Devotion by the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1814
The beginning of the school year is naturally full of enthusiasm as teachers, students, and parents eagerly anticipate the adventures ahead. And this year, we Catholics have a particular reason to be excited – we are celebrating the Jubilee Year of Hope! Jubilees are times of special graceto “re-establish a proper relationship with God, with one another, and with all of creation” (Jubilee 2025: Peregrinantes in Spem). They are ordinarily proclaimed only once every twenty-five years, so this is a unique opportunity for our students to discover and mark this often-overlooked element of the Church’s calendar during their formative school years.
Pope Francis formally declared the commemoration of the Jubilee Year in his 2024 bull Spes non confundit, writing that “the Jubilee should inspire the Church to make greater efforts to reach out to… adolescents, students, and young couples, the rising generation. Let us draw close to the young, for they are the joy and hope of the Church and of the world!” Educators have the privilege of drawing close to the young each day in our classrooms.
As the Church continues to observe the Jubilee until January 6, 2026, we are especially encouraged to harness the energy of the first few weeks of school and purposefully cultivate hope in the hearts of our students – not just positive feelings, but authentic virtue that will sustain them in whatever circumstances the Lord has ordained for this school year.
In this article, I’ll suggest several different ways that teachers can bring the Church’s proclamation of this Jubilee Year to life in their classrooms. I’ll rely on the framework laid out in Pope Saint John Paul II’s 1992 apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis, where he proposed a pattern for the renewal of seminary education founded on four pillars: human, intellectual, spiritual, and pastoral (vocational) formation. Of course, any deeply formative undertaking will inherently contain aspects of multiple pillars, and the developmental needs of our students certainly differ from adult seminarians, but I have found this structure useful for thinking about how to truly teach the whole person at any age. Read on for a smorgasbord of strategies to support your students’ growth in the hope that is the anchor for their souls (Hebrews 6:19).
Intellectual formation, or study, is intimately familiar to teachers, and there are myriad opportunities for learning related to hope and the Jubilee Year. A simple first step is to memorize the Act of Hope and pray it daily. Next, explore the differences between an optimistic disposition, the natural emotion of hope, and the supernatural virtue of hope with your class. This distinction could lay the groundwork for further discussion of literary characters, historical figures, and saints in your own curriculum who exemplify different types of hope, giving children aspirational models
to shape their own moral horizons.
If you’re looking to supplement your existing lessons, a few possible texts for read-alouds, narrations, and seminars are Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales, especially “The Happy Prince”, “The Nightingale and the Rose”, and “The Selfish Giant” (elementary school); JRR Tolkien’s short story “Leaf by Niggle” (middle school); and GK Chesterton’s epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse (high school). Finally, consider guiding students to examine the scriptural and historical roots of the Jubilee Year in both Jewish and Christian contexts. A list of sources that could be used for teachers’ personal formation and for designing lessons on these topics can be found at the end of this article.
Of course, we don’t just want to convey information about the virtue of hope and the Jubilee Year to our students – we also want to lead them to conform their lives to these truths. This is done through human formation, which broadly seeks to empower the person to exercise their
freedom in accordance with the intrinsic capacities and limitations of human nature. A limitation that our culture frequently ignores is our need for rest. But one of the key commands that the Lord gives the Israelite people for keeping the Jubilee is to enter into a year-long “sabbath of solemn rest for the land” (Leviticus 25:4), allowing people, animals, and the soil itself to experience restoration and renewal. While educators will continue to cultivate the ground of our students’ minds and hearts throughout this year, the celebration of the Jubilee invites us to be especially attentive to
fostering an atmosphere of leisure in our classrooms.
Whether this is done through regular picture study, nature journaling, read-alouds, playful re-enactments and experiments, or simply enjoying 15 minutes of extra recess once a week, intentionally rest and delight in reality with your students this year. Continue to lean into sabbath outside of the classroom as well. Teaching is a labor of love which will inevitably make demands on your time outside of contract hours, but your students will never find rest in your classroom if you never rest from your classroom. I encourage you to begin this school year with prayerful discernment around the work carried into evenings and Saturdays, and with a firm commitment to protect Sundays for worship, community, and leisure. The Lord desires us to serve from a place of receptivity, not exhaustion, and we can place our firm hope in his promises to abundantly provide for our needs and the needs of our students, especially in this Jubilee Year (Leviticus 25:19).
One of the great blessings of working in Catholic schools is the ability to hand on our faith and trust in God with freedom and confidence. This work of spiritual formation involves gradually leading students to respond to His loving invitation to be transformed by Christ and His Church, especially through our rich heritage of liturgical, devotional, and personal prayer. The most visible spiritual practice in the Christian observance of the Jubilee Year is making a pilgrimage to the Holy Doors in Rome’s four papal basilicas. Passing through the Holy Doors in a spirit of faith and
conversion is an act graced with a plenary indulgence, or the complete remission of temporal punishment due to sins for ourselves or a soul in purgatory, providing the other normal conditions are met. In recent years, popes have utilized their Petrine authority (Matthew 16:18-19) to extend
this indulgence to local pilgrimage sites as well. Consider organizing a pilgrimage field trip for your class.
Whether your destination is a nearby national shrine, a pilgrimage site designated by your diocese, or simply a significant local church, spend time preparing to receive these special graces by teaching your students about Jubilee pilgrimages, Holy Doors, and indulgences; exploring the story of your class’s pilgrimage site; arranging a time for your class to go to Mass and Confession; and allowing students to reflect on their particular intentions and hopes for the pilgrimage. This would also be an opportune moment to invite your school’s pastor or chaplain into your classroom, whether to form students before the trip or as a pilgrimage chaperone.
If you manage to organize a pilgrimage field trip to Rome itself, please let me know – you will instantly become my nominee for Teacher of the Year! Of course, this is not a realistic option for the vast majority of educators. But do you know a family member, friend, priest, or parishioner who is making a pilgrimage to Rome this year? If so, ask if they’d be willing to spiritually carry your students and their petitions along too. Invite them to visit your classroom before and after the trip to share pictures and stories about their experience. Most importantly, encourage students to imagine their whole lives as a pilgrimage not just to Rome, but to heaven. This reflection is a favorite of mine:
“I am a countryman, Lord, who comes from the country of the world. Teach me your city’s ordered ways, the courtesies and gracious manners of your court. Remove from me the likeness of the world on which I had been modelling myself, and make me like your citizens, lest in their midst I seem as one deformed. And teach me too the language that I do not know, the language I began to hear when I came out of Egypt, but do not understand because I had grown up in an alien land. Teach me the language you speak with your sons and they with you, and make me understand those little signs, by which you give understanding hearts to know what is your good, acceptable, and perfect will” (William of St. Thierry, Meditation 4).
Consider bringing students to your school’s church or chapel for a period of silent prayer with this and other texts, images, or music which speak to the theme of pilgrimage. Another resource for praying with your class throughout the year is Joan Watson’s Opening the Holy Door, which offers commentary on each of the Scripture stories pictured on the panels of the pre-eminent Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica.
None of our students knows where the Lord will lead them in the twenty-five years before the next Jubilee, but their school years are a critical time to prepare them to respond to their unique call to holiness through vocational formation (analogous to pastoral formation in seminaries.) Priests and religious are particular signs of hope to the Christian community and to the world because their lives are a clear witness to what Pope Saint John Paul II names “eschatological man.” In Matthew 22:30, Christ tells us that there will be no marriage in heaven. Instead we will directly
enjoy the beatific vision and the resurrection of the body, experiencing what the Church Fathers describe as divinization or theosis. This is God’s greatest promise to us and the highest object of our hope.
In their choice of celibacy for the kingdom and their life ordered entirely to the praise and service of God, priests and religious are living reminders of this beautiful reality. When teaching about vocations to priesthood and religious life, find age-appropriate ways to highlight how they point all Christians towards the hope of heaven. If possible, invite religious brothers and sisters to your classroom to speak about their discernment story and this aspect of their vocation. Finally, the celebration of the Jubilee summons us to be “tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardships of any kind” (Spes non confundit 10). When your class practices the works of mercy this school year, take advantage of the opportunity to reinforce this focus on hope.
The Jubilee Year is a dynamic Catholic tradition that our students should encounter during their school years. During this time, the Church offers us intensified graces of reconciliation with God and neighbor, conversion to deeper holiness of life, and hope for both our earthly pilgrimage
and our heavenly homeland. She also invites us to mission as we help bring these fruits to the world through our prayer, witness, and service to others. As teachers, we can answer this call by planning for moments of holistic formation focused on the Jubilee that nourish our students’ intellectual, human, spiritual, and vocational potential. However you choose to honor the Jubilee Year of Hope in your classroom, know of my prayers for you and your students: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope (Romans 15:13).
Sources for Teachers’ Personal Formation and Lesson Planning
The virtue of hope
Spe salvi (2007 encyclical from Pope Benedict XVI)
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1817-1821
ST I-II, q. 40
ST II-II, q. 17 and q. 18
The Jubilee Year
Historical Overview
Timeline
Tertio Millenio Adveniente, especially Chapter 2 (1994 apostolic letter from Pope Saint John Paul II)
Jesus and the Jubilee: the Biblical Roots of the Year of God’s Favor (Dr. John Bergsma)
Originally published September 3, 2025