2025 celebrates a Jubilee year in the Catholic Church, and Father Dave welcomes Scripture teacher and veteran tour guide Joan Watson to discuss. She is pilgrim formation manager for Verso Ministries and author of the new book, “Opening the Holy Door: Hope-Filled Scripture Reflections from St. Peter’s Basilica.”
Joan explains the Jubilee year and says, “Jubilee years have their roots in the Old Testament. In Leviticus, God called the people to take a rest. He originally said, ‘Take a rest every seven years and have this sabbatical year.’ Then he said, ‘Every seven sabbaticals, I want you to really rest and have a Jubilee.’”
“These times of Jubilee were times of freedom; slaves were released, land was given back, and debts were forgiven,” she continues. “This mercy that the people were supposed to show was really a sign of the mercy God wanted to give them.”
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Joan describes how Pope Boniface VIII called the first Christian Jubilee in 1300, and how pilgrims would travel on foot to the tombs St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome. A Jubilee year is now usually declared every 25 years, and this pilgrimage to Rome continues today. “[A pilgrimage is] an outward manifestation of an inward disposition,” Joan says. “We’re all on this pilgrimage of life, and so our spiritual lives are pilgrimages. At certain times of our life we physically do that; We undertake hardship to go from one place to the other, to be a symbol of that pilgrimage of life with the Lord.”
One element of the Jubilee is entering through the Holy Doors in Rome. “It was [established] pretty early on that your pilgrimage would end by entering into one of the four Major Basilicas of Rome,” Joan says, which are St. Peter’s Basilica, St. John Lateran, St. Paul Outside the Walls, and St. Mary Major. All of these locations have a special door that is normally sealed shut with cement and ceremonially opened during a Jubilee year. In 2025’s Jubilee year, Pope Francis is including a fifth Holy Door located in a local prison.
Joan specifically focuses on the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica, and the 16 bronze panels with different images mostly from Scripture. “I really fell in love with these images because they are depictions of mercy, forgiveness, that release from sin, and images of hope,” Joan says, noting that the theme of this Jubilee is Pilgrims of Hope.
“Most of the panels depict scenes from Christ’s life, and so in the book, I walk through them as a Scripture study…it helps you enter into the Scriptures to see what these stories have to tell you about hope, and how we can hope in this sometimes what looks-to-be-hopeless world,” she continues. “It takes you through these images to help you pray with them like a Visio Divina.”
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Joan describes one of her favorite scenes depicted on the Holy Door. “The panel that originally attracted me to the door was the panel of the Good Shepherd,” she says, and notes how many portrayals of this story show a heavily clothed shepherd standing still. “This depiction attracted my attention because the Good Shepherd is pretty lightly clad, as a shepherd working would be, and he’s reaching out for the sheep. He’s grabbing on to a little twig at the top of the rock, and you can just tell he’s working for the sheep.”
“I think that’s a beautiful depiction of the Good Shepherd, because Christ obviously did everything he could to rescue us,” Joan adds. “He gave his life for us. It’s really beautiful, because the Good Shepherd in this scene is cruciform the way he’s reaching out, reminding us of how the shepherd saved that little lost sheep – through the cross.”