Jubilee Year closes locally with Mass

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

WORCESTER – Hope, despite darkness in the world, was a central theme at the Worcester diocese’s closing of the Jubilee Year.

Bishop McManus, joined by Archbishop Michael W. Banach (originally from the Worcester diocese and now Apostolic Nuncio to Hungary) and several other clergymen, celebrated the closing Mass Sunday at St. Paul Cathedral.

The St. Paul Cathedral Choir provided music. More than 100 people from various parishes attended, including a busload from Divine Mercy Parish in Blackstone, one of the diocese’s Jubilee Year pilgrimage churches, and a husband and wife from the Boston Archdiocese who have visited several pilgrimage churches.

Archbishop Banach preached about sources of hope, weaving in the universal Jubilee Year of Hope and the Worcester diocese’s 75th anniversary, both celebrated in 2025, and Sunday’s feast of the Holy Family. His comments in English included repeated mention of immigrants, and he spoke briefly in Spanish and Portuguese too.

He noted that the Holy Family was human and their story is one of “life not always turning out the way you expected,” including “living as immigrants in the land that once held their ancestors as slaves.”

In and around us too there is darkness; division, violence and bitterness can “make us wonder if the world is coming apart,” Archbishop Banach noted. But, he said, God sends light into the world, as we proclaim when reciting the 1,700-year-old Nicene Creed.

“The Light that entered the world on that first Christmas was not as fireworks or with trumpets,” the archbishop pointed out. “God entered the world as a baby – small enough to be held, weak enough to need care, humble enough to be laid in a manger …

“Knowing and seeing God who is love filled the Holy Family with profound hope,” he said.
“That’s why the Catholic Church has been celebrating the past year as the Jubilee Year of Hope.”

He quoted from Pope Leo XIV’s message for the Ninth World Day of the Poor last June: “Amid life’s trials, our hope is inspired by the firm and reassuring certainty of God’s love …The living God is in fact ‘the God of hope,’ (Rom 15:13) and Christ, by his death and resurrection, has himself become our hope (I Tm 1:1). We must never forget that we were saved in this hope and need to remain firmly rooted therein.”

We can’t save ourselves; our hope rests in God’s saving action through Christ, Archbishop Banach said. Christ’s power enables us as his disciples to “be for our world a leaven of authentic hope, a harbinger of new heavens and a new earth (cf. 2 Pet 3:13), where men and women will dwell in justice and harmony, in joyful expectation of the fulfillment of the Lord’s promises,” he added, quoting Pope Francis’ Bull of Indiction for this Jubilee Year, “Spes non confundit.”

God’s light is stronger than any darkness and that is the source of our hope, Archbishop Banach maintained.

He illustrated human beings’ part in that with comments about the Worcester diocese, which he called “powerful and hopeful,” where, for 75 years, people have gathered to worship, seek Jesus, be challenged and work together to serve others. The diocese, through its institutions, “reminds us that God accomplishes his greatest works in the … ordinary moments of life – in the simplest and least likely of individuals who open their lives to him in trust and with hope.”

The archbishop said that was true for the Holy Family and is true for each of us, from the teenager to the recovering addict to “the immigrant who simply wants a better life for his family. …

“The ordinary person worshipping at the ordinary parish church, sitting in the ordinary pew, in the ordinary towns or cities of the diocese, by the grace of an extraordinary God is still the hope of the world!” he said.

“If a little boy from Nazareth can change all eternity, then ordinary people, especially immigrants, like the Holy Family, can change life around them. That is the genius of God still at work in the Diocese of Worcester.” God can use a person’s ‘yes’ to him to change a heart, a home, even the world.

“When we become disheartened and wonder about the future, we remember that the Church is about following God’s Spirit – not about being perfect,” Archbishop Banach said. “The church is about repenting – literally changing our minds … Pilgrimages are a reminder that we are a pilgrim Church. … We move forward, embracing Jesus’ call to discipleship,” trusting him to work through us.

The archbishop encouraged listeners to visit a creche, remembering the Holy Family’s story, and to work daily to “make that story a part of our own stories – stories full of hope.”

At the reception after Mass, Roselyn Odor, of St. Paul Cathedral, said she came because she wanted to see what the event was like. She decided, “It was good.”

Nancy Wells said she and her husband, Michael, of Immaculate Conception Parish in Marlborough (a Boston archdiocesan pilgrimage site), came to St. Paul’s because it was one of the Worcester diocese’s pilgrim churches, and because the Mass was for the Jubilee Year’s closing, and because they were celebrating their 52nd wedding anniversary. Mr. Wells said he asked his wife what she wanted to do for their anniversary, and she chose this.
Mrs. Wells said two of their children are in the Worcester diocese and she teaches religious education with their daughter Shannon Pluta at St. Mary of the Hills Parish in Boylston (as well as at Immaculate Conception in Marlborough).

The couple said they visited other pilgrim churches in their archdiocese, the Worcester diocese and other states.

Mrs. Wells said Jubilee Year events in their archdiocese got them praying the rosary together and “strengthened our faith and brought us closer” together.

– Editor’s Note: This Jubilee Year closing Mass can be viewed online at worcesterdiocese.org/jubilee.