An ecclesiastical holy year is meant to have an influence, to give added meaning, to everything the Catholic Church does over the course of that year. The Jubilee of Hope is, therefore, like a fresh set of wineskins by which to receive the effusion of grace that Christ wants to pour into us during Holy Week.

The essence of hope is, St. Paul implied to the first Christians in Ephesus, to live with God in the world (Ephesians 2:14). When we realize God-with-us is indeed still very much with us, all of life changes.

Holy Week is an invitation to be with him up close, to accompany him on Palm Sunday into Jerusalem, to eat with him the Passover he eagerly desired to eat with us in the Upper Room, to stay awake with him prayerfully in the Garden of Gethsemane, to stand with him, like his mother, on Calvary, and then to meet him risen from the dead as he seeks to journey with us through life like he did the disciples on the Road to Emmaus.

Holy Week is a privileged opportunity to examine just how much we are with the One who took on our humanity to abide with and within us.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines hope as “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (1817). It’s a rich definition that helps us to see how we’re supposed to live not just the holiest week of the year, but our whole life.

To call something a theological virtue means that it’s a gift directly from God by which we’re called to relate to him.

That stable moral muscle features, first, the Catechism says, a trust in Christ’s promises. As we enter spiritually into the zenith of the Church’s liturgical calendar, we stake our life on what he told the apostles multiple times: that he would be betrayed, handed over to religious leaders, mocked, crucified, killed and on the third day raised. We trust in all of the Old Testament prophecies that he fulfilled. We trust, too, in what Jesus says every disciple must do to enter into his victory: Deny ourselves, pick up our cross daily and follow him.

The theological virtue of hope similarly features a dependence on the Holy Spirit rather than a self-reliance. As we pray in the first Psalm, cursed are those who place their ultimate trust in themselves or in human powers. Those who trust in God, however, are like trees planted in fresh running water whose leaves never fade and who bear regular fruit. We see an illustration of those two types of trust on full display in the betrayals of Peter, James and John and the other apostles. Their spirits were willing, but their flesh was weak. During the Last Supper, they protested that they would never betray Jesus, even should he have to die. They relied on their own sense of strength and loyalty — and it came up far short. After Pentecost, however, filled with the Holy Spirit and relying on him, they were able to remain intrepidly faithful, even to gruesome martyrdom. The same Holy Spirit wants to strengthen us to remain faithful this Holy Week and beyond.

The virtue of hope, the Catechism underlines, is foremost about a hunger for the kingdom of heaven and eternal life. We are able in some sense to participate in that kingdom and life embryonically in this world, because eternal life is, as Jesus says, knowing God the Father and himself (John 17:3), and the kingdom of heaven is wherever Christ the King of Heaven reigns, including on the throne of the cross. Holy Week is supposed to strengthen us in that knowledge and communion on earth and help us grow in a desire for their everlasting fulfillment.

Holy Week is a time during which we make our own the prayer of the Good Thief on the cross and open ourselves to Jesus’ offer of paradise. We recognize, as we sing in the Exultet at the Easter vigil, that “our birth would have been no gain had we not been redeemed,” had Christ not broken “the prison bars of death and [risen] victorious from the underworld.” Holy Week is a time during which we see on full display the battle between good and evil, between life and death, between heaven and hell. And it’s an occasion to exercise the moral muscle that has us desire eternal life and the Kingdom that Jesus paid such a precious price to obtain.

The Jubilee of Hope is also meant to help us become more equipped to carry out St. Peter’s exhortation, “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you a reason for your hope” (1 Peter 3:15), and Holy Week strengthens us in that witness. We see on display how much God loves us — that he sent his own Son to die for us on Calvary so that we might not perish but might have eternal life (John 3:16). His resurrection is a sign of the triumph of life over death, sanctity over sin, light over darkness, a type of first fruits of all those who will rise again (1 Corinthians 15:20).

That’s why the kerygma, the essential proclamation of the Christian faith, has always involved what we mark in Holy Week. St. Paul summarized it this way: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; he was buried; he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; [and] he appeared” to Peter, the Twelve, 500 brothers, James, and finally to Paul himself (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). The meaning of those saving events and post-Resurrection appearances is at the core of Christian hope, life and evangelization. Death does not have the last word; life and love do. Therefore, Christian hope is grounded and reasonable: If not even crucifixion can keep Jesus in the grave, the first Christians grasped, then why should they fear anyone or anything?

The traditional symbol of hope is the anchor. The Letter to the Hebrews, which is an extended meditation on what Christ won for us as Priest and Victim during the first Holy Week, urges us to “hold fast to the hope that lies before us,” which it calls “an anchor of the soul, sure and firm, which reaches into the interior behind the veil, where Jesus has entered on our behalf as forerunner, becoming high priest forever” (Hebrews 6:18-20). Holy Week is the time when the whole Church, the great assembly of fishers of men in the Barque of Peter, casts our anchor not into the sea but beyond the clouds, where Jesus, by his triumph, has entered to prepare a place for us.

That anchor is cruciform. Catholic tradition has sung on Good Friday for centuries, “Ave, O Crux, Spes Unica!” “Hail, O Cross, our only hope!” It’s our sole hope because without what Christ gained for us on the cross, eternal life would not be possible. But it’s also our only hope because unless we grasp onto that sign, lifting the cross high, the love of God proclaiming, losing our life so as to gain it, we will not be able to experience what Christ gained for us on the cross.

That’s why we enter these sacred days as “pilgrims of hope,” the theme of the Jubilee.

Holy Week is indeed an interior pilgrimage in which we retrace with Jesus the central events of our salvation, as he bids us follow him through the new and eternal Passover from death to life, from this world to the next.

Let us respond to the grace of the Holy Spirit to trust in Jesus’ promises and follow him up close on the Way of the Cross that is the sole road to our great hope’s fulfillment.

FURTHER REFLECTION VIA EWTN

Find reflections from Father Joseph Mary this Lent, based on The Seven Last Words EWTN Learning series. Also sign up for two free eBooks from Father Joseph, as well as his reflections emailed each Sunday through Easter.

In addition, find a separate eBook (in Spanish) from Father Pedro Nunez, with his reflections emailed each Sunday through Easter, plus related video archive.