by Brett Manero
For Catholics, new years come in many ways. There is our birthdays, which can be looked at as an “individual new year” for each one of us. There is the beginning of the Church year with the start of Advent in late November or early December, which is technically the true start of the year for the Church. As a teacher, I often think of September as the start of a year, with the beginning of the academic calendar. And of course there is January 1st of the Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory XIII, in another reminder of how much the Church has given to the secular world.
This new year is all the more special, for a couple of reasons. We’re entering into the year 2025 AD, and we are quickly approaching the year 2033 AD, or two-thousand years (give or take) since the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the permanent altering of world history as know it. How the Church will celebrate this anniversary will be paramount.
Until then, this new year also sees the arrival of a new Jubilee Year, which began on Christmas Eve and will continue throughout 2025. A jubilee Year brings many graces into our broken world, which the world so desperately needs. Catholics can and will receive untold graces through the Jubilee Year, and more information about it can be found here:
https://www.usccb.org/jubilee2025
What a reminder of the words of Christ in Matthew 16: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19). The authority of the Church extends to such events as Jubilee Years. It is a reminder that the Church is the “fifth Kingdom” prophecies by the Prophet Daniel in c. 600 BC, the Kingdom that would remain forever and permanently change the world.
Let’s have a great New Year, and embrace as many of those Jubilee graces as we can.
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