The Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy will end for Roman Catholics on Sunday, on their feast day of Christ the King, but the church won’t be merciless going forward.
“It simply means that the jubilee year concludes,” said Bishop Daniel Thomas of the Diocese of Toledo. “Our attention to being the face of the mercy of Jesus, who is the face of the father’s mercy, that would continue on forever, obviously.”
There are four Holy Doors in the diocese that pilgrims have entered to show repentance along with renewal of their faith. By walking through the doorways draped in red and white with a picture of Jesus, they received, as an example of mercy, plenary indulgences that free a soul from punishment on earth or in purgatory, according to Catholic belief.
“What I find interesting,” said Msgr. William Kubacki, the rector of Our Lady, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Cathedral, the location of one of four Holy Doors in the diocese, is “everybody that comes through the Holy Door does something different. Some say [a] prayer of Pope Francis. … Others will sing songs as a group. You’ll see others just touching the door and saying a quiet prayer, whatever it might be.”
The doors have been open since Dec. 8, the feast day of the Immaculate Conception and the 50th anniversary of the ending of the Vatican II conference.
The doors will close today at the Sorrowful Mother Shrine in Bellevue, Ohio, the Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey, Ohio, and Divine Mercy Parish in Paulding, Ohio. Bishop Thomas closes the door at Rosary Cathedral, 2535 Collingwood Blvd., during 5 to 6 p.m. Mass today. “Literally a few minutes after the Mass, all the stuff will come down,” Msgr. Kubacki said.
The doors proved to be popular destinations. Msgr. Kubacki said the number of visitors to the cathedral doubled. Besides individuals, families, and small groups, groups as large as 600 people were there for the Holy Door, the monsignor said. “We probably got about 5,000 people going through the Holy Door.
On Sunday, the door, located at a rear side aisle, will look like the other doors and return to its regular use. The Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and doors at the three other basilicas there will be closed and sealed until a pope declares another holy year and they can then be reopened.
For Rosary Cathedral, Msgr. Kubacki hopes to put a plaque or other indicator that the entrance served as the Holy Door for the jubilee of mercy.
Having a Holy Door as a pilgrims’ destination “served as an occasion for many people to return to the sacrament [of reconciliation, also called confession] who hadn’t been in years,” said David McCutchen, the director of the diocese’s office responsible for religious education. At the doors, brochures were available that told about Holy Doors and explained how to make confession.
“The emphasis on mercy and just the whole imagery of throwing the doors open, and the whole emphasis of that invitation to Jesus to visit the door [extended an] invitation and opportunity to encounter the Lord’s mercy, and [make] a fresh start where needed and a deepening of the spiritual life,” Mr. McCutchen said.
“As a diocese, we had tried to plan what would be important for us regarding this year of mercy to most concentrate some energy on,” Bishop Thomas said. “Part of that energy was to have a 'Reflecting the Face of Mercy' conference … to reach out to three groups of folks who we believe were most in need of God's mercy and who would be most affected by outreach in mercy. They included the divorced and remarried outside the church. They included folks with same-sex attraction. And they included folks who were affected by abortion.”
The aim, he added, was “to draw them back to the Lord, draw them into his mercy, and if, by God's grace, [that would] draw them back into the church, that was one of our great intentions.”
To emphasize the act of reconciliation, Mr. McCutchen said, “We did two events in the diocese that made confession more available,” a day when all possible churches were offering the sacrament and, during Lent, greater confession opportunities.
“A number of folks have told me that this year has been particularly impactful because, for every individual, whether it’s bishop, priest, deacon, consecrated religious, lay man or woman, younger or older, there has been the outreach or the realization that God's mercy extends to every single person,” Bishop Thomas said. “For each one of us, I think, we recognize that mercy first extends to us because each of us is a sinner.
“So to be able to personally, if you will, be more aware of God's mercy for us … to be personally aware that God's mercy was extended to me in an extraordinary way in this jubilee year, and then to respond to that mercy, hopefully by living out the reality of extending that mercy to others.”
Works of mercy done in body by helping others and in spirit by thoughts and words also received more attention. As Bishop Thomas related, “I remember one person said to me, ‘I haven’t heard about the corporal and spiritual works of mercy since I was in grade school,’ and that person was not young. I think it was very helpful because, for us, this is part of our Catholic ethos. It’s who we are; it comes directly from Scripture and tradition.”
The bishop said he intends to show by the diocese’s continuing actions that closed doors are no barrier to mercy.
Contact TK Barger at tkbarger@theblade.com, 419-724-6278 or on Twitter @TK_Barger.
First Published November 19, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
