From the Friars: 2025: The Year of Hope

Happy New Year! Today is the First Sunday of Advent. This means it is the beginning of the Church’s New Year of Grace, 2025. This gives us an opportunity to thank God for the blessings we have received this past year and to look forward, in hope, to the many blessings God will give us.

In 2025, we will complete our “Lift Project” connecting the Upper and Lower Churches via two wheelchair lifts. Why do we need to provide access for people to go into the Lower Church? Well, have you seen the Lower Church lately? We have a new Shrine Gift Shop located in the foyer filled with books and religious articles.

Likewise, thanks to our friend Larry Roux and his crew, we have a new wooden reredos (an altar backdrop/screen) in the sanctuary of the Lower Church, where there used to be nothing but a plain, beige wall. After the Epiphany, we will have altar rails installed in the sanctuary as well. This will continue to enhance the beauty of our Shrine as the “Hidden Jewel of the Merrimack Valley”. (My term for us–what do you think?).

More importantly, Pope Francis has named 2025 a Jubilee Year with the theme entitled “Pilgrims of Hope”. Because our world is suffering from the impact of war, the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and climate change, we all need hope. The Holy Doors will open at St. Peter’s on Christmas Eve and other dioceses throughout the world will commence the Holy Year on December 29th, the Feast of the Holy Family.

We have a tremendous opportunity to be renewed in the virtue of hope. Hope enables us to trust in Christ’s promises of salvation and eternal life, persevere through obstacles and trials, do God’s will even when things are hard, and to fight against temptations to despair. With hope we can envision a new world–one in which Jesus Christ reigns. But He cannot reign in our world, until He first reigns in our hearts.

Make room for the coming of Our Lord in your hearts this Advent and have a happy, hopeful New Year!

–Rev. Andrew, FPC