On the road to Emmaus, Jesus famously rebuked Cleopas and the other disciple for not realizing that the Messiah had to suffer and die and rise from the dead in order to fulfill his divine mission. So as to prove this, Jesus, beginning with Moses and all the prophets ... interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures (Luke 24:27). That is, Jesus, the Word, demonstrated his continual presence throughout salvation history in the events and figures through which God chose to reveal himself, a revelation that culminated in the definitive revelation in the Incarnation.
Thus, from the earliest days of the Church, Christians read the Old Testament as Christian Scripture: not just out of respect for God’s chosen people, but because it spoke about Christ. They saw in the words of the Old Testament, and the events of salvation history they described, the deeper meanings that referred to Christ and his Church.
This dynamic of reading the Old Testament as describing the life of the Church is the foundation of our celebration of the Jubilee in the Church. In the Book of Leviticus, chapter 25, God commands that every seventh year will be a sabbath for the land, and that it is not to be planted, so that the earth can rest, just as God rested on the seventh day from his work of Creation (see Leviticus 25:5).
Thus, the Sabbath is not just a weekly occurrence for man in his imitation of God, but a cosmic reality for all of Creation, so that everything can bear the Maker’s mark. But there was also to be a Sabbath of Sabbaths, the Book of Leviticus commands. That is, every seven-times-seven years – every 50th year – there was to be what the Bible calls a yobel, which comes over into English as “Jubilee.” This was meant to be a sort of “sabbath of sabbaths.” The rest and abundance that characterized the weekly Sabbath was extended to a whole year, but it also included more significant observances: Each family was to return to its ancestral land, slaves were to be freed, debts forgiven, and exiles were to return home.
Clement of Alexandria, in the late second and early third century, recognized that the Jubilee in Leviticus was meant not just to refer to certain economic and political realities for the Israelites of time past, but to the mystery of Christ and his Church. The restoration of property and forgiveness of debt, the liberation of slaves and return of exiles, for St. Clement, point to the forgiveness and remission of the debt of sin that was paid for by the precious Blood of Christ. It refers to the freedom of the children of God whereby we are no longer slaves to sin and death, but free sons and daughters of the Father. Given that the Jubilee took place every 50 years, the number 50 itself took on the spiritual significance of forgiveness and mercy.
Thus, when St. Clement interprets the significance of the feast of Pentecost, which literally means “fifty,” for example, he sees that feast as containing the same mysteries of the Jubilee: forgiveness and remission of sin, now brought about by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church.
The practice of offering indulgences attached to Jubilee pilgrimage and activities, then, is not an invention of Pope Boniface VIII, who called the first Christian Jubilee in 1300. It is the Church seeing in the events and words of Scripture what Christ intended to bring about in his Church from the beginning, and which was brought to light in the glory of the Resurrection.
This article originally appeared in the January 2025 issue of Magnificat. Reprinted by permission.
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St. Thomas Students Experience the Jubilee
Dr. John Boyle and his wife, Dia, and the Catholic Studies students were in Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis and the election of Pope Leo XIV, all during the Jubilee Year of Hope.
This story is featured in the summer 2025 issue of Lumen.
