I usually begin drafting my columns when I am at home – sitting at my desk and surrounded by familiar objects and sounds. I am starting to compose this particular column with the view of Saint Peter’s Basilica in the background and the noises of Rome coming into my room. Yet the issues are the same from home or from Rome. We are about to change seasons – not just meteorological seasons, but liturgical seasons. Our life of prayer is highly influenced by the natural world. It is harvesting time, and the days are growing shorter. There is a chill in the air. The Sunday readings grow more ominous – filled with warnings to be alert and attentive – not just to the world around us, but to the changes that are to occur within us.
We are about to enter Advent, often referred to as a season of joyful expectations. This Advent will also usher in the beginning of the Jubilee Year for 2025. The theme for this Jubilee Year is Pilgrims of Hope. The city of Rome is already gearing up for a great festive moment of prayer and pilgrimages. New venues for transportation, restaurants and shops are now being prepared to help the anticipated 40-plus million pilgrims who will travel to Rome filled with hope and an eagerness to transition from the recent past with its too frequent wars, the deadly pandemic and the violence that has so often been the hallmark of our present-day world. We need the hope that a Holy Year brings to serve as a positive goal for tomorrow. We too here in the Archdiocese of Washington will designate special moments and events to observe the Holy Year.
Advent is an appropriate prelude to the Holy Year ahead as it remains an annual liturgical hopeful season, and it will usher in an entire year marked by our longing for the hope that the Lord promises. We will mark the Holy Year here in the Archdiocese of Washington by designating nine parishes spread throughout the archdiocese where special prayer events and observations will allow our people to follow this Year of Hope with great local spiritual opportunities. The list of those parishes will be published closer to the beginning of Advent.
(Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, writes his “What I Have Seen and Heard” column for the Catholic Standard and Spanish-language El Pregonero newspapers and websites of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.)
