A special year

Fr. Livio Tonello, director

Dear friends, 2025 is a special year: it is the Holy Year! An event that occurs every 25 years and marks the journey of the Church and Christians welcoming the extraordinary grace of God’s mercy. That is why the calendar pages present month by month the most significant Jubilee events involving certain categories of people: children, the sick, artists, sportsmen, youth, volunteers… Our journey will be marked by the celebration of God’s benevolence for humanity, walking together on the path of hope, as the Jubilee slogan “Pilgrims of Hope” urges. We are called to ask for the gift of hope, to mature hope to deal with disappointments and defeats, to make ourselves bearers of hope.

The whole life of faith is a pilgrimage, anongoing search for the Lord to experience his mercy. To one is excluded from crossing the threshold of love and regaining confidence, motivation, momentum. Every age of life, every professional category, every existential situation is a place in which to encounter Christ, the only one who can give true hope to the world. We think this especially for this our time marked by wars, conflicts and violence.

We first need to recognize the immense goodness present in our world, lest we be tempted to think ourselves overwhelmed by evil and violence. The “signs of the times”, which include the yearning of human hearts in need of God’s saving presence, ought to become signs of hope. One of these is certainly that of peace. Heedless of the horrors of the past, humanity is confronting yet another ordeal, as many peoples are prey to brutality and violence. Is it too much to dream that arms can fall silent and cease to rain down destruction and death? May the Jubilee remind us that those who are peacemakers will be called “children of God” (Mt 5:9). The need for peace challenges us all, and demands that concrete steps be taken. The jubilee events that mark the months remind us that each person, in his or her own life situation, is capable of hope. Through our choices, actions, projects, in the places where we live, we can become pilgrims of hope, passing it on to others.

The Universal Association of Saint Anthony, of which you are a member, fulfills this mission on your behalf as well, donating the funds it collects to give hope to those in difficulty. Each jubilee event that appears in the calendar is associated with a Charity work that the Association supports. It is s concrete way of translating the invitations of the Holy Year and making ourselves the dispensers of the trust that comes from God. It is also our contemporary and concrete way of renewing the spirit and care that Anthony expressed toward the fragile, the helpless, the needy. During his life he did not celebrate any Holy Year, but he experienced many pilgrimages, went through many doors of the heart, made holy every day of his life. Happy Jubilee, full of hope.