Welcome Back!
Thank you for reading another issue of The Peasant Times-Dispatch, where we explore the life of faith from the perspective of a peasant—we aren’t experts, we aren’t theologians, we are just trying to do our best (and trying to mean it). Last month, we talked about what it really means to talk about Holiness. This month, I’m reflecting on the end of the Jubilee Year.
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The End
Pope Francis, in mid 2024, announced that 2025 would be a Jubilee Year. It did not come as a surprise—the Church celebrates a Jubilee every 25 years, but since it was announced a lot has changed in the Church and the world. Pope Francis could not have known that he would not live to see the Jubilee through. Then-Cardinal Prevost could not have imagined that he would be Pope Leo before the announcement of the Jubilee was even one year old1.
The Jubilee is a time of forgiveness and reconciliation. It has its roots in the ancient economic mechanism to wipe debts clean and reset the ledgers. We are intended to reset our spiritual ledgers in these years. It’s intended to be an end, and a new beginning. Which feels very appropriate for Advent—the first month of the new liturgical year, the last month of the calendar: both an end and a beginning.
And yet, I think we tend to forget it’s a Jubilee only a few months after the Jubilee year begins. We turn our attention to the new and varied headlines that grab our attention, and the word Jubilee fades to the back of our minds. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s human. But I wanted to make one last remark on the Jubilee before the year expired.
Bittersweet Endings
We can, obviously, choose to forgive at any time, and we should. The Jubilee is a periodic reminder that this is bigger than mere forgiveness, it’s a wiping clean. We are called to carry no grudges with us to heaven, God won’t ask us about any other souls when we come before the judgement seat. The world needs forgiveness2, it needs the healing love of Christ and we are the ones out in the world sharing that healing love with others. Our priests, in persona Christi, give us that healing love—and like the servant whose debts were forgiven by the Master, can we turn around and demand our debts are paid by those who owe us? Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, Christ Himself commanded us to pray.
But it can be hard to let go. Sometimes what we are called to forgive spills the banks of grievance and overflows into a devastating wound. WE need healing, how can we possibly forgive? But if we hold on to these wounds and hurts too long, they become an acid that dissolves charity in our hearts. The lance had to be removed from Christ’s side to allow the blood and water of Divine Mercy to pour forth for us. Mercy can only flow when we remove the obstructing lances from our hearts—even acknowledging that in doing so it will leave behind wounds.
It is bitter—I am not going to sit here and tell you it is painless. We all have experiences of choosing to let go of wounds, choosing love over bitterness. It doesn’t result in instant joy. It doesn’t result in peace in our hearts right away. But it is sweet because it disposes us to love. We are, in a fumbling, blind sort of way, trying very hard to love through a neighbors offense3. And as we discussed last month, that disposition matters a whole lot.
Advent At The Farm
Advent is a purple liturgical season4, like Lent, of penance and preparation. This connection to Lent tends to stick out strongly in my mind, because Advent doesn’t feel like Lent. Seasonally, Advent is a descent into darkness, even though the cultural air around Christmas is joyful and musical and luminous. At the darkest part of the year we are reminded about the coming of Christ, who, knowing our offenses and knowing everything that He would suffer for us5 still chose to take on humanity, still chose the cross, still chose Mary for His mother.
I don’t need to think very long or very hard to remember my sins and offenses against God. This advent it’s a beautiful time to remember that this Divine Child who came into the world chose to do it, and would choose it again even if you were the only soul in all the world. As peasants it is important for us to remember this: the strange, twofold notion of both Christ’s choosing us and our fallen sinfulness. It’s important for us to remember these things (among other reasons) so we don’t get too big for our britches. When we meet our friends in the street or strangers on the bus, we aren’t meeting them as God’s favored son: we are all prodigal sons and daughters in our own way, and all chosen by God in His divine way. Maybe, for His sake, we can extend a little grace to our brothers and sisters, and choose to let that grievance go. This advent, the darkest part of the year, we can focus better on the light of Christ. As this Jubilee year draws to a close, perhaps we can try to approach Christ with our ledgers clean, and ask Him to help us forgive others as we are forgiven by Him.
Peasant Saints in heaven, pray for us.
St Therese of Lisieux, pray for us.
Mary, Mother of our Creator, pray for us.
I am currently selling a limited number of “Scoodles Saints” and now “Scoodles Scribes”: Saints and Scribes hand-drawn in my cartoonish stick figure style. Limited number only, now open to international orders while supplies last!
Thank you for reading! God bless you.
AJPM
A surprising bit of synchronicity: Pope Francis announced the Jubilee on May 9, 2024. Pope Leo ascended to the Chair of Peter on May 8, 2025.
The world is such that it is always true to say we need this “now, more than ever”.
Just to emphasize this point: it’s not wrong to feel offense. Rather it’s normal, it’s natural, it’s human. It is supernatural to love through it. When we feel knocked down and have tears in our eyes because we are weighed down by the burdens of life, for us to say “God is Good” can be a heroic act. This is, after all, the same way that God has loved us.
Technical term
For us!!! For you, and for me!
> It doesn’t result in instant joy.
And yet God *could* make it result in instant joy or overwhelming peace (he has the keys to the back door of our soul and can make us feel things and I think I probably don't need to convince anyone of this, just remind them that they know it of their own rare experience). It is actually a kindness that he does not generally do that, because otherwise we would do it *for the wrong reason* or at least for much more mixed motives, like a space chimpanzee pushing buttons to get banana-flavored pellets.