Lent in the Jubilee Year

Reflection.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Owerri celebrates a twin Jubilee this year 2025. The Archdiocese celebrates a special Diamond Jubilee Year to mark the 75 years of its establishment (1950 – 1975). With a Jubilee theme, Reviving and Living the Faith, the Archbishop, His Grace, Most Rev. L. I. Ugorji, inaugurated the Jubilee year, 12th December 2024. He remarked that while the Archdiocese thanks God for all the progress recorded, there is need for a critical self-evaluation during the course of the Jubilee year in order to respond in future with greater generosity and effectiveness to God’s continuous call. Also, through a pastoral solicitude, the Archbishop further summoned all to join Pope Francis in the universal church’s Jubilee of Hope. He teaches that it is a Jubilee that provides the faithful the opportunity to perform pious works and have their sins remitted.

The two Jubilees afford us all in Owerri an opportunity to celebrate a fruitful Lenten season. The 40 days of Lent recalls the passion and death of Jesus Christ which prepares followers for a joyful celebration of Easter. Jesus went to death to deal with sin. During Lent, we are called to see through the eyes of the suffering saviour, the grave nature and consequences of sin. We are also encouraged to see the possibilities there are to defeat sin. In the cruel death of Jesus who shared human life, in order to carry away the sins of the world, we see that death does not spare anyone that bears sin. However, through Jesus’ generous acceptance of suffering in order to restore humanity, we see that we can defeat sin by sharing other people’s pains and sorrows.

In a Jubilee year that calls us to critical self-evaluation, Lent provides for us the opportunities to critically and sincerely reflect on the sin that menaces us most. We reflect anew the effects of the endemic sin of corruption that devastates our communal and personal lives, abandoning us in constant states of fear, insecurity and death.

But more graciously, in a Jubilee year that also calls us to hope, Lent provides us the powerful means to continue to battle our sins. Christian hope helps us to desire heaven as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit (CCC. 1817). Rather than yield to temptations to despair, armed with the Three Pillars of Lent: Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving, we can look towards a more abiding happiness, knowing that corruption is rooted in the pursuit of transient happiness. This is what our Jubilees inspire into us this Lent.

When we begin this year’s Lent on the 5th of March, we will be faced with a whole lot of activities at the parish and Archdiocesan levels ranging from the usual Stations of Cross, Sunday catechesis, and various acts of Lent, to the many Jubilee activities like Quiz, Family Consecrations, and seminars. These activities have their penitential characters that will help us to renew and revive our faith.

Our challenges will be to sincerely join in all these activities, not just as a personal commitment, but as a way to build a communal faith that witnesses to the power of our collective evangelization as an Archdiocese in a Jubilee year.

We invoke our Blessed Mother who accompanied Jesus through his suffering, to support us in our Jubilee and Lenten journey.

Fr. KCK Onwumere
Rector, Assumpta Spiritual Year Seminary, Ogbaku