Journeying with Mary in the Jubilee Year 2025.

2025 is the jubilee Year following the Church's tradition of celebrating one every twenty five years. In the document declaring this jubilee year, Spes Non Confundit, Pope Francis exhorts everyone to let the year be “a moment of genuine personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, ‘’the door' (cf Jn. 10:7,9) of our salvation, whom the Church is charged to proclaim always, everywhere and to all as our ‘’hope’ (1 Tim 1:1).” The jubilee then is and should be about Jesus Christ. It is a time to build and/or deepen one's relationship with Jesus Christ, the Second person of the Trinity, the Son of God and son of Mary. The jubilee Year then is one “of hope… Jesus, our Hope.”

This echoes the words of Pope Benedict XVI who stated so beautifully what it means to be a Christian. He wrote: Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice of a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction (Deus Caritas Est). The jubilee Year then is a year of encounter with Jesus Christ. To be Christian is to be an Easter people.      

In John's Gospel, Christ declared: “I am the Way. the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” Quite clearly, Jesus Christ is the Way to the Father. This begs the question: what is the way to Jesus Christ. Many don't ask this further question. Our faith teaches that the Sacraments are the obvious way to Christ. Through these channels of grace instituted by Christ Himself, we encounter Him. The most prominent of these sacraments is the Eucharist which is the source and summit of our Christian life. We encounter Christ at every mass. In the priest who is acting in the person of Christ. We meet Him in and through His Word proclaimed through the Readings. Remember: This is the Word of the Lord and the Gospel of the Lord. Of course we meet Him in Holy Communion. Even in the people of God gathered: Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am in their midst. 

Christ Himself said: Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do unto me. In Spes Non Confundit nos 10 - 15, Pope Francis lists some of these ways by which we can encounter Jesus: a) Prisoners b) the sick at home or in the hospital c) the young d) migrants e) the elderly who frequently feel lonely and abandoned f) the poor who often lack the essentials of life. 

We get to Christ through Mary, His mother. During this jubilee Year one way to encounter Jesus is to encounter Mary. This is beautifully expressed in the theologically rich expressions: Through Mary to Jesus and Mary Stella Maris - Lead us to Christ. One can sense the unease of the Marian skeptics. If the jubilee is meant as an encounter with Jesus, why the proposal to journey with Mary? It is not a Marian year. Why inject Mary into everything? 

The simple reason is in the fact that there is an intrinsic link between Jesus and Mary, between son and mother. It is a very simple truth and fact of human relationships that sons and their mothers are often so close. In some traditional African cultures where the traditional ruler, the Fon/Chief wields power, the Queen Mother occupies a position of prominence especially in matrilineal societies. In a certain negative sense, the stranglehold of mother-in-laws the blessing or curse of many marriages elucidates this point 

Nobody drives this point home more beautifully than St. Pope John Paul II who himself harbored doubts about the intensity of devotion to Mary. He wrote: I began to question my devotion to Mary believing that if it became too great, it might end up compromising the supremacy of worship owed to Jesus. He learnt from St Louis de Montfort, who wrote that all true Marian piety was Christocentric, or Christ-centered - all true devotion to Mary necessarily pointed us to Christ and through Christ who is both Son of God and son of Mary into the mystery of God Himself. Rather than being an obstacle to an encounter  with the living Christ, Mary is a privileged vehicle for meeting Christ the Lord. 

Pope Francis through his homilies for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God celebrated on January 1st every year (2014 to 2024) provides perspective on which to ground this proposal. In 2015, he emphasized the inseparability of Christ and Mary. “There is a very close relationship between them as there is between every child  and his or her mother. The flesh of Christ (caro) - which, as Tertullian says, is the hinge (cardo) of our salvation - was knit together in the womb of Mary (cf. Psalm 139:13). This inseparability is also clear from the fact that, Mary chosen before hand to be the Mother of the Redeemer shared intimately in his entire mission remaining at her son's side to the end on Calvary. Francis loudly proclaims: Jesus cannot be understood without Mary. 

Vatican II taught us that when the mother is honoured the son is duly known, loved and glorified. Hence, in seeking to encounter Jesus Christ in the jubilee Year through Mary we will know, love and glorify Jesus. 

Christ Himself points us or rather leaves us with his mother and his mother with us. And in that famous line in the miracle at the wedding feast at Cana, Mary points us to her son, Christ: Do whatever he tells you. These two passages found only in John's Gospel establish for us the raison d'etre for invoking Mary to journey with us. To claim a direct personal relationship that bypasses and/or circumvents Mary is at best reductive and delusional. If your journey to Christ does not meet Mary then clearly you are on the wrong path. Christ came through Mary so that we can come to Him through her. 

One finds an incredible wealth of resource in St Pope John Paul II's Apostolic letter in 2002, Rosarium Virginis Mariae where he offers a passionate foundation for the rosary. The image of the rosary as a school of Mary is so powerful and contains the essence of what devotion to Mary accomplishes. In Chapter One of that “must read” document, John Paul II invites all to enroll in the school of Mary. It is a school of contemplation whereby when we pray the rosary for example we are contemplating the face of Christ in union with and at the school of His Most Holy Mother. St Pope John Paul II states that “Mary is a model of contemplation given that in a unique way the face of Jesus belongs to Mary. It was in her womb that Christ was formed receiving from her a human resemblance which points to an even greater spiritual closeness. No one has ever devoted himself to the contemplation of the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary.” 

Mary treasured these things and stored them in her heart is a verse repeated twice in the Gospel. (Luke 2:19 & 51). Mary's memories are precious and priceless. She was there from the hidden beginnings in the womb through his life to the tomb and Resurrection. Who better then than Mary can teach us about Jesus Christ? And as St John Paul II noted. “Among creatures no one knows Christ better than Mary; no one can introduce us to a profound knowledge of his mystery better than his mother.” (14) We learn from Mary the best teacher about Christ. 

When we journey with Mary we are praying to Christ, says John Paul II. Pope Francis casts the jubilee Year as a pilgrimage. We encounter Christ in and through a pilgrimage. The jubilee is a pilgrimage of hope. It is a year of Journeying. The Gospels portray Mary as a traveler. After the annunciation, Mary left in haste to visit her cousin Elizabeth. She brings Christ to Elizabeth. Then she journeys to Bethlehem for the census where she gives birth to Christ. Next, she escapes to Egypt carrying her new born baby, Jesus and returns home. She travels to Jerusalem and brings Christ to the temple. Remember the Presentation. Then during annual religious festivals, Mary and Joseph would bring Jesus to the temple and during one of these, He got missing and was later on found. She journeyed with her son to Calvary. It is from this cross that Christ  offers his mother to the care of his beloved apostle John and offers John to the maternal protection of Mary. In his 2014 homily, Pope Francis summarizes this by saying Mary has always been present in the hearts, the piety and the pilgrimage of faith of the Christian people. The Church journeys through time…and on this journey she proceeds along the path already trodden by the virgin Mary. (Redemptoris Mater, 3). Our journey of faith is the same as that of Mary and so we feel that she is particularly close to us. As far as faith, the hinge of the Christian Life is concerned, the Mother of God shared our condition.

Our pilgrimage of faith has been inseparably linked to Mary ever since Jesus dying on the Cross gave her to us as our Mother, saying “Behold your Mother!” (Jn. 19:27). These words serve as a testament bequeathing to the world a mother. When the faith of the disciples was most tested by difficulties and uncertainties, Jesus entrusted them to Mary who was the first to believe and whose faith would never fail. (Jan 2014).

Welcoming the mother into our lives is not a matter of devotion but a requirement of faith: If we want to be Christians, we must be Marians, that is children of Mary. During this jubilee Year then let us dedicate time to journey with Mary to encounter Christ. 

And as Pope Francis states in Spes Non Confundit:

Hope finds its supreme witness in the Mother of God. In the Blessed Virgin, we see that hope is not naive optimism but a gift of grace amid the realities of life...

I am confident that everyone, especially the suffering and those most in need, will come to know the closeness of Mary, the most affectionate of mothers, who never abandons her children and who, for the holy people of God, is “a sign of certain hope and comfort”. [21]