by Bruce Murphy (December 10, 1999)
Read Revelations 21:1-2,10-26, 22:1-5
For six years now, the Church has been preparing for the Great Jubilee of our Lord Jesus Christ. It has been a time of reflection upon our relationship with the trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It has been a time of reflecting on our response to the Trinity and of the call of our Lord to serve him and his people. Within the Catholic Charismatic Renewal this has taken on a deeper call to evangelization, witnessing to others and calling them to a deeper relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ, while looking at our own lives and repenting of the ways that we individually and communally did not work to bring about the kingdom of God and unity in the body of Christ.
We stand here this night just 14 days before entering the Great Jubilee of our Lord and we must continue to prepare our hearts and seek the wisdom of God for our lives. All of this preparation should bring us closer to the Father through his Son Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. It should bear fruit in the gifts and graces that he has been pouring out into our hearts. We must ask ourselves if the prophetic message given to the renewal is alive in our hearts as we prepare to enter into this great time of celebration.
It is important to understand what Jubilee is all about. Let’s first take a look at where the term Jubilee came from. In Leviticus 25 we read:
“ The LORD said to Moses on Mount Sinai, "Speak to the Israelites and tell them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, let the land, too, keep a sabbath for the LORD. For six years you may sow your field, and for six years prune your vineyard, gathering in their produce. But during the seventh year the land shall have a complete rest, a sabbath for the LORD, when you may neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. The after growth of your harvest you shall not reap, nor shall you pick the grapes of your untrimmed vines in this year of sabbath rest for the land. While the land has its sabbath, all its produce will be food equally for you yourself and for your male and female slaves, for your hired help and the tenants who live with you, and likewise for your livestock and for the wild animals on your land. "Seven weeks of years shall you count--seven times seven years--so that the seven cycles amount to forty-nine years. Then, on the tenth day of the seventh month let the trumpet resound; on this, the Day of Atonement, the trumpet blast shall re-echo throughout your land. This fiftieth year you shall make sacred by proclaiming liberty in the land for all its inhabitants.”
We first are given a sense that there are special times and seasons that the Lord calls us into. He also tells us that Jubilee is for everyone and everything. It is meant to be a rest and/or restoration of all created things. In this passage, the Lord continues to speak telling about the produce of the land and not planting during this year, restoring property and setting free slaves. Then the Lord has this to say,:
“Do not deal unfairly, then; but stand in fear of your God. I, the LORD, am your God. "Observe my precepts and be careful to keep my regulations, for then you will dwell securely in the land. The land will yield its fruit and you will have food in abundance, so that you may live there without worry. Therefore, do not say, 'What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we do not then sow or reap our crop?' I will bestow such blessings on you in the sixth year that there will then be crop enough for three years.”
God tells us that his ways are to be kept and that if we are obedient, he will provide for us and give to us in abundance. Our focus is to follow God. In this year we are told that even helping others must be done so without asking for return. The scriptures continue with:
“Do not exact interest from your countryman either in money or in kind, but out of fear of God let him live with you. You are to lend him neither money at interest nor food at a profit. I, the LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God. "When, then, your countryman becomes so impoverished beside you that he sells you his services, do not make him work as a slave. Rather, let him be like a hired servant or like your tenant, working with you until the jubilee year, when he, together with his children, shall be released from your service and return to his kindred and to the property of his ancestors."
Our love for each other must reflect the love God has for each of us. We are to treat each other with such respect and love. He finishes by talking about those who have to sell themselves into bondage to provide for their families. They can redeem themselves or a clansman can redeem them during their time of bondage, but in the Jubilee year they are to be released. We are to understand that everything that is, belongs to the Lord. The Lord finishes this chapter by saying:
“For to me the Israelites belong as servants; they are servants of mine, because I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I, the LORD, your God.”
Everything belongs to God and God is in the business of reconciling people to himself and to others. That is what Jesus showed us when he came among us and that is what he calls us to be. The church calls us to see this as our calling.
Pope John Paul II says, “The best preparation for the new millennium, therefore, can only be expressed in a renewed commitment to apply, as faithfully as possible, the teachings of Vatican II to the life of every individual and of the whole church.” Tertio Millenio Adveniente
He called the church to the following even more during the Jubilee:
a) Underlies all the councils and the general, regional, national and diocesan synods.
b) In this century especially, with the two world wars, Pope Paul VI in his Apostolic Exhoration “Evangelii Nuntiandi” laid down the means of this.
c) Calls for a commitment by Catholic Christians to renew the Lords call in the gospel where he said, “Go into all the world proclaiming the gospel to every nation baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them whatsoever I have commanded you”.
d) This calls each individual to live out their baptismal promises and come to a personal encounter with the living Jesus Christ.
e) By doing the above, it is meant to usher in a new Springtime of Christianty
f) In Ecclesia in America (pg 86), the American bishops ratified this.
a) Aimed at an increased sensitivity to all that the Spirit is saying to the Church and to the Churches, as well as to individuals through charisms meant to serve the whole community.
b) Purpose is to emphasize what the Spirit is suggesting to the different communities, from the smallest ones, such as the family, to the largest ones, such as nations and international organizations, taking into account cultures, societies and sound traditions.
c) We are called to full docility to the Holy Spirit who is Lord with the Father and Son.
a) The Trinity: To give glory to the Trinity from whom everything in the world and in history comes and to whom everything returns.
b) Eucharist: International Eucharistic Congress will take place in Rome during this year seeing in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Savior, who took flesh in Mary’s womb twenty centuries ago, who continues to offer himself to humanity as the source of divine life.
c) Christian Unity: It is also meant to be a meeting of all Christians in this year in the proper sense of fraternal cooperation and wishing to acknowledge the joy shared by all the disciples of Christ.
d) Pilgrimages: Each of us is to prepare even more by making a pilgrimage, if possible, to the Holy Land or Rome or to some other place that sheds the grace of God in the hearts of his people.
For each of us in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, the national committee has proposed that we concentrate on the following to show unity in our commitment to the church and those things that I mentioned above. They have asked us to commit to the following:
I would also add that if you cannot attend this conference, then you might try to go to the one in Steubenville this year.
We must give the Lord our full permission to use us as he sees fit and to let him into those areas of our lives where we still rebel against him. If we do not, he will not be able to bear the fruit he wants to in our lives. Remember the image of the young rich man. He came seeking to follow Jesus, but when Jesus asked him to go and sell all he had, he turned and left in sorrow. We don’t know whether this young man later said yes or no, but he missed out on a great opportunity which the Lord was trying to lead him to. What is it that we value above God? Are we willing to let go of it and let God really work in our lives? If we do, what a real celebration the Jubilee will be. What grace in abundance does he have for those who will follow in obedience.
As the Lord has told us in prophecy here before, this is a time of great grace for the Church. More than ever, we have been called by God, by the Church and even here tonight to surrender to the docility of the Holy Spirit. Mary, the Mother of God, gave to us a very great example giving her yes to God so that through the Holy Spirit, the greatest gift to all mankind, Jesus, might come into our very lives. During this Advent season, are we spending time meditating upon that?
We must ask ourselves if we are willing to pay the price with our lives, our talents, our treasures or even our mites, totally giving ourselves as Jesus did, so that the whole world may know and receive the gift of life and eternal salvation. There is only one answer to all that rips people’s lives apart, Jesus the Nazarean, Jesus, the only Son of God. We must surrender our families, our parishes, our dioceses, our prayer groups and our communities to the docility of the Holy Spirit. It is only then that we can live in the truth and show the world that Jesus is real. (Chariscenter newsletter)
Let us remember what sacred scripture tells us in Matthew 22:37-39: "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments." To disobey them is to commit the greatest sin.
In Christian Unity then, let us remember and fully acknowledge that the world will only know Jesus, when our love for one another is reflected in these two great commandments spoken by our Lord himself and we join ourselves to the Church and its great mission given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us enter fully this Year of Jubilee in the power of the Holy Spirit lifting high the name of Jesus and giving glory to God the Father.