The Peace and All Good Column

Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer, OFM Conv., is the seventh Archbishop of Atlanta. In his award-winning column “Peace and All Good,” he shares homilies and pastoral reflections.

We live in difficult times, and the future seems even more uncertain. The peace that we yearn for appears so far from our reach as we see wars continuing to escalate in Ukraine and the Middle East and raging conflicts in so many other parts of the world. 

Our communities have been shaken by crime and violence. Large parts of our country have experienced the wrath of nature, from hurricanes to forest fires. We see people wandering our streets, living in poverty and not knowing where the next meal will come from. While we know that God is in control of all things at all times and in all places, we often feel frustrated because we do not understand God’s will.  

Just as beauty befits a lover, so God works all things together in a fitting, beautiful way according to his will. He is the artist; all of life is his mosaic. He is the great weaver who threads all things together to form an exquisite tapestry. St. Gregory of Nyssa writes, “For all eternity he put in men’s hearts the fact that they might never discover what God has done from the beginning right to the end.”  

God works all things together according to his wisdom, but we do not have the capacity to understand all he does. God’s works and ways make sense, just not always to us. Isaiah sums it up well when he writes: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.” 

We ask God for the grace to embrace the life we can see, the life he has given to us, and to enjoy it fully. And we must never lose hope. While the world in which we live is constantly changing, the good news is that “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever.” 

Jesus is the door to hope. He wants to enter into our hearts. And we must never forget that we are pilgrims on a journey. We do not have a lasting home on this earth. In God’s time, the world as we know it will pass away. For now, we take the words of the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes to heart: “I recognized that there is nothing better than to rejoice and to do well during life.” 

This is the logo chosen by the Vatican for the Holy Year 2025. Pope Francis has chosen the theme, “Pilgrims of Hope,” for the jubilee year, which is marked by pilgrimages, prayer, repentance and acts of mercy. (OSV News photo/Vatican Media)

“Hope does not disappoint.” With these words of St. Paul to the Romans, Pope Francis began a Papal Bull of Indiction announcing the year 2025 as a Jubilee of Hope, beginning on Christmas Eve, 2024 with the Opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica, and ending on Jan. 6, 2026, the Solemnity of the Epiphany.  

The Holy Father writes: “Everyone knows what it is to hope. In the heart of each person, hope dwells as the desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future may bring. Even so, uncertainty about the future may at times give rise to conflicting feelings, ranging from confident trust to apprehensiveness, from serenity to anxiety, from firm conviction to hesitation and doubt. Often we come across people who are discouraged, pessimistic and cynical about the future, as if nothing could possibly bring them happiness. For all of us, may the Jubilee be an opportunity to be renewed in hope.”   

History and meaning of jubilees 

Within our Catholic tradition, a jubilee is “a year of forgiveness of sins and also the punishment due to sin, it is a year of reconciliation between adversaries, of conversion and receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and consequently of solidarity, hope, justice, commitment to serve God with joy and in peace with our brothers and sisters. A jubilee year is above all the year of Christ, who brings life and grace to humanity.”   

In the past 25 years, we have celebrated several jubilees; the Great Jubilee of 2000, celebrating the two-thousandth anniversary of the Birth of Christ, and the extraordinary jubilees of 2013 (Year of Faith) and 2016 (Year of Mercy). The theme of the 2025 Jubilee is “Pilgrims of Hope.” Pilgrimage is of course a fundamental element of every jubilee. Setting out on a journey is traditionally associated with our human quest for meaning in life. A pilgrimage is a great help for rediscovering the value of silence, effort and simplicity of life.  

Pope Francis has decreed that on Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024, the Feast of the Holy Family, in every cathedral throughout the world, diocesan bishops are to celebrate the Holy Mass as the solemn opening of the Jubilee Year. I will celebrate the Eucharist at 10:30 a.m. that day at the Cathedral of Christ the King, Atlanta, the mother church of this archdiocese, and I invite you to join me there.   

In preparation for the Jubilee of Hope, I encourage you to read the Holy Father’s Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025, “Hope does not Disappoint.” You may find the document and other resources for the jubilee on the Vatican’s official website. Also, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website has several resources. There are links to both of these websites on the Archdiocese of Atlanta’s website. 

Even in the midst of a troubled world and uncertain times, the Holy Father invites us to look to the future with hope. In his own words: “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.”   

May that hope sustain each one of us and may the Lord grant us his peace!