One of the most significant features of a Jubilee Year in the Catholic tradition is the Pilgrimage.
For centuries, the practice of pilgrimage has allowed Christians to respond to a stirring in their hearts, stepping forward and making a journey in hope of an encounter with the Lord. The Latin root of the word hints at crossing boundaries and walking across distances… but it is more than physical space that is crossed. On a pilgrimage, the interior part of the person is also changed through encounters: encounters with their travel companions, encounters with Jesus Christ.
In his public ministry, Jesus knew how physical, tangible things helped us to understand, and when he healed or taught he used physical objects (such as the paste/mud he used to heal the blind man, c.f. John 9:1-7) and familiar imagery (e.g. the vine in John 15). Things and places matter, and they help us, through something we can see and touch, to understand mysteries that are a little harder to see and touch. The Church learns how to teach and to heal from Jesus and uses the Sacraments that he gave us as physical signs that in a mysterious way bring into effect the very mysteries they signify.
Pilgrimages are one way of doing this. Places of grace are a gift given through the Church as a way of using the physical to impart the spiritual – the Holy Doors at St Peter’s Basilica, and many other special locations across the world, will be pilgrimage sites for the Jubillee Year of Hope in 2025. We are called to take up our mat and to walk like paralytic beside the pool of Bethesda, John 5:8. Notice that to decide to walk, to set out, is a response to a call from the Lord! In our own lives, that call may be as gentle as a desire to go and see a special place.
Not all of us will be able to get to the Holy Doors in Vatican City, and so we have local pilgrimage sites as well, to make a pilgrimage possible for every family, couple or individual circumstance.
In the Diocese of Broken Bay, in addition to our Cathedral Parish, we have 3 shrines with different prayer intentions attached, and with different patron saints to invoke. We have produced a Pilgrim Passport for those of you who wish to pilgrimage to all of the Shrines of Hope throughout the Jubilee Year –find out how to get yours!
1.The Shrine of Hope for Families at Gosford Parish (under the patronage of St John Paul II)
2.The Shrine of Hope for the Youth at Chatswood Parish (under the patronage of Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati)
3.The Shrine of Hope for Priests at Manly Freshwater Parish (under the patronage of St John Vianney)
Check out each of the Shrine of Hope pages to find out more about what is happening at each Shrine!
