Celebrating the Jubilee Year of HopeJune 16, 2025

Celebrating the Jubilee Year of Hope

We are living in a difficult time right now. Every day brings us news of another tragedy, another devastating event, another hurting person. In our country and world we are confronted with images of natural disasters and people suffering at the hands of those filled with hatred and prejudice. In the midst of all this, Pope Francis proclaimed 2025 the jubilee year of hope. We need to open wide our minds and hearts to live in the expectancy of a new heaven and a new earth.

I have taken a step in this direction by using the “Hope Portal,” by Krista Tippett, available on the On Being podcast feed and Substack. Krista Tippett — Hope Portal, Episode 1 | The On Being Project. I encourage you to access this compelling program. Krista offers her listeners and readers a hope-filled way of engaging with life. “I see hope as a defining, recurrent, ever-present feature of every wise and graceful person, every wise and graceful life I’ve come into conversation with.” She describes hope as “an orientation, . . . a way of seeing and moving through the world. And it is a choice. In the face of profound, reasonable despair, it is a calling, it is a practice, a muscle. And, like any muscle, it can be flexed and strengthened.” (see above)

When I reflect on hope as an orientation this broadens my thinking from seeing hope as a static virtue to seeing it as a calling from a loving God who walks with me as I learn to practice hope daily. An orientation reminds me that living with hope colors the way I perceive all of reality; it suffuses my perception and allows me to experience peace.

When I compare hope to a muscle I understand that this orientation can grow stronger through use or weaken when I forget to nurture it with God’s grace. Here are several suggestions I plan to consider doing to bolster my orientation to hope:

• setting an intention for each day that focuses me on finding causes for hope
• choosing a Scripture reading with a theme of hope for lectio divina
• creating a “Hope Chest” filled with “hope” quotations for me to reflect on
• exploring “emergence,” a concept found in philosophy, systems theory, science, and art to explore how it might relate to hope (see the “Hope Portal, Episode Two” Hope Portal - adrienne maree brown | The On Being Project)
• reading the papal document by which Pope Francis decreed the Jubilee Year - Spes non confundit - Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025 (9 May 2024) | Francis

May hope grow in your heart through the grace of our loving God!

Sister Virginia DeVinne