Ongoing Jubilee Year Reminder of Our Freedom from “meaningful relationship with God”: Catholic Bishop in South Africa

He notes that God has given each follower of Jesus Christ “statutes and ordinances” to help him or her discover the “freedom of being a Christian” and adds that choosing a deeper relationship with God through the person of Jesus Christ helps Christians to “grow in wisdom”; they are empowered to pay attention to the promptings and influence of the Holy Spirit.

The Auxiliary Bishop, who started his Episcopal Ministry in September 2022 encouraged the people of God to align their choices with the will of God, choosing “things that are life giving,” upholding God’s commandments, relying on the Word of God in Holy Scriptures, and deepening their relationship with God.

In the video recording published on March 25, Bishop Masilo reflects on the Lenten Season, which he says provides an opportunity for the people of God to examine their lifestyle against the Word of God and to reconcile with God.

“If we find that our lives are actually against what God wants, we reform and then we pray for the grace to throw into the deep, so that we grow as Christians, and that we grow also each day to examine our steps guided by the Gospel and the promptings of the Holy Spirit,” he says. 

During Lent, the member of the Clergy of South Africa’s Tzaneen Catholic Diocese says, Christians need to “cultivate a much richer interior life” guided by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God “so that the hope we live during this Jubilee Year helps us also to grow in prayer and trust to God.”

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The Holy Father announced the start of a Year of Prayer on 21 January 2024 in preparation for the Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year, the second in his Pontificate after the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2015.

He said that the 2025 Jubilee Year, whose theme is “Pilgrims of Hope” will be “a year dedicated to rediscovering the great value and absolute need for prayer in one’s personal life, in the life of the Church, and in the world.”

Months later, on the Solemnity of the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ on 9 May 2024, the Holy Father solemnly proclaimed the upcoming Jubilee Year 2025 at a ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica, during which he delivered the Bull of Indiction of the planned Jubilee, “Spes non confundit” (Hope does not disappoint).

Scheduled to officially conclude on 6 January 2026, the Jubilee Year provides the people of God across the globe an opportunity to participate in various planned jubilee events at the Vatican and in their respective Episcopal Sees and of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (ICLSAL).