In the coming year of 2025, Pope Francis has asked that the Church observe a Holy Year with the theme “Pilgrims of Hope.” The purpose of this year is to emphasize the hope which Christ brings to humanity by being born into our midst. In a world, which for so many reasons has lost hope, we are to be reminded this coming year of the hope that Christ came to bring to all persons.

This theme, “Pilgrims of Hope,” announces that every life involves a journey. Throughout this journey, there are different trials and tribulations that each person must face. Often these trials are passing and we all require hope to persevere through them. Knowing that the trials and difficulties experienced on our pilgrimage do not define us, is extremely important for preventing us from giving up and loosing perspective. As we are pilgrims, it is also important that we are aware that we have a final destiny—the Kingdom of Heaven. Being aware of that is often what can give us the strength to endure through life’s challenges. Scripture reminds us that we are called to be citizens of Heaven (Philippians 3:20) and that it is from there that Christ has come to save us.

I recently was reminded of the kind of journey that we are all on as I accompanied a friend to the play “The Lion King.” Whether you have seen the play, the movie, or both, it presents the kind of journey story that we are all on. In the movie, at the beginning when young Simba is born, he is anointed, as we all were in baptism, and his family receives him and holds him up with the expectations of the great hope that they have for his future. As he grows up, he is accidentally involved in the death of his father. Believing that he is responsible for the death of his father, Simba runs away in shame and forgets who he is and the dignity that belongs to him. As he is unable to forgive himself, he attempts to deny his value and worth. His story will involve a hope-filled re-discovery of his identity, value and dignity. He triumphs by reclaiming it and living as he was intended to do.

This scenario can be applied to the lives of all of us. When we are born, we are received into families that dream of the potential that we all have. When we are baptized, we are brought to the Church and anointed with the Oil of Chrism to remind us that through baptism we are members of Christ’s priestly, prophetic and kingly people. We, and our families, dream big about the futures before us.

Along the way, our limitations, the bigness of life, our sins and temptations, diminish our hopes, and the shame of things that we may have done, cause us to lose hope and forget the value that belongs to us as children of God. Despite these things, made in the image and likeness of God, no human being ever looses his or her value in God’s eyes. We are always God’s beloved children. No sin, no mistake, no limitation, no weakness, or sickness can ever diminish the value that we have in God’s eyes. In fact, the message of Christ’s life is that not even death can diminish our value in God’s eyes; because through our faith in Christ, He will raise us up from death for the eternal life that He has created us for and bring us to the place in heaven He has prepared for us.

At Christmas, we celebrate the birth of the Son of God who made a great pilgrimage to save us by reminding us who we are and why we should never lose hope. There is a beautiful line from scripture that states: “Even though He was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather, He emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave by becoming like other humans” (Philippians 2:6-11). What this is saying is: so that we might be saved, and never lose hope, Jesus became one of us to show us the way back to the Father.

Jesus was born in a difficult time. His country was occupied by a foreign army. Ordered back to their hometown for a politically motivated census, a housing crisis made it difficult for Mary and Joseph to find a place for Jesus to be born. Jesus was a stranger born in a barn. His poverty is meant to allow all of us, rich or poor, to relate to Him. His life proclaims God’s unconditional love for all people. Jesus lives and dies in order that we might never lose hope and so that we might all understand that we are all brothers and sisters on pilgrimage to the Kingdom of Heaven.

In the letter in which he introduces this Jubilee year, entitled Spes non confundit (“Hope does not disappoint,” from Romans 5:5), Pope Francis speaks of the many different areas where hope can be reintroduced into our lives during this coming Jubilee Year of 2025.

Pope Francis begins by speaking of the need for hope in our struggle with sin and shame, reminding all of us that God never views us as our sins. We are always His beloved sons and daughters. As pilgrims of hope, we are not to be bound by our sins. We are all called to seek forgiveness and to offer forgiveness. We are reminded that in the Sacrament of Reconciliation our sins are forgiven. When we struggle with sin and addiction, we are to search for hope through conversion, and possible treatment, knowing that a new way of life is always to be hoped for and possible. We must never be condemned and bound by our past. We must also allow a new future for others by offering them the forgiveness that we desire from God.

Many people also struggle with broken dreams. They believe that they should have been the person of their dreams, married the person of their dreams, had the house and children of their dreams, pursued the career of their dreams, enjoyed the retirement of their dreams, and deserved to have had all their dreams come true. When their dreams do not come true, they disengage from life and fall into a depression. Christ is born into poverty to invite us to see hope in our own poverty. Whether our dreams have come true or not, we are all God’s beloved children and our value remains the same. Christ came into the world to invite us to see hope in all of our situations. One very profound way to bring hope to all of our situations is not to think about what is missing from our lives, but to find real and simple reasons for gratitude in our lives.

Sickness and illness are also often a reason for losing hope in life. Jesus is born into the weakness of humanity, and suffers on the cross, so that He can always be with us in our sufferings. Christ wishes to remind us that He is always with us in our illnesses to help us be aware that illness does not diminish our value in His eyes. For those who are seriously ill, celebrating the Sacrament of the Sick, or arranging to have the Eucharist brought to their home by a minister of Communion, can be a way of allowing Christ’s hope to shine into our lives.

For all of us, death can be the greatest challenge to hope. For Christians death is never the end. In faith and hope, we are to believe that Christ came to reconcile us to the Father and to open the gates of Heaven to humanity. There is much hope to be found in recalling that our true citizenship is in Heaven. In the Creed, we profess that we believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. If the death of a loved one has taken our hope, engaging in bereavement ministry or counselling could re-introduce that hope back into our lives. When we really accept that there is a Heaven, we know that through Christ’s mercy, our deceased loved ones are alive and well with God. Happy and alive with God in Heaven, it is not possible that our deceased loved ones would want us to be sad and miserable on earth. The dead who are happy and alive in Heaven, through the mercy of God, would want us to live happy and alive on earth with the hope of seeing them in Heaven.

This Christmas, we celebrate the birth of the one who is the source of hope for all peoples—Jesus Christ our Saviour. His birth announces that there is no person, no situation, which is without hope. No matter who we are, what we have done, or where we have been, or what we are enduring or lost; we are all God’s beloved daughters and sons. Throughout every moment of our journey—Jesus Christ—Emmanuel—is with us.

As we celebrate Christmas, the birth of the one who is the source of hope, and begin a Holy Year dedicated to hope, I would like to invite you to identify one goal of hope for the coming year. Where can you introduce hope into your life this coming year? I close with a few possibilities:

• If sin and shame have caused you to forget that you are a beloved daughter or son of God, allow the birth of Christ in a manger to lead you to rediscover God’s love for you and celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
• If life is not what you dreamed it would be, allow Christ’s birth in a manger to give you the hope to dream about the happiness that is possible in the life you can have with Him.
• If sickness or old age have robbed you of believing in your value, allow Christ to be born into your midst to remind you who you are and of your infinite value as one created with an enteral soul.
• Where the death of a loved one has brought sorrow and darkness into your life, pray to deepen your faith in eternal life so that you may be consoled by the certainty of seeing your loved one again in Heaven through the mercy of God.
• And finally, and most importantly of all, one of the best ways of rediscovering hope for ourselves, is by bringing it to others. By serving and caring for others, we learn that we each have an important place in God’s plan and we are all His beloved children. Each one of us is called to be a co-worker of hope with God on our pilgrimage to Heaven.

This Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of Him who is the source of all hope—Jesus Christ our Saviour—may His hope shine in your hearts that you may bring hope to others.

Merry Christmas!

Fr. Michael McGourty
Pastor—St. Peter’s Church, Toronto

P.S. I close by leaving you with the Jubilee Prayer:

Father in heaven,
may the faith you have given us
in your son, Jesus Christ, our brother,
and the flame of charity enkindled
in our hearts by the Holy Spirit,
reawaken in us the blessed hope
for the coming of your Kingdom.

May your grace transform us
into tireless cultivators of the seeds of the Gospel.
May those seeds transform from within both humanity and the whole cosmos
in the sure expectation
of a new heaven and a new earth,
when, with the powers of Evil vanquished,
your glory will shine eternally.

May the grace of the Jubilee
reawaken in us, Pilgrims of Hope,
a yearning for the treasures of heaven.
May that same grace spread
the joy and peace of our Redeemer
throughout the earth.
To you our God, eternally blessed,
be glory and praise for ever.
Amen.