Monthly Prayer: January 2025

“Hope does not disappoint.” 

A new year can often bring a sense of both anxiety of what might happen, but also of hope for what will come. We are now into a Jubilee year where Pope Francis has encouraged us to be pilgrims of hope. Not a wishful thinking kind of hope but a strong hope that does not disappoint. 

In Pope Francis’ Papal Bull, Spes Non Confundit (in connection with the Jubilee year), it is written that ‘Christian hope does not deceive or disappoint because it is grounded in the certainty that nothing and no one may ever separate us from God’s love'.

A Jubilee year is a time of restoration, a time of forgiveness, often an opportunity to live a simpler life and a time of recognising our reliance on God and not of self. 

Remember that we journey in hope together as the Church. We do not do this alone.  

We pray that the coming year is filled with the hope that cannot be extinguished, our hope in God. 

Please join us by saying The Jubilee Prayer written by Pope Francis.

Father in heaven,
may the faith you have given us
in your son, Jesus Christ, our brother,
and the flame of charity enkindled
in our hearts by the Holy Spirit,
reawaken in us the blessed hope
for the coming of your Kingdom.
May your grace transform us
into tireless cultivators of the seeds of the Gospel.
May those seeds transform from within both humanity and the whole cosmos
in the sure expectation
of a new heaven and a new earth,
when, with the powers of Evil vanquished,
your glory will shine eternally.
May the grace of the Jubilee
reawaken in us, Pilgrims of Hope,
a yearning for the treasures of heaven.
May that same grace spread
the joy and peace of our Redeemer
throughout the earth.
To you our God, eternally blessed,
be glory and praise for ever.
Amen