An unrolled Torah scroll on a wooden table

Jubilee: Proclaiming the Lord’s Year of Favour

Wednesday 29th January 2025

This January, we have been marking the Jubilee for Communications by taking a closer look at our Gospel readings and what they reveal to us about our Christian call to share the Good News.

Over the past three weeks, we have been exploring the stories of the Epiphany, the Baptism of the Lord, and the Wedding at Cana to reflect on the manifestation of Jesus as the Word Incarnate and how that was proclaimed by key figures in the Gospels.

This week, we look back at Sunday’s Gospel, in which these two recurring themes are brought to the fore as we hear Jesus reading from the scroll of Isaiah.

Isaiah’s prophecy is one of hope; promising restoration – a great Jubilee – brought to the Jewish people by the Messiah.

With the words, “this text is being fulfilled today even as you listen“, Jesus’ message is clear: that he is the anointed, the holy one of Israel, sent to fulfil Isaiah’s prophecy and bring God’s love and healing to the Jewish people.

But when we consider this reading through the lens of the Incarnation and all we’ve reflected on this month, the passage takes on a new dimension.

Here, we see Jesus as “Jubilee” itself, foretold in his genealogy and made present through his very body: his flesh and blood.

In this way, Jesus not only points to himself as the one to bring God’s love and healing: but rather he is God’s love and healing, brought to us through his own body.

But the reading also brings with it a challenge when we remind ourselves of the words from Gaudium et Spes, which we explored in the second week of our series:

"The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear."

In this way, in union with Jesus through his body and blood, we are tasked to share in his mission of evangelisation, which we read in Sunday’s Gospel: “to bring good news”, to “set the downtrodden free”, and to “proclaim the Lord’s year of favour” – the Year of Jubilee.

A Challenge

As we bring our Jubilee for Communications to a close, we challenge you to take up Jesus’ call to mission this Jubilee Year.

In his homily for this Third Sunday of Ordinary Time in 2022, Pope Francis said:

Read box with text reading: "Brothers and sisters: let us ask ourselves: do we bear within our hearts this liberating image of God, the God of closeness, compassion and tenderness, or do we think of him as a merciless judge, an accountant who keeps a record of every moment of our lives? "Is ours a faith that generates hope and joy, or, among us, a faith still weighed down by fear, a fearful faith? What is the face of God that we proclaim in the Church?"

This Jubilee, we challenge you to reflect on what the image of God is to us and how we can proclaim the God of mercy, closeness, and compassion – revealed in January’s Gospels – through concrete actions this Holy Year.

Need some inspiration? We’ve come up with a few tips to help you get started!

  • Revisit Sunday’s Gospel as a family
  • Invite a friend to Mass
  • Visit a designated church and share a photo on social media using #salfordpilgrim
  • Ask Our Lady to intercede for someone you know
  • Begin a fundraising challenge
  • Let go of past hurts and reach out to an old friend
  • Begin our Pilgrim’s Passport challenge with your family.

Whether it is through our words, actions, prayers, or a renewed life reconciled to God, there are countless ways we can profess and live out our faith in our world today.

However you choose to observe this Year of Jubilee, we invite you to share it: to proclaim the beauty and goodness of this Year of Favour to all we meet.

Join us in March as we revisit the theme of “Proclaiming the Year of Favour” by venturing into the Book of Daniel.

Meanwhile, our Jubilee of Jubilees series continues next month as we celebrate the Jubilee for Interfaith and Ecumenism by exploring a little more about the Abrahamic Faith.

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