A year ago at the Diocese’s opening Mass for the Jubilee Year, Bishop Timothy Senior foretold it as being a period of “transformative presence” that will “reveal a little bit more of that destiny that we all have, the end of the journey to see God as He truly is.”
“We are pilgrims of hope journeying together with the entire family of humanity. In Jesus Christ, we always have hope, no matter what the circumstances are on the journey that is unfolding around us,” he said during the opening liturgy, celebrated four days after Christmas last year.
Typically celebrated every 25 years, a Jubilee Year is a special time of grace for the Church. In promulgating the Jubilee 2025, the late Pope Francis chose “Pilgrims of Hope” as its theme, saying it would be a catalyst “to greatly restoring a climate of hope and trust as a prelude to the renewal and rebirth that we so urgently desire.”
And in parishes large and small from all corners of the Diocese, countless parishioners took up the call to be Pilgrims of Hope, traveling to some or all of the Diocese’s seven pilgrimage sites in journeys marked by prayer, Catholic fraternity and renewed hope.
“I was struck by the faith of Catholics who have gone before us,” said Anne Satteson, after joining St. Joseph and Immaculate Conception parishioners in Berwick on a joint bus trip to the Basilica of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Danville in October.
“Keeping in mind that the theme of this Jubilee Year is hope, I thought it was interesting to learn that the Basilica was built with the pennies of the working class – mostly immigrant Slovaks – and completed in 1939 which was during the Great Depression,” she said.
“It struck me that, although they were poor, they gave their money because of the hope that their spiritual lives provided and the hope they held for a better future for their children. It showed that their faith was at the center of their lives,” she said.
A member of St. Joseph Parish in Berwick since 1983, Satteson signed up for the pilgrimage to the Basilica after having been there years ago when her children were in school.
Father Dominic Azagbor, O.P., parochial vicar for the two Berwick parishes, celebrated Mass for the pilgrims, and Sister Michaelette of the Sisters of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, presented a history of the Basilica.
“I was so grateful for the opportunity to join fellow parishioners for the visit, which was prayerful and reverent,” said Satteson, who serves as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion at her parish and did so during the pilgrimage. “It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
Abiding Together
For the Abiding Together Women’s Group at St. Joseph Parish in Mechanicsburg, Jubilee Year pilgrimages to all seven Diocesan sites provided a glimpse of the broader Church and an appreciation for the traditions, communities and outreach of the various parishes.
The idea to make the pilgrimages stemmed from a book study of “Jesus and the Jubilee,” based on a weekly podcast the Abiding Together group listens to. Inspired by the graces a Jubilee Year brings, members of the group decided to make a journey to Corpus Christi Church in April, where Father Allan Wolfe, pastor, celebrated Mass for their intentions.
After the ladies next visited the Basilica in Danville, where they caught up with a former priest and a former principal – Father Kenneth Roth and Sister Michael Anne Orlik, respectively – they decided to plan pilgrimages to the five remaining sites.
“Everywhere we went, we had phenomenal tour guides who knew not only the history of their church, but all the details. Every church had such intentional symbols, and that just gave me such a greater appreciation for them,” said Lauren Stout.
“Another blessing was that we drew closer on these pilgrimages. We were in the car for a few hours, listening to music, telling stories, talking about our families. It was really a sharing and a bonding of our sisterhood,” she added.
Fellow parishioner Barbara Geisler said, “At first, it seemed pretty aspirational to go to all seven churches, but once we started getting some traction and visiting a few, we stepped on the gas by the fall so that we could get to all of them. At each location, it was remarkable to see the people who were that excited about their church.”
As the women traveled to the sites over the course of several months, they carried prayer intentions and a focus on the virtue of hope.
“For me, it offered a beautiful focus on grace,” said Marlene Steinour. “Not that long ago, grace was my word of the year and it was really a transformational year for me with that word: coming to people with grace, striving for more grace that I would entertain situations more carefully and more God-like. I really took that with me on the pilgrimages and that was impactful for me personally.”
“Hope was always at the forefront for me – hope for my family because a cousin had just passed away, intentions for what was happening in my life as well as what was happening in the world at the time,” said Diane Maclay. “My intentions were situational, and it just flowed with the Year of Hope and the beauty of each church.”
Maclay said the group was blessed to see beautiful churches in all corners of the Diocese, learn about their history and see how parish communities are currently spreading the light of Christ.
“We got into the habit of picking up the bulletin at each church to see what they were doing for the local community and caring for the people around them. It was beautiful to get a glimpse of the work they’re doing and the caring culture that is all over the Diocese,” she said.
And they supported those local efforts in various ways, including purchasing more than $500 worth of pierogies from a sale at Our Lady of Hope Church in Coal Township.
For St. Joseph’s parishioner Lucy Sauder, who lives at Bethany Village, the pierogies were a connection for her friends in the assisted living community. “A lot of the people here are from the Coal Region and it was quite something for them to hear I was going to the Shamokin area for a pilgrimage. When I brought back some pierogies, it was all the talk,” Sauder said. “I never imagined it would have made such an impression, but that’s the thing about doing something for others – you see that things become bigger than you expect and have a meaning for people.”
“I think for our group, these pilgrimages made the Jubilee Year all the more special,” Sauder said. “When Pope Francis decided for the Church to have a Year of Hope, it was the perfect time because hope is something that we need all over the world today. Visiting these churches together made us feel that much stronger, that much more hopeful as pilgrims.”
With One Voice
Over the course of two days in August, 42 teenagers and eight chaperones from One Voice Youth Ministry in the Lancaster area piled into a few passenger vans to visit all seven churches, where they celebrated Mass, spent time in Adoration and learned about the details of each site.
“It was certainly a big undertaking, but very much worth the effort to give these teens a chance to see our pilgrimage sites and tour our Diocese,” said Kim Moore, Youth Coordinator for One Voice, a regional youth ministry program in Lancaster County.
At each church, teens eagerly took in the beauty, symbolism and iconography, approaching the visits with reverence.
“One of the teens said one of the best things they had seen was that the clergy members, Sister or parishioner giving the tour at each church was so proud of their parish community and how they’re serving the Lord,” Moore recalled. “That’s been so true everywhere we’ve gone. You can see clearly how much their Catholic faith means to them. They’ve been extremely informative with the details about the church and the faith, and also incredibly welcoming,” she said.
“We came across so many things we’d never seen and so many things we hadn’t learned about that we might not have ever known if we didn’t do this pilgrimage,” she said. “It was truly a blessing.”
Closing Celebration
“We must fan the flame of hope that has been given us, and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and far-sighted vision.”
Pope Francis shared these words in his Letter for the Promotion of the New Evangelization for the Jubilee 2025.
In Spes Non Confundit, the bull of indiction for the Jubilee Year, the late Holy Father prayed the time of grace would “help us to recover the confident trust that we require, in the Church and in society, in our interpersonal relationships, in international relations, and in our task of promoting the dignity of all persons and respect for God’s gift of creation. May the witness of believers be for our world a leaven of authentic hope, a harbinger of new heavens and a new earth (cf. 2 Pet 3:13), where men and women will dwell in justice and harmony, in joyful expectation of the fulfilment of the Lord’s promises.”
In a solemn closing of the Jubilee Year in the Diocese of Harrisburg, Bishop Timothy Senior will celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on Sunday, December 28, at 9:30 a.m. at St. Patrick Cathedral in Harrisburg. The day is also the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
The Mass will be an occasion to thank God for the graces of the Jubilee Year and to continue looking forward with hope, as Pope Francis wrote in his letter:
“Let us even now be drawn to this hope! Through our witness, may hope spread to all those who anxiously seek it. May the way we live our lives say to them in so many words: ‘Hope in the Lord! Hold firm, take heart and hope in the Lord!’ (Ps 27:14). May the power of hope fill our days, as we await with confidence the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and glory, now and forever.
(Photos courtesy of Diocesan parishioners.)
By Jen Reed, The Catholic Witness
