Word to the Wise
Saturday, August 1, 2015 - Saturday in the 17th Week in Ordinary Time
[Lev 25:1, 8-17 and Matt 14:1-12]This fiftieth year you shall make sacred by proclaiming liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when every one of you shall return to his own property, every one to his own family estate. In this fiftieth year, your year of jubilee, you shall not sow, or shall you reap the aftergrowth or pick the grapes from the untrimmed vines......[Leviticus]
AUGUST 1st ST. ALPHONSUS LIGOURI, CSSR [founder of the Redemptorists]
There are times when we would all like to "start all over again." That is basically what the year of jubilee would do, as described by Leviticus! Scripture scholars point out that we have no real evidence that the jubilee laws were ever observed. In any case, the provisions about buying back property sold since the last jubilee, etc. would have been difficult if not impossible to enforce. Whatever happened in this regard, we do still have the notion of a "jubilee," a special time of celebration to mark the passage of time. Couples celebrating 50th wedding anniversaries or religious celebrating 50 years of profession are referred to as "jubilarians." Institutions celebrate jubilees as well. The friars of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) will begin a special year of jubilee this Fall, to celebrate 800 years of existence. We were officially approved by Pope Honorius III on December 22, 1216!
Popes are known to proclaim special years of jubilee. The faithful could obtain special spiritual benefits during this time by performing particular religious acts. Pope Francis has proclaimed a special jubilee of Mercy, to begin this Advent.
We are creatures of time and space. Somehow, the idea of a jubilee seems to me an acknowledgment of time as something we usually take for granted, like breathing, until we realize that we may be "running out" of it. Perhaps some of us who are growing older greet jubilees with mixed feelings, but a celebration is a celebration. It won't hurt us to be jubilant about God's blessing of years. AMEN
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