Dear Hungarian Families!
The year 2025 promises to be an extraordinary year in our lives, as it will be a Jubilee Holy Year. Pope Francis says in his letter written for the preparations for the Holy Year:
"The Holy Year has always been an event of great spiritual, ecclesiastical, and social significance in the life of the Church. Ever since Boniface VIII introduced the first Holy Year in 1300 – with a centennial repetition which then became fifty years, and then fixed as a twenty-five-year interval – God's faithful holy people experience this celebration as a special gift of grace, characterised by the forgiveness of sins and particularly by the Indulgence, a full expression of God's mercy." (Pilgrims of Hope – Pope Francis' Letter for the Preparation of the 2025 Holy Year)
The Holy Year, within God's faithful people as a large family, is also a gift of grace for families. For the Holy Year – beyond a loving reflection – is primarily about renewal, renewed conversion, and the opportunity for a new beginning. Let us view the Holy Year as an opportunity for families for "gracious redesign".
This new beginning also means experiencing the forgiveness of sins and God's mercy. It is an opportunity to mend our relationships: to forgive those with whom we are in conflict. It is an opportunity to forgive ourselves, and most of all, an opportunity for God to forgive all of us for not having received His love. Let us ask for God's stooping, merciful love for all these things!
As the Bishop for Family Affairs, with a heavy heart, I ask forgiveness from God, from children, young people, and their families, and from all those who have suffered any form of abuse at the hands of Church ministers. We will do everything possible to ensure that situations leading to abuse do not recur in the future and – fully aligning ourselves with the principle of zero tolerance announced by the Holy Father – we will continue the work already begun, keeping prevention in mind.
I believe that even in these faith-testing situations, Jesus speaks to us. It is He who heals wounds. I pray for all Catholic families that they may not lose their faith and may be able to process the wounds they have suffered. I trust that there will also be people in their surroundings who will help to bind up these wounds, who will offer them understanding and comfort.
At the same time, I ask for God's mercy! I place the words of Pope Francis on all our hearts: "Forgiveness does not change the past, it cannot modify what has happened, but it makes it possible to change the future, to live differently, without anger, hatred, and the desire for revenge." (Spes non confundit, 23)
The approaching Jubilee can greatly contribute to restoring an atmosphere of hope and trust – says the Holy Father. The Holy Year also carries within itself the hope of renewal for families: we can renew our marital relationship, our child-rearing attitudes, and our relationships with our elderly relatives.
The guiding principle of the coming Holy Year is: hope, for which the Pope chose the motto Pilgrims of Hope. He gave his Bull, issued for the 2025 Jubilee and already referenced above, the title: Hope does not disappoint (Spes non confundit).
What is hope?
In a general sense, hope is the desire for something good, the achievement of which does not depend solely on us; we wish to possess it, and we trust that with the necessary help, we will achieve the desired goal.
For the Christian, hope is a virtue (a readiness for good) that enables our will to do all that is necessary for our salvation, and to confidently await God's help, with which we will reach our supernatural ultimate goal and see God face to face.
"We must keep the torch of hope burning" – teaches the Holy Father. The bearer of the torch of hope is the family. In other words: the source of hope can be the family.
Why can the family be the source of hope?
Pope Francis said at the X World Meeting of Families that the family is the first place where a person learns to love. The Pope articulated an eternal truth: if someone grows up in a loving family, they experience and practise selfless love. Perhaps even more so, the larger the family. For today's increasingly individualised person, living in the temptation of selfishness, an authentic, though not perfect, family life can offer hope not to fall victim to the world of selfishness, but instead to build the culture of life lived in relationships of love.
Hope, whose ultimate goal is the encounter with the beatifying God, is also called a divine virtue; its sisters are faith and charity. A family living in sincere faith and charity becomes a blessing for itself and for others, which, experiencing God's infinite goodness, will always be a source of hope.
In the family, conceived life is awaited, children are accepted and raised. Long ago, in rural areas, people said of someone expecting a child: they have a future. And he who has a future, hopes. There is hope that the family will live in the Church and in society. There is hope for parents and children who love and accept each other. There is hope for caring for grandparents.
The Holy Father made synodality itself the theme of the synod of bishops concluded this year, of being on the way, of walking together on the path of faith. The Second Vatican Council says of the Church that it is God's pilgrim people. This is especially true for the family, the domestic church. The family is the walking together, the pilgrimage of different generations. Whoever learns cooperation in the family has hope that they will become a member of the Church and society who is ready for dialogue, capable of listening, and receptive. Our hope is that our faithful families will attract people seeking God and awaken in them too the desire for family life, for commitment.
Pope Francis also says: "As we feel that we are all pilgrims on earth, where the Lord has placed us to cultivate and keep it (cf. Gen 2:15), let us not fail along the way to contemplate the beauty of creation and to care for our common home." (Pilgrims of Hope – Pope Francis' Letter for the Preparation of the 2025 Holy Year)
The family, with its love for nature, can also be the cradle of creation care.
A family ready to adapt to one another and open to dialogue also carries the hope of peace, which our world so greatly needs today. Peace always starts from human hearts and smaller communities. Thus, the family can also be the bearer of the hope of peace.
As we prepare for the Holy Year, we give thanks for our families. I fondly think of my colleagues who assist in the spiritual care of elderly family members with the "I will stand by them" programme, a training which we intend to continue in the coming year.
The protection of life remains a cause close to our hearts; next year, for the fifth time, we will organise the Pro-Life Day in Debrecen, in cooperation with our Greek Catholic brethren.
We also intend to continue the development of a catechumenal approach to marriage preparation.
In order to help families become sources of hope, we wish to look at the writing published in 1995 by the great Pope of families and hope, Saint John Paul II – who next year will have passed into eternity twenty years ago –, his encyclical Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life).
Furthermore, let our spiritual reading be Pope Benedict XVI's apostolic exhortation Spe salvi, on Christian hope, which points to the spiritual kinship of the two Popes: "...we need the smaller or larger hopes which keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without that great hope which must transcend all others. This great hope can only be God, who embraces the universe and is able to give and bestow upon us what we are incapable of achieving on our own. It is precisely this bestowedness that belongs to hope. God is the foundation of hope – not just any God, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end: each of us and humanity as a whole." (31.).
With joy and hope, we are preparing for the international Jubilee pilgrimage of families to Rome at the end of May, and in mid-October for the thirtieth family congress, which this time we will organise in Vác.
Dear Hungarian Families!
The Holy Year begins with the opening of the Holy Door of the papal basilicas in Rome. In Hungary, too, all diocesan bishops will open the Holy Year in their own dioceses. But the most important thing is that we open our hearts, and the hearts of our families to Christ, and with this heart, be able to love our fellow human beings!
As Bishop for Family Affairs, I know that we must resolutely protect our families from gender ideology contrary to Christian values, from the harmful content of the online world, and from increasingly common addictions, so that our smallest communities may remain pure sources of hope! My colleagues and I will strive during the Holy Year to ensure that, to use the words of the Holy Father, "we celebrate the Holy Year with intense faith, living hope, and active charity" (Ibid.) in our families too. For this, I ask God's blessing upon you. Thank you for your faithful love!
At the beginning of Advent and at the threshold of the Holy Year, asking for the patronage of the Immaculate Virgin, I pray for you!
Vác, 08/12/2024
Marton Zsolt, Bishop of Vác
President of the Hungarian Catholic Bishops' Conference Committee for Family Affairs
Photo: Vatican Media
Joyful News Press Office / Diocese of Debrecen-Nyíregyháza