a moment of hope, and many parishes arrange their own pilgrimages to other centres at home and abroad. Arrangements are also being made for a jubilee pilgrimage to Rome next November (details will be available on the archdiocesan website).

Any jubilee year ultimately celebrates the gift and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus on the cross. On the cross, the Lord alone relieves us of our spiritual debts, of our slavery to sin, and sets us free to be with him in building up the Kingdom of heaven. By being “pilgrims of hope”, by seeking to be Saints in our ordinary everyday living, in bringing others to know and love and serve Him in service and prayer we are expressing hope to a world so much in need of it.

Resting in Jesus

Perhaps the biggest opportunity in this coming jubilee year maybe one that we've not thought about, and that is the Jubilee year as a year of rest. Yes, for many of us we know we cannot take a year off work and simply rest; we all have bills to pay, life continues with getting the children to school, fulfilling appointments at the hospital and doctors and getting on with our jobs whether we want to or not. But, in the same breath, we are commanded to rest on the Sabbath, to spend time with family and to place our faith at the centre of all we do. Perhaps the coming jubilee will be an opportunity to put those three things in focus? The jubilee is an opportunity for us to put things aside, to move away from distractions on TV, smartphone and social media, to perhaps pick up a book, to talk to someone face to face or indeed just to be still. The jubilee it can be an opportunity for you and me to find concrete ways of living more simply a life of prayer by designating specific time each day or by going to Holy Mass during the week instead of just on a Sunday if our timetable allows. The jubilee year is an opportunity for us to practise “the presence of God” in daily life knowing he walks by our side. This jubilee year can be for us a time of renewal, of re-focus and of rest.

My wish this year as ‘pilgrims of hope’ is that we should grow deeper in faith, in prayer but also in service of God and each other.

On this Solemnity of Christ the King, we pray particularly for the young people of the Church who are our hope for the future, please pray for them.

I wish you and your families every blessing as we approach the season of Advent and prepare for the great feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ,

+Malcolm McMahon OP

Archbishop of Liverpool