Pilgrims of Hope
The Jubilee Year 2025: Pilgrims of Hope
On Friday 24th January, we will launch the Jubilee Year 2025: Pilgrims of Hope, in school. We prepared for this during the Year of Prayer last year, including looking at the Our Father in more depth, praying it using Makaton and learning the official Jubilee Year hymn. Our Junior Choir also sung this with other schools in the Deanery during a special singing festival in Summer 2024. When Fr Daniel led Mass on the first of the Spring term, he also spoke about the Jubilee Year and gave us a special Jubilee blessing.
What is a Jubilee Year?
- An important moment in the life of the church that happens every 25 years.
- It is a time of renewal, celebration, rest and freedom.
- Pope Francis has called this Jubilee Year, Pilgrims of Hope. It is an invitation to renew our hope, a hope which comes from knowing that God loves each one of us, whoever we are.
- He has asked us to be a hope for others, by putting Catholic Social Teaching into action through caring for our common home and supporting our brothers and sisters who experience war, hunger or poverty.
Can you begin to think of how the different Catholic Social Teaching principles could link to Pope Francis’s call for us to be a hope to others?
At the beginning of the Spring term, representatives from our pupil leadership groups met to think of ways in which we can utilise all our gifts and talents to help mark the Jubilee Year: Pilgrims of Hope. We looked at what ‘Hope’ means to us and the ways in which we can show this in our home, school and parish community. The children shared so many great ideas and we look forward to putting these into an action plan. Many thanks to our House Captains for their excellent suggestion for the leadership groups to work together in this way. We will launch the Jubilee Year with a special Celebration of the Word on Friday 24th January. You can find out more about this Holy year in our weekly prayer information slides which are shared with children and parents. Please also visit https://www.cbcew.org.uk/jubilee-2025/ to find out more information.
On Friday 17th January, Fr Daniel led our Celebration of the Word. To help prepare us for this Jubilee Year, he helped us to understand the meaning behind the Pilgrims of Hope logo. We also listened to last Sunday’s Gospel and was given the mission to think of ways in which we can spread joy to others. One way in which Fr Daniel said we can show joy is to smile at those that we meet. We finished our Celebration of the Word by singing the official Jubilee Hymn. Fr Daniel and Mr Cox said that if you smile when you sing, your voice sounds even better– after hearing the children sing with big smiles on their faces, I can assure you that this is true! Whilst talking about the theme of Hope, Fr Daniel spoke of the quote ‘Hope is like an anchor for the soul’ from Hebrews. This piece of Scripture really resonated with the children. Our Prayer and Liturgy team wrote this on our new chalkboards in the playground and the children in 6K chose to include it in their Celebration of the Word on St. Paul. Thank you, Fr Daniel!
