Pope Francis's Jubilee: Why He's Focusing on Mercy and Forgiveness

JUBILEE OF MERCY –

Much has been said so far about the Jubilee as an event, with the 33 million pilgrims expected, the resulting economic opportunities, the public works that needed to be done in Rome, and the fear of ISIS attacks. But the Jubilee, which will open on the day of the Immaculate Conception, is first and foremost a religious, spiritual event, as Angelo Scelzo, deputy director of the Holy See Press Office, reminds us in a book (Il Giubileo, la Misericordia di Francesco. Libreria Editrice Vaticana) that reconstructs its various aspects.

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JUBILEE 2015 –

And Rome's Jubilee will be Pope Francis's, with the paradigms of his pontificate, his language, and his pastoral message. Starting with the key word that accompanies it: mercy. The only effective antidote to the nihilism, cynicism, and indifference that overwhelm us. Former Bishop Bergoglio defined mercy thus: "A fundamental law that dwells in the heart of every person, when they look with sincere eyes at the brother they encounter on the path of life ." Simple words, in the style of this Pope, but extremely profound and also very demanding.

Mercy is the hallmark of a Christian who comes out of his shell and faces, without reticence, the relationship with the other, whoever he may be.. In the pastoral mission of Pope Francis it is the key to bring us closer to the peripheries of humanity (always remember the phrase with which he introduced himself immediately after his election: "They took me from the end of the world"), places
of injustice, abuse, violence and poverty, but also of profound existential loneliness.

The ground where the Christian acts, in his daily life, and where the Church exercises its function, another expression of Pope Francis, of a "field hospital".
In Scelzo's book, mercy is also expressed in works: giving food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, shelter to the homeless, visiting the sick, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, burying the dead..

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JUBILEE OF MERCY 2015 –

All are inspired by closeness, direct contact, and a loving embrace with the least, who in the Kingdom of Heaven, according to the message of the Beatitudes, will be first, as Pope Francis already considers them on earth. Then there are the seven spiritual works of mercy: to counsel the doubtful, to teach the ignorant, to admonish sinners, to console the afflicted, to forgive offenses, to bear with troublesome people, to pray to God for the living and the deadReading them sends shivers down my spine. For the commitment to which Christians are called, where mercy encompasses not only forgiveness but even tolerance for those we truly cannot stand.
Pope Francis, as a good Jesuit, in his essential simplicity overlooks no detail. It's not necessary to label him a "revolutionary" pontiff to recognize his ambition for renewal, at a time when the Church is suffering, also from the shadows of filth that have distanced it from popular sentiment and faith. And it's certainly no coincidence of the calendar that Bergoglio's Jubilee opens on the same day the Second Vatican Council closed, half a century ago.

What does it mean? A line of continuity with the conciliar turning point, desired by Pope John, even against the opinion of a section of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and concluded by Paul VI. A Council that has not yet borne full fruit, also because the Church's time is not that of civil life, and it has not been fully metabolized by the people of God. Quite the opposite.

Christianity, a religion of peace, always and in any case, suffers from an incomplete relationship with modernity, the great challenge launched by the Second Vatican Council. And Jubilee mercy, "the path that unites God to man" in the words of Pope Francis, is a compass for an open Church , one that does not abandon humanity to its destiny and its self-destructive temptations.

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