The Cross teaches us about hope

The holy year in Idaho begins with veneration of Jubilee Cross

A liturgy opening the holy year was celebrated by Bishop Peter at the doors of the Cathedral on Dec 29.

(ICR  photo/Vero Gutiérrez)

By Tish O’Hagan

For the ICR

Jubilee 2025, themed “Pilgrims of Hope,” began in Idaho on Sunday, Dec. 29, when Bishop Peter Christensen opened the cathedral doors and invited the people to venerate and process behind the Jubilee Cross. It will remain in the cathedral sanctuary for the entire jubilee year so that the faithful may continue to venerate it as they mark this Year of Hope. It will serve as the symbol of our hope and a primary destination of our diocesan pilgrimages.

One of the three theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity), hope is described in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817). Hope recognizes that we will encounter trouble and confusion but does not despair because Christian hope is enabled by a trust in God’s gift of salvation, a gift we can receive because of the death and resurrection of God’s son and the further gift of the Holy Spirit.

This is perhaps why Pope Francis asked the jubilee pilgrims to follow a Cross and why the Cross symbolizes this jubilee year of hope. The Cross is a paradox that is the essence of Christian hope—a symbol of apparent failure and glorious exaltation and the ultimate reminder of God’s infinite love. To realize this love, the Christian must confront the worldly view of the Cross that sees Jesus’ death as failure, and embrace the opposite view: rather than death, life; rather than failure, triumph.

Faith enables hope; the happiness that hope engenders enables charity. Jesus tells his followers He is giving them a new commandment and asks them to “love [be in charity with] one another as I have loved you.” His commandment is new because the love He is speaking about is new, all-consuming and sacrificial, and Jesus will need to demonstrate it on the Cross for His followers to understand it. Without the crucifixion, they would never have grasped what Jesus asked them. Christians today have had millennia to comprehend this kind of love; we have made the cross our central symbol, a symbol of the hope we gain when we choose to lose all in order to gain all.

As we journey on this pilgrimage of hope, encountering joy and sorrow, we may be guided by St. Teresa of Avila’s beautiful prayer: “Hope, O my soul, hope. You know neither the day nor the hour. Watch carefully, for everything passes quickly, even though your impatience makes doubtful what is certain, and turns a very short time into a long one. Dream that the more you struggle, the more you prove the love you bear your God, and the more you will rejoice one day with your Beloved, in a happiness and rapture that can never end.”

As this year opens, Catholics may want to begin their own jubilee with further reflection on hope itself.

More information about the Jubilee Year of Hope can be found on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website (usccb.org/jubilee2025), on the Vatican website (iubilaeum2025.va), and on our diocesan website (dioceseofboise.org/jubilee).

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