Aside to homilists on preaching in 2025—especially Epiphany

UPDATED: Thoughts for (and from) fellow homilists on preaching in the 2025 Jubilee Year

Cologne Cathedral - Bavarian window Adoration window - Detail: Adoration by the Magi and shepherds. © Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Note: This article has been updated with thoughts from fellow homilists; see below.

This post started as a brief email to my brother deacons of the 2016 ordination class in the Archdiocese of Newark. As often happens, it grew in the writing until I thought it possibly worth sharing with a wider audience, if not as wide an audience as I often address here at All Things SDG. (To readers for whom the present subject is of no interest: Happy New Year! I’m grateful that you find enough of my writing here worthwhile to bear with the bits irrelevant to you. I do have posts coming up in the next week or two that I hope you will enjoy!)

My musings here (offered as one “comparing notes,” in the hope of eliciting feedback and further thoughts) are meant primarily for fellow clergy, especially Catholic clergy, regarding preaching opportunities in the year ahead—particularly in this coming weekend, January 4–5, when Catholics in the US celebrate Epiphany. (The traditional date of Epiphany, observed by many others, is January 6.) Some of what follows may also be of interest to other Catholics; beyond that, YMMV.

One year ago, Pope Francis declared 2024 a Year of Prayer in preparation for the Jubilee Year 2025 now beginning. (The Year of Prayer was actually first announced in February 2023, though I first heard about it in January 2024 when it began.) I made the Year of Prayer a focus of my first homily of 2024, and I tried to preach about prayer throughout the year, mentioning the Year of Prayer as often as possible. (In fact, it was this intention to preach on prayer throughout the year that led me to finally create this Substack publication as a home for all my writings on any and every subject, beginning with that first homily.)

While I certainly wasn’t alone in focusing on prayer and the Year of Prayer throughout 2024, I sometimes felt alone in this, as most Mass-attending Catholics I met throughout the year were unaware of the Year of Prayer. Many such Catholics, on learning of the Year of Prayer, expressed chagrin that they hadn’t known—that nobody had told them. Even clergy I met were often unaware that 2024 was meant to be in any way special. This would seem to be an unsurprising communications fail on the part of the Vatican and probably of pretty much all levels in the Church. We heard a lot in 2024 about the Synod on Synodality from both advocates and critics, but not so much about prayer in a year meant to be in a special way dedicated to it.

Now the Year of Prayer is over and the 2025 Jubilee is upon us. The quarter century years are special times of celebrating the mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation; thus, 2025 is in a way a year with a special Christmas-like character (as 2024 was supposed to be a year with a special Advent-like character, for those who knew about it). If we don’t tell our people these things, they won’t know!

As homilists, we may wish to consider how we might make the Incarnation a special focus on our preaching this year. Another important theme this year is the 2025 Jubilee theme or motto, “Pilgrims of Hope.” Thus, the Christian life as a pilgrimage and the theological virtue of hope are themes on which homilists might lay special emphasis in 2025. Of course there are literal pilgrimage opportunities connected with the opening of the Holy Door in Rome and other events in Rome as well as local events, but in our preaching the natural focus will be on our journey as pilgrims in this world.

For those of us preaching this coming weekend on Epiphany, there is a golden opportunity, in that the journey of the Magi, which we celebrate on this feast, is the first pilgrimage in the Christian tradition. Pope Francis, in his 2023 Epiphany homily, quoted the following from a 2013 homily by Pope Benedict XVI:

Their outward pilgrimage was the expression of their inward journey, the inner pilgrimage of their hearts.

There is obviously lots more where that came from!

Looking beyond Epiphany, this Jubilee falls, perhaps providentially, in Year C of the Lectionary cycle, giving special prominence to the Gospel of Luke, the middle section of which focuses on Jesus’ teachings and parables given “on the road” from Galilee to Jerusalem—i.e., everything from Luke 9:51 (“When the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem”) through the triumphal entry in Luke 19. This “pilgrimage” section of Luke is the source for all regular Sunday Gospels of July, August, September, and October:

• July 6 (14th Sun OT) Jesus sends out the 72 (Lk 10:1–12, 17–20)

• July 13 (15th Sun OT) The Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25–37)

• July 20 (16th Sun OT) Mary and Martha at Bethany (Lk 10:38–42)

• July 27 (17th Sun OT) The Our Father; ask, seek, knock (Lk 11:1–13)

• Aug 3 (18th Sun OT) The rich fool (Lk 12:13–21)

• Aug 10 (19th Sun OT) The wise and prudent servant (Lk 12:32–48)

• Aug 17 (20th Sun OT) Setting fire to the earth (Lk 12:49–53)

• Aug 24 (21st Sun OT) The narrow gate, the locked door (Lk 13:22–30)

• Aug 31 (22nd Sun OT) Places of honor (Lk 14:1, 7–14)

• Sept 7 (23rd Sun OT) Hating father and mother, carrying your cross (Lk 14:25–33)

• Sept 21 (25th Sun OT) The dishonest steward (Lk 16:1–13)

• Sept 28 (26th Sun OT) Lazarus and the rich man (Lk 16:19–31)

• Oct 5 (27th Sun OT) Faith like a mustard seed; unprofitable servants (Lk 17:5–10)

• Oct 12 (28th Sun OT) Ten lepers (Lk 17:11–19)

• Oct 19 (29th Sun OT) The unjust judge (Lk 18:1–8)

• Oct 26 (30th Sun OT) The Pharisee and the tax collector (Lk 18:9–14)

Some of these “on the road” passages offer obvious thematic “pilgrimage” tie-ins—most obviously and programmatically sending out the 72, but also, e.g., the Good Samaritan (the charity we owe to those we meet on the way), the rich fool (our treasure is not here), carrying your cross, and the ten lepers (meeting Jesus on the road). Very unhappily, we don’t get the Emmaus road resurrection appearance in this year’s Sunday Easter readings, though we can work it in somewhere if we want to!

Opportunities to reflect on the mystery of the Incarnation present themselves at every turn; a few obvious examples include the following:

• Feb 16 (6th Sun OT) Beatitudes and woes (Lk 6:17, 20–26; Beatitudes as Jesus’ “self‑portrait”

• March 9 (1st Sun Lent) Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness (Lk 4:1–13; Jesus was tempted in every way as we are)

• March 16 (2nd Sun Lent) The Transfiguration (Lk 9:28b–36; Jesus’ humanity as the pinnacle of divine revelation)

Finally, looking beyond the Gospel readings, the theme of hope figures significantly in the readings and Psalms on a number of Sundays; notable examples include May 25 (6th Sun OT), June 15 (Most Holy Trinity); July 20 (16 Sun OT); August 10 (19th Sun OT); and November 2 (All Souls).

Those are the thoughts that occur to me as I write these words in the last hours of 2024. I would be happy to hear from others in the comments (and possibly expand this post based on any useful feedback I may get) regarding how homilists might highlight the 2025 Jubilee in their preaching for the benefit of the faithful!

Update: Thoughts from fellow homilists

Father Stephanos Pedrano suggests Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Spe Salvi (On Christian Hope) as a source for preaching on “Pilgrims of Hope.”

Deacon Greg Kandra of The Deacon’s Bench writes:

I think it’s a great angle, and an opportunity to reflect on the journey of the magi in a different way — while embracing the notion that all of us are “pilgrims on a journey, travelers on the road.” Like the magi, we are seeking to discover Christ, and then be so changed that we depart “by another way.”

Deacon Steve Lipski (from my 2016 ordination class) writes:

I would offer two other nuanced “pilgrimages”: Mary’s and Joseph’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. I think it complements your emphasis on “how we might make the Incarnation a special focus on our preaching this year” (Lk 2:3-7); and two, the shepherds’ pilgrimage (Lk 2:8-20). Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in his The Divine Romance quipped about the shepherds and Magi as such: “There were only two classes of men who heard the cry that night: Shepherds and Wise Men. Shepherds: those who know they know nothing. Wise Men: those who know they do not know everything.” I love this leveling of pride.

Deacon Don Weigel writes:

I do think that you are correct in suggesting a “theme” for the year—something that we preachers can come back to time and again to work into our homilies. And a theme doesn't have to be in EVERY homily—that would require us to “shoehorn” a message when it doesn't really fit the readings or the season.

That being said, I do think that we have to constantly call people to ACTION from the faith that they profess during worship. We have to constantly encourage them to mover from the personal (which is absolutely necessary) to the social so that people understand that our faith is something to be lived. The message of the Incarnation—a wonderful theme for 2025—will cause us to relate to the value of humanity, the infinite value of the human person. That theme will meet with some serious challenges in the politics of the next 4 years, and I don’t think we should shy away from reminding, recounting, and restating the Church's teachings on such things as immigration, social safety nets, etc.

Deacon Anthony Scarpantonio writes:

Although I’m not preaching this weekend, I wrote the Gospel reflections for our parish’s YouTube channel. My pastor asked me to include the Jubilee message with Christmas.

This Christmas, we are blessed to not only celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus, but also the start of a Jubilee Year in our Church. The theme this year is “Pilgrims of Hope.” Pope Francis wrote that as believers of Jesus ‘“we are called to be tangible signs of hope for those brothers and sisters who experience hardship of any kind.”

It is fitting that all the gospels for Christmas follow this theme. When Joseph found out that Mary was with child, an angel gave him hope by telling him not to be afraid to take her into his house. Then he took Mary on a pilgrimage to Bethlehem to give birth to Jesus, and they laid him in a manger. Later, the angels told some shepherds about the birth of Jesus, and they went on their pilgrimage to meet him. And finally, we have the Apostle John, giving us hope by telling us about Jesus, and who he truly is: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

May you and your family have a blessed Christmas. And this year, let us all go on a pilgrimage to be the hope for all our brothers and sisters in the world today. As Mother Teresa once said, “Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest.”