On December 29 at the 10:00 am Mass, Bishop Paprocki celebrated the opening of the 2025 Jubilee Year for our diocese as we unite with Catholics throughout the world during this special year. The theme for this year comes from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Hope does not disappoint.” (Rom. 5:5). Our Holy Father, Pope Franics, writes the following about this Jubilee Year:
The coming Jubilee will thus be a Holy Year marked by the hope that does not fade, our hope in God. May it help us to recover the confident trust that we require, in the Church and in society, in our interpersonal relationships, in international relations, and in our task of promoting the dignity of all persons and respect for God’s gift of creation. May the witness of believers be for our world a leaven of authentic hope, a harbinger of new heavens and a new earth (cf. 2 Pet 3:13), where men and women will dwell in justice and harmony, in joyful expectation of the fulfilment of the Lord’s promises. (Bull of Indiction, no. 25)
As I was concelebrating the Mass that morning, listening to Bishop Paprocki’s homily and considering this topic of hope, I had a nudge from the Holy Spirit about an idea for my bulletin articles for this coming year. The thought came to my mind to walk through Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical on Christian Hope, Spe Salvi. After Mass, when I looked at the document, I saw that it was 50 paragraphs, which is perfect for doing one paragraph a week for the year! I have long loved the writings of Pope Benedict, both before his becoming pope, and after. Among my favorite of his writings is this document, so I am personally very excited to journey through his brilliant treatment on this topic. It is my hope (no pun intended) that our reflections on this theme will be a very fruitful experience for all who read these articles, as I am sure it will be fruitful for me as I write them.
I do not intend to quote the entire paragraph each week, just the main points, but I encourage you to access the document to read the entire text, one week at a time. If you search for “Spe Salvi Pope Benedict” on Google, the official Vatican translation should be one of the first results.
The first paragraph is rather short, but it sets the stage well for the document. The Holy Father begins by quoting St. Paul’s words from his Letter to the Romans as he writes: “’SPE SALVI facti sumus’—in hope we were saved, says Saint Paul to the Romans, and likewise to us (Rom 8:24)” (SS 1) He then goes on to write that this virtue of hope helps us in facing our present circumstances:
Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey. (SS 1)
Notice how he uses the word “if” a few times in proposing this theme of hope. This will be one of his main goals, to convince us that hope does indeed lead us to a goal, one that is certain, and one that is worth continuing the journey toward. If you permit me to take St. Paul’s words slightly out of context, our hope in his providing a clear answer to that question will not be met with disappointment (Rom 5:5), but rather, it will only serve to strengthen our hope in what the Lord has “prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9) in the Kingdom.
Father Alford