Today, throughout the world we are giving thanks for the past year, our Jubilee Year of Hope 2025.
We give thanks for the ways in which we, as the Diocese of Kilmore, celebrated the Jubilee Year of Hope. In our Cathedral today, you can view our wonderful exhibition of photographs of the different liturgical gatherings for prayer and the celebration of Mass that took place at various key sacred sites throughout the Diocese of Kilmore.
We give thanks for our Jubilee celebrations at Trinity Island to acknowledge St Felim who lived nearby, at Drumlane Abbey, to recognise St Maedhóg, also known as St Aidan, at his birthplace on St Maedhóg Island in Templeport, and his burial place in Rossinver, Co Leitrim. We are grateful for gatherings to celebrate St Kilian and his companions St Kolanat and St Totnan in Mullagh on the first anniversary of the visit of their relics from Wurzburg, Germany. We celebrate how different parishes gathered outdoors at Holy Wells, Shrines and Mass Rocks throughout the Diocese, which included the Mass Rock at Araglan, near Killygarry in this Parish of Urney & Annagelliff on 10th August.
Each of these celebrations gave recognition to the origins of our Christian story and to the resilience of people of faith through the generations in Kilmore Diocese. As ‘pilgrims of hope’ we went on pilgrimage Knock on the Feast of St Felim. We travelled to Lourdes in greater numbers in the company of our assisted pilgrims, all our volunteer staff and younger helpers which this year included students from St. Patrick’s College, Cavan.
During our Jubilee Year we reached out to young people with a day in Knock on 14th June and with our Diocesan Day for Young People on 27th September. We give thanks for those who completed a two-year training for Ministry to Young People who will be involved in future projects. It is great that we prepared our four Jubilee Churches, for the Novena of Hope here in the Cathedral, for our outreach to the bereaved during November, to prisoners at Loughlan House, Blacklion in December.
Our diocese went on pilgrimage to Rome, to embrace the beginnings of our Church, to appreciate the reach of the People of God throughout the world, the contribution of the Irish and to participate in the celebration of Mass with Pope Leo XIV.
We have been renewed, reconnected with the origins of our faith and encouraged to keep hope alive. Why celebrate the Jubilee Year of Hope 2025 today, the Feast of the Holy Family? Our celebration of the Jubilee Year of Hope is not the end, but the beginning and we recognise that it is in our families that we are nurtured in our faith and values. It is in our families that we can grow in awareness of God’s love for us, as persons capable of loving relationships and in values that have us reach out to care for others.
Family is at the core of life and today we celebrate the Holy Family are our model of family life. A nurturing family life, taking account of the roles of parents and children, is essential, fundamental, foundational, central, as outlined in our first reading from the Book of Ecclesiasticus, to how we relate to others and contribute to our own family life. We acknowledge that not every family experience harmony or life-giving love. We give thanks for the supports available to families to enable healing and forgiveness.
In taking the Holy Family as our model, I would like to focus on St Joseph, the silent one, who heard God speak in his dreams. The late Pope Francis had a devotion to the sleeping St Joseph – Pope Francis left his requests with St Joseph overnight. In our Gospel, St Joseph is guided in a dream to flee to Egypt. His family, himself Mary and Jesus, became migrants as is the reality for so many families today.
In another dream St Joseph is guided to return from Egypt and yet again in a further dream he is directed to live in Nazareth. And so, the prophecies of the Old Testament scriptures were fulfilled as outlined in our Gospel. As we face different challenges as families, we are called to acknowledge and listen to God for guidance in our prayer time together.
As we reflect on how St Joseph was guided in his dreams, we celebrate how we are of the dreams of our own St Felim and St Patrick, of how St Maedhóg, St Kilian & Companions dreamt of going on mission, be it to Wales, Ferns or Wurzburg, Germany. Each endured their own hardships with St Kilian & Companions suffering martyrdom. As the People of God, we celebrate the witnesses of the past now and discern how we are called into the future.
In our second reading from St Paul to the Colossians we hear that we are chosen, called to love, to be thankful and to be forgiving; all ways in which the message of Christ finds a home in our hearts and in our families.
As we give thanks for the sources of our faith in family life, in the inspirational lives of the Holy Family, of our Saints, especially, St Felim, St Patrick, St Maedhóg, St Kilian & Companions, may we look to the future with greater hope.
In the spirit of our Jubilee Prayer may the grace of the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the grace of the Jubilee reawaken us and transform us into tireless cultivators of the seeds of the Gospel to transform from within humanity and the cosmos, our world.