What is a Jubilee? What is this year about?
     The Old Testament offers instructions about celebrating a Jubilee every 50 years. The Jubilee has roots in the Jewish practice of Sabbath rest every seven days, connected to the creation story in which God created the world in six days and rested on the next.
    This rest is not merely about "taking a break", but orienting life to what is most important. The prohibition of work on the seventh day prompts people to look beyond productive work and see all activity in light of the eternal.
    Like all the other forms of Sabbath rest, the Holy Year follows a Sabbath of Sabbaths, " seven times seven years". The Jubilee extends its logic from the Books of  Leviticus and Deuteronomy where the texts call for forgiving debts and freeing enslave people, even letting the land rest and the fields lie fallow.
    Inaugurating the current Jubilee Pope Francis walked through the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica, evoking Jesus' description of himself in the Gospel of John as the DOOR OF SALVATION.
    Pope Francis has called for several acts of hope as: welcoming migrants, peacemaking, openness towards having children, for affluent nations to forgive debts, and a general call for repentance and mercy. 
    In tune with the long tradition of Jubilees, however, Pope Francis emphasizes that the more people see the world as God sees it, the more people will act against injustice.