The Most Rev. John Alphonse Asiedu, SVD, Bishop of the Apostolic Vicariate of Donkorkrom, and responsible for Clergy and Consecrated Men and Women in Ghana, has explained the significance of a Jubilee Year in the life of the Church.
“A Jubilee Year is a Holy Year,” he said in a Keynote address during the Opening Ceremony of the 2025 Jubilee Year Celebration for Consecrated People in Ghana at Sunyani.
According to the Donkorkrom Bishop, “It is a Holy Year not only because it begins or ends with solemn holy acts, but also because the ultimate purpose of the year is to encourage holiness of life.”
He added that the celebration of a Jubilee Year has always been an event of great spiritual, ecclesial, and social significance in the life of the Church.
“Ever since the year 1300, when Pope Boniface VIII instituted the first Holy Year, it was initially celebrated every hundred years. Then, following its biblical precedence, the Jubilee Year was celebrated every fifty years, and finally, now it is celebrated every twenty-five years,” the Bishop elucidated.
According to Bishop Asiedu, the intention of His Holiness, Pope Francis, in convoking this Holy Year of Jubilee 2025, is first and foremost “to strengthen our faith, to encourage works of charity and brotherly communion within the Church and in our real missionary situations, to be pilgrims of hope and to call Christians to be sincere and coherent in our faith in Christ, in order to renew the face of the earth”.
The Jubilee Year, he underscored, is therefore “a special gift of grace for all of us, characterized by the forgiveness of sins and in particular by the indulgence, which is a full expression of the mercy of God”.
The Bishop of Donkorkrom drew the attention of the Consecrated Men and Women to the fact that Pope Francis, on December 24, 2024, during the celebration of Holy Mass on the Eve of Christmas in the Vatican, opened the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica to officially launch the Jubilee Year of 2025, were he encouraged all Christians to use the Holy Year to bring to birth a new world where peace and justice reigns.
He made further reference to the Pope’s Bull of Indiction: “Spes Non Confundit” issued in Rome on 9th May 2024 for the celebration of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025, in which the Pope indicated clearly that the Jubilee Year of 2025 is itself in continuity with preceding celebrations of grace and it invites “everyone to an intense experience of the love of God that awakens in hearts the sure hope of salvation in Christ”.
Bishop Asiedu underlined yet another intent of the Holy Year, which is to guide the steps of all Christians towards yet another fundamental celebration.
“In the year 2033, the Church will mark the Jubilee of the 2000th anniversary of the redemption won by the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he noted, adding that the Jubilee Year 2025 “is thus not an end in itself but already looks into the future with hope for which we are ready to make a pilgrimage marked by great events in which the grace of God precedes and accompanies his people as they press forward firm in faith, active in charity, and steadfast in hope (1 Thes 1:3)”.
The Bishop in-charge of Consecrated people recalled his personal experience of the Great Jubilee in the year 2000 when as a young priest, he derived memorable and impressive spiritual benefits that have marked his religious life and ministry till date.
“I remember with fond memories the various activities marking the celebration and the climax in December 2000. It was indeed a Jubilee that was very significant not to me alone but to the life of the Church in general principally due to its specific nature. It was a Jubilee which ushered us into a new millennium,” he recounted.
“It also marked the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Christ which gave us the opportunity to express our devotion in various forms, offer prayers of praise and thanksgiving to God, and to reflect deeply on the gift of the Incarnation and the redemptive mission of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he added.
His Lordship expressed the hope that the Jubilee Year 2025, would truly be a milestone in the life of every Religious as he said “I am convinced that as consecrated people, we have travelled from our various communities and places of apostolate to this beautiful environment here in Sunyani, not only to listen to myriads of talks and presentations, but most importantly to chart a concrete path and draw a roadmap in making this Jubilee Year meaningful and spiritually beneficial to us as individuals, to our various Congregations and Institutes and to all the Catholic faithful we serve in this country and beyond”.
He added that in the words of the Holy Father, the Jubilee Year is a moment to “recover lost hope, to renew that hope in our hearts and to sow seeds of hope amid the bleakness of our time and our world,” which is the basis for the theme of the Jubilee Year: Pilgrims of Hope.
The Bishop further intimated that the Ordinary Jubilee will conclude with the closing of the Holy Door in the Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican on January 6 2026, the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, while its spiritual fruits would transcend times and seasons.
He prayed that during this Holy Year, “the light of Christian hope may illumine each one of us as consecrated people so that through us the message of God’s love would be proclaimed all over the world”.
By Sr. Sylvie Lum Cho, MSHR and Sr. Gifty Anastasia Blewu, SMMC (Sister Communicators)
