OAPCE
Christmas 2024 message from the Liaison Bishop
✠ Yvan Mathieu, SM
Dear members of the Ontario Association of Parents in Catholic Education (OAPCE),
The first days of December and the first signs of winter remind us that Christmas is only a few days away. This Christmas 2024, like all the other Christmases we celebrated before, Christians from the whole world will commemorate the Nativity of Christ. But this year’s Christmas celebration will be different. It will mark the beginning of a new Jubilee Year for the Catholic Church.
The word Jubilee comes the Hebrew word Yobel, the ram’s horn that is used the beginning of a special feast in the Jewish liturgical calendar. In this calendar, every seventh year is a sabbatical year. “Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in their yield; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of complete rest for the land, a sabbath for the LORD: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.” (Lev. 25:3-4) After “seven weeks of years, seven times seven years,” (Lev. 25:8) “you shall have the trumpet sounded loud.” (Lev. 25:9) “And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you.” (Lev. 25:10-11) “It was intended to be marked as a time to re-establish a proper relationship with God, with one another, and with all of creation, and involved the forgiveness of debts, the return of misappropriated land, and a fallow period for the fields.”
Following this Biblical tradition, “in 1300, Pope Boniface VIII called the first Jubilee, also known as a ‘Holy Year,’ since it is a time in which God’s holiness transforms us.” It was originally celebrated every hundred years. But in 1470, Pope Pius XI decided that there would be a Holy Year every twenty-five years. This Christmas eve, the trumpet (yobel) will sound to mark the 2025th anniversary of Jesus’ Nativity. “The 2025 Jubilee will officially open on December 24, 2024 at 7pm, with the rite of Opening of the Holy Door of the Papal Basilica of St. Peter by the Holy Father, who will then preside over the celebration of the Night Mass of the Lord’s Birth inside the Basilica.”
As “parents in Catholic Education,” we are thus invited to celebrate this Christmas in a very special way with our children. Pope Francis wrote: “We must fan the flame of hope that has been given us, and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and far-sighted vision. The forthcoming Jubilee can contribute greatly to restoring a climate of hope and trust as a prelude to the renewal and rebirth that we so urgently desire; that is why I have chosen as the motto of the Jubilee, Pilgrims of Hope. This will indeed be the case if we are capable of recovering a sense of universal fraternity.”
Just like the shepherds of Christmas, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” (Luke 2:15) Let us become Pilgrims of Hope, collaborating with God to build a world of Hope and Peace.
Merry Christmas to you all!
✠ Yvan Mathieu, SM
