By Bishop James Conley
This Jubilee Year 2025 makes manifest the great Jubilee mandate of liberation from sin, forgiveness of debts, and reparation of relationships. God’s goodness to us is so overwhelming that we can easily be overcome by its grandeur, or paralyzed by its call to do the same. How can we possibly express the unfathomable mercy and forgiveness to others, that he has shown to us? The answer is that we can’t, without his grace, which he pours out in abundance to us during this Holy Year.
The Jubilee Year is also a great opportunity to set right our relationships with our brothers and sisters; to express to those in our lives, the love and compassion that we have experienced from him. God’s love knows no partiality, nor does God differentiate between sinner and saint. He sees each one of us through his divine lens of love.
The reason why God can love so profoundly is simply because love is his identity. “God is love” (1 John 4:8). It is who he is. He sees the goodness concealed within each one of us, and strives to cultivate it, nurture it, and bring it to maturity. It’s why he can forgive so readily. He sees us as we were created and works tirelessly to bring out that goodness, helping us reject that which gets in the way of the perfect creature he always intended us to be.
He sees us, he knows us, and he loves us; and he asks us to see and know and love others in the same way. This is why he commands us “to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt. 22:37-39). During this Jubilee Year, we are called to take on the vision of Christ, and see others genuinely, as the Children of God that they truly are, as beloved by him in a way that is almost incomprehensible.
In our present society, there is a community of believers where this reality of being seen and known and loved by others can go unrealized: those families and members of the Body of Christ with disabilities. While it can be easy to “acknowledge” someone with disabilities, or perhaps even to sympathize with their difficulties, their struggle can be so very different from ours that we don’t know how to respond and see them for who they truly are. The easy answer to this is to move along quietly. The courageous thing is to enter in to their trials and accompany them.
When we really see someone, an opportunity presents itself: the chance to know the person and hear his or her story. Every human person is beautiful and has his or her own story, every soul has great dignity and worth, and each soul has the capacity for joy.
We should not be naïve to suffering. The constancy of care that flows from these disabilities is very real, and often overwhelming. It is easy to not see the family members who feel like they are drowning in the constant storm and tides of caring for those with special needs. It can be easy to presume all is well, as we keep people at arm’s length, not realizing the heaviness of their crosses. This is not what the Church and her members are called to do. In Lent of 2015 Pope Francis called on our Christian communities to be “islands of mercy,” refuges for the weary, places where people with special needs can be seen, heard and loved.
To love is to give without expecting anything in return. To love the disabled and those who care for them is a genuine need in our Church and society, and calls for a true Christian response. I know many parents, guardians, siblings, and caregivers who empty themselves out repeatedly for their loved ones with disabilities – from the individual’s childhood through his or her entire adult life. God sees and knows them too, and loves them. He is calling us to lift them up and walk with them, and to love them as well.
This, like so many things, begins with an invitation. Our parishes are a home to all. Not a perfect home, but a loving and patient home. Many who live in our parishes are unseen and feel isolated and alone. We must answer the desire of their hearts! To the one who feels isolated, it is not enough to wish them well. We need to break into their world and speak a word of welcome into their very hearts. If isolation has truly set in, that is a place the enemy fills with lies. We must not abandon our neighbors.
I would like to invite all with disabilities and their families to join me at the John XXIII Diocesan Center, 3700 Sheridan Blvd. in Lincoln on Monday, May 12, at 7 p.m., the eve of the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, to meet each other and pray together. We will have a holy half-hour of Eucharistic adoration and some reception time together.
The Holy Father has called for the weekend of April 26-27 to recognize people with disabilities during this Jubilee Year. I am forwarding intercessory prayers to all our parishes to be read that weekend. I would like to invite all with disabilities and their families to join me at the John XXIII Diocesan Center, 3700 Sheridan Blvd. in Lincoln on Monday, May 12, at 7 p.m., the eve of the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, to meet each other and pray together. We will have a holy half-hour of Eucharistic adoration and some reception time together.
I ask all of you to work within your community, with your pastor, and with those who are experiencing this reality, to help to make your parish a place of welcome. Perhaps there are low-sensory liturgies that can be offered, adaptive catechesis or regular times where communities can be built and fostered. The possibilities are numerous. It starts with all of us, making space in our schedule so that our neighbors are seen, known, and loved, in the same way that each of us is seen, known, and loved by our Heavenly Father.
