REFLECTIONS TODAY
The theme of Jubilee Year 2025 is Peregrinantes in Spem, “Pilgrims of Hope.” “Pilgrimage” evokes an extraordinary journey to a place considered special, one undertaken as a quest for a unique motive, and at times a journey to the unknown. It can also refer to one’s journey through life, hoping to reach one’s ultimate destination.
Pilgrimages symbolize the experience of homo viator, of a human being who sets out on his journey through space and time. We are all pilgrims on earth. And our destination is something beyond this earth, beyond this life. We long to reach the “promised land,” a destination that lasts, where our weary souls can have a perfect rest, where our deepest desires are at last granted. The Letter to the Hebrews explains why we journey: “Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come” (13:14).
Christian pilgrims in the Jubilee Year visit pilgrimage churches and shrines: the four major basilicas in Rome and other churches designated as such in the dioceses all over the world. This is directed to the meeting with God in his house, “a house of prayer for all peoples” (Is 56:7). The pilgrim meets the mystery of God and discovers his countenance of love and mercy. In receiving the sacrament of Reconciliation, the pilgrim gains the grace of indulgence. The pilgrim repeats the experience of the Prodigal Son in sin who, experiencing the hardness of trials and of penance, arises and embraces the sacrifices of the trip back to his father’s house. But he also experiences the joy of the embrace of the Father, rich in mercy, who leads him from death to life.
Christian pilgrims could learn from the journey of the Magi in today’s solemnity of the Lord’s Epiphany. Seeing an extraordinary star that shone when Jesus was born, they journeyed from their distant countries in the east and reached Jerusalem where they had an audience with King Herod, thinking that the “newborn king of the Jews” would be found in the palace. But Scriptures and the reappearing star directed them to a house in Bethlehem, where in an ambiance of utter simplicity, without any trace of royalty, they recognized the child Jesus as the Messiah-King, did him homage, and offered their gifts. They then departed for their journey by another way. “Another way” was not just about not taking their former route. Rather, knowing Christ, they had a change of perspective about the nature of kingship and power, about how God reveals himself in Christ, and about welcoming “outsiders” like them among his chosen people.
Knowing from Scriptures that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, why were the Magi the only ones who set out to find him? Why did the chief priests and the scribes remain unmoved? Pope Benedict XVI offers this reflection: “What is the reason why some men see and find, while others do not? What opens the eyes and the heart? What is lacking in those who remain indifferent, in those who point out the road but do not move? We can answer: too much self-assurance, the claim to knowing reality, the presumption of having formulated a definitive judgment on everything closes them and makes their hearts insensitive to the newness of God. They are certain of the idea that they have formed of the world and no longer let themselves be involved in the intimacy of an adventure with a God who wants to meet them. They place their confidence in themselves rather than in him, and they do not think it possible that God could be so great as to make himself small so as to come really close to us” (Epiphany, 6 January 2010).
Source: “365 Days with the Lord 2025,” St. Paul’s, 7708 St. Paul Rd., SAV, Makati City (Phils.); Tel.: 632-895-9701; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.stpauls.ph.