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To mark the beginning of the Jubilee Year of Mercy there is to be a celebration of the Eucharist followed by the opening of the Jubilee door at Wellington’s Cathedral of the Sacred Heart at 7pm on Tuesday 8 December.
Cardinal John will be opening the main doors of the Cathedral at the same time as Pope Francis is opening the Jubilee door in Rome.
There will be many ceremonies like this taking place at Catholic places all around the world at exactly the same time.
The Jubilee Door door is opened only Jubilee years.
The year of Jubilee in both the Jewish and Christian traditions is a time of joy, the year of remission or universal pardon.
In Mosaic law, each fiftieth year was to be celebrated as a jubilee year, and that at this season every household should recover its absent members, the land return to its former owners, the Hebrew slaves be set free, and debts be remitted.
The same conception, spiritualized, forms the fundamental idea of the Christian Jubilee, though it is difficult to judge how far any sort of continuity can have existed between the two.
It is commonly stated that Pope Boniface VIII instituted the first Christian Jubilee in the year 1300, and it is certain that this is the first celebration of which we have any precise record, but it is also certain that the idea of solemnizing a fiftieth anniversary was familiar to medieval writers.
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