Jubilee
by Anne Marie Mongoven, OP
In announcing JUBILEE the author of the Book of Leviticus called for the sounding of the trumpet and commanded this:
You shall count off . . . seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; . . . and you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you. . . . It shall be holy to you.” (Lv. 25:8–10, 12)
Long before the birth of Jesus, our ancestors celebrated jubilee. For them the jubilee year was meant to be a year for rest, reflection, and redemption; a time for forgiveness and for celebration. Jubilee was a communal celebration in which all, young and old, rich and poor, people of every level of society took part. The community was to become holy by offering homage to God, justice to one another, and stewardship to all of creation.
Our jubilees in the 21st century are not unlike those of ancient times. Whether we celebrate silver, golden, or diamond jubilees, what we basically celebrate is what the ancients celebrated: God’s love for us. At jubilee time we remember what we only too often forget, that we live and move and become whole in God’s loving embrace. We remember that God’s constant loving pours new life, new energy, new spirit into us. Jubilees are about God more than they are about us.
Loving is everything in life and jubilee celebrates both our being loved and our loving. Without being loved and being loving we are nothing. It is through sharing in divine life that we become loving and through loving that we become more fully human. At jubilee time we celebrate God’s continuing love for all of us, and our loving in return.
Leviticus tells us that we shall hallow the jubilee year and it shall be holy to us. We hallow by loving. By letting the land lie fallow we are caring lovingly for the earth. By forgiving our debtors, we express love for them. Our love for captives impels us to set them free. By being just to everyone, we express at least minimal love for everyone, for doing justice is only the beginning of love. In jubilee year we celebrate God’s love for us by growing in our love for the Creator and for all of creation.
Jubilee time for Dominicans from Sinsinawa is also a time when the whole Congregation, our Associates, families, and friends celebrate the lives of our jubilarians. We celebrate their fidelity in love, a fidelity we have seen and heard and received. We celebrate the love they express as they preach the Good News of Jesus the Christ. We give thanks for God’s love of them.
Every jubilee celebration calls for quiet thoughtfulness as well as for song and dance. We need quiet so we can reflect on God’s love for the jubilarians and their love for all of creation. Through such thoughtfulness we may discover that what we are really celebrating in jubilee is the gift of God’s grace made flesh, made visible, made tangible, made audible in the lives of our jubilarians. Each jubilarian is a sacrament, a visible sign of an invisible reality, a being in whom transcendence and intimacy meet.
Every summer we gather to celebrate the loving lives of our jubilarians made possible by God’s loving of them. Living lovingly is an extraordinary and divine-like way of being. Jubilee celebrations help us all to remember that truth.