The Prophecy and Fulfillment of the Jubilee | Dr. John Bergsma

Summary

Dr. John Bergsma shares his personal journey and deep insights into the significance of Jubilee years, both from a biblical and a contemporary perspective. With the upcoming Jubilee year in 2025, he explores its profound implications on personal and societal levels. Through his experiences, research, and newfound Catholic faith, he illustrates the Jubilee as a time for spiritual liberation and renewal, urging a joyful embrace of this sacred tradition.

Highlights

• Dr. Bergsma reflects on how the Jubilee year was instrumental in his conversion to Catholicism. 🛐
• Jubilee is a biblical concept tied to liberation and returning to ancestral lands, deeply rooted in Leviticus. 📜
• Economic freedom and restoration are key themes of the Jubilee, relevant to modern societal structures. 💰
• Prophecies and biblical passages foreshadow the coming of a messianic Jubilee led by Jesus. ✝️
• The 2025 Jubilee year is a chance to embrace pilgrimage and sacramental life for spiritual transformation. 🔄

Key Takeaways

• Dr. Bergsma's journey to Catholicism was deeply intertwined with the Jubilee of 2000. 🛤️
• The Jubilee year is a time of spiritual renewal, reflecting biblical roots and modern implications. 📖
• Jubilee practices remind us of freedom from debts and the restoration of family and property values. 🏘️
• Francis’s upcoming Jubilee in 2025 is an invitation for global spiritual growth and community. 🌍
• Indulgences and pilgrimage represent deep spiritual opportunities during Jubilees. 🚶‍♂️

Overview

Dr. John Bergsma’s talk on the Jubilee is not only a look back at an ancient biblical tradition but also a personal journey that led to his conversion to Catholicism during the Jubilee year of 2000. His narrative weaves together historical, theological, and personal threads, providing a dynamic tapestry where the Jubilee becomes synonymous with spiritual renewal and personal transformation.

The Jubilee, as described by Dr. Bergsma, plays a crucial role in the Mosaic Law, emphasizing restoration and freedom – not just from financial debts but from the shackles of life's burdens. He details how modern societies can draw from these ancient traditions to combat today’s economic inequities and strengthen the fabric of the family, echoing the original intentions of the biblical law.

With the upcoming 2025 Jubilee declared by Pope Francis, Dr. Bergsma encourages contemporary believers to engage deeply with the tradition through practices like pilgrimage, sacramental observance, and indulgences. His talk is a powerful call to recognize the Jubilee as an enduring embodiment of God’s grace, inviting adherents to seek renewed freedom and divine connection.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 10:30: Introduction and Jubilee Year of 2000 The chapter "Introduction and Jubilee Year of 2000" begins with an enthusiastic greeting and introduces the topic of the Jubilee. The speaker expresses that this is a significant moment both personally and broadly as they approach the Jubilee year of 2025. The Jubilee has greatly influenced the speaker's life, including impacting their decision to apply to several graduate schools.
• 10:30 - 22:00: Choosing a Dissertation Topic on Jubilee The chapter discusses the author's journey of getting accepted into the University of Notre Dame in 1999. Despite not being Catholic and coming from a Protestant Calvinist background, the author expresses a unique opportunity to study under a Calvinist from their own Dutch tradition at a predominantly Catholic institution. This experience was seen as a providential opportunity given the rarity of finding such a combination in any other school worldwide.
• 22:00 - 33:30: Biblical Roots of Jubilee in Leviticus The chapter titled 'Biblical Roots of Jubilee in Leviticus' discusses the personal journey of an individual who intended to study under a Protestant academic at the University of Notre Dame. The individual was awarded a fellowship allowing them to study there, highlighting a seemingly self-serving plan to exploit the situation. However, it is hinted that there was a divine influence guiding their path as they started their studies during preparations for the grand Jubilee celebration.
• 33:30 - 49:00: Jubilee as a Socioeconomic Principle The speaker reflects on their cynical view towards the Catholic Church's promotion of the Jubilee of 2000. They mention the Pope's encouragement of pilgrimages to Rome and offering of extra indulgences, likening it to historical practices of selling indulgences. The speaker showcases skepticism by referencing Johann Tetzel's phrase about indulgences, indicating a belief that the church is continuing old practices of monetizing religious events.
• 49:00 - 65:00: Prophetic Significance and Isaiah In this chapter, the author reflects on their skepticism and dismissive attitude towards the Jubilee year 2000. Initially, they approached the concept with cynicism and a scoffing spirit, but did not anticipate the significant spiritual transformation they would undergo during that year. Despite their initial reluctance, the events and divine interventions they experienced during that Jubilee year prompted a swift decision to leave their doctoral program.
• 65:00 - 89:00: Dead Sea Scrolls and Melchizedek Prophecy The chapter begins by introducing a family with four children and a fifth on the way, highlighting their uniqueness in a certain program due to having more children than anyone else. The narrator reflects on their own situation within the program, being significantly older than others and being on the verge of rejection for being 'too old' at the age of 29. As a result, there is a clear urgency to exit the program and start earning money to support the family. The narration transitions to the advice received by someone about the key to achieving this goal. The chapter sets up a narrative about balancing family responsibilities with the necessity of earning, against the backdrop of the narrator's age and program challenges.
• 89:00 - 105:00: Fulfillment in Jesus Christ In this chapter, the author shares his experience of choosing a dissertation topic in academia. He emphasizes the importance of quickly selecting a topic and highlights the pivotal role of his advisor, who is often referred to as the 'doctor father' in academic circles. Early in his first semester, he decided to engage his advisor by taking him out to lunch with the intention of discussing and refining potential dissertation topics. The chapter outlines the author's proactive approach to academic mentorship and guidance in pursuit of fulfilling his scholarly objectives.
• 105:00 - 115:30: Jubilee Year 2025: Practices and Emphasis The chapter discusses the exchange between the narrator and a fair director during lunch. The director encouraged individuals to explore their own topics and express their ideas, while the narrator sought more concrete suggestions. This led to a back-and-forth conversation lasting about two hours, reflecting different approaches to idea development.

The Prophecy and Fulfillment of the Jubilee | Dr. John Bergsma Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 well it's great to be with you this evening and uh we got a wonderful topic to go over which is the Jubilee and this is a very special moment for me um moment in the broader sense you know certainly tonight is wonderful but uh more broadly as we approach the Jubilee year of 2025 um the Jubilee has had a very special impact on my own life um I uh apply apped to several graduate schools
• 00:30 - 01:00 in the fall of 1999 and by God's Providence got accepted at the University of Notre Dame uh I was not Catholic and did not intend to become Catholic was a Protestant uh man from my own calvinist tradition who was teaching at the University of Notre Dame in Old Testament and uh in fact Notre Dame was the only School in the world where I could go to study under a calvinist from my own Dutch tradition
• 01:00 - 01:30 and get a doctorate in Old Testament under him so I got accepted at the University of Don Notre Dame they offered me a fellowship I thought this was great I'll go down I'll study with a Protestant get paid by Catholics it'll be like robbing the Egyptians that that was my plan to just manipulate and take advantage of the situation well of course God had other plans and uh ended go going down to the University of Notre Dame and beginning my studies just as preparations were ramping up for the great Jubilee of
• 01:30 - 02:00 2000 so that was going on and I was a bit cynical about the whole thing you know and I heard about the Jubilee of 2000 and you know how the pope was encouraging pilgrimages to Rome and how extra indulgences were being offered for the year I'm like darn it they're still at it you know when the coin in the Coffer clings the soul to Heaven Springs you know Johan tetel and the whole business them Catholics have haven't
• 02:00 - 02:30 changed a bit so I looked at the Jubilee year 2000 with with great cynicism and um uh almost a scoffing Spirit uh not realizing what God was going to do to me during that uh Jubilee year um but again that was a jubilee year 2000 and other things combined so uh I knew I had to get out of my doctoral program quickly
• 02:30 - 03:00 uh because they had four children and I think the fifth on the way if I remember and more kids than anybody else in the program I was older than anybody else in the program was 29 years old almost they told me they almost didn't accept me because I was such an old man at 25 54 you know any of that um uh so I knew I had to get out of out quick and start earning money from all for all these mouss to feed and somebody told me that the trick to doing that was was to
• 03:00 - 03:30 choose your your dissertation topic quickly and the person who knows the dissert the dissertation topics that will work is your advisor who in Academia is called your doctor father and that was the man I had gone down to study with from my own tradition and so I took him out to lunch very early on after a couple of weeks into my first semester took him out to lunch and my intention was to pick his brain until he suggested something that I could work on on a dissertation topic
• 03:30 - 04:00 that he knew would work so we spent about two hours over lunch and he was a l Fair director he didn't want to suggest anything he wanted everybody to find their own topic and express themselves and develop their own ideas I was like to heck with all that give me something to works and I'm GNA do it and so back and forth we fought me trying to get information out of him and he trying to you know to prevent me from getting information and after about 2 hours he
• 04:00 - 04:30 finally broke down and said well some years ago I had a student who began to work on the biblical Jubilee and he never finished and I always thought it would be a good idea to see that project come to fulfillment and I thought Bango there we go all right that's going to be my topic it's going to be the Jubilee never thought too wits about the Jubilee before my whole life never gave any consideration to Leviticus 25 before didn't care didn't know it could have
• 04:30 - 05:00 been you know the biblical perspective on garbage I don't know anything that he had suggested I would have taken so so but it was a jubilee so I began to work on the Jubilee and so I was working on the Jubilee when the Jubilee of 2000 hit and then uh also at the same time the world's greatest commentator on The Book of Leviticus famous man famous Jewish scholar by the name of uh Jacob Milgram
• 05:00 - 05:30 the rumor was out that he had finally finished his Levi Leviticus commentary his 3500 page commentary on The Book of Leviticus is like crazy it's like I don't know like 30 pages per page of Leviticus or more whatever that calculates out to you more than that much more than that I would to say in any event um so his his third volume of his three volume commentary on uh The Book of Leviticus was released right around the Year of
• 05:30 - 06:00 Jubilee and it came out and had on the front a picture like this had a man blowing the chofar to announce the uh the arrival of the Jubilee it was a the third volume on Leviticus 23- 27 if I'm recalling correctly so an amazing time amazing convergence of all these book biblical all these Jubilee developments probably the greatest commentator on the Jubilee releasing his work my doctor father saying work on the Jubilee and then Pope John Paul II announcing the
• 06:00 - 06:30 Jubilee and something spiritually was at work and before that Jubilee year was out I had become convinced of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and I decided to become part of the Catholic church now they couldn't schedule my confirmation for within the bounds of the Jubilee year that fell a few months afterward at near the end of February of 2001 but my almost my entire journey into the church really took place and unfolded in that Jubilee year and I
• 06:30 - 07:00 think it was the result of those Jubilee Graces so that's a a story for another night but when I heard that Pope Francis had announced that 2025 was going to be a jubilee year um I thought you know the time has come time has come to say something about the Jubilee um I'm probably one of four or five uh persons in the whole world that have done a dissertation on the Jubilee or something very closely related um very few of us
• 07:00 - 07:30 out there um I can only think of one maybe two other persons that are alive that have done comparable work so I got a real uh unique uh um skill set because of what my dissertation topic was on done a lot of research on the ancient uh biblical Jubilee and who knows uh these Jubilee years usually come around every 25 years uh I'm going to be 79 when the next one comes around don't know if I'm gonna
• 07:30 - 08:00 live that long uh it's not guaranteed so this might be the last Jubilee year I ever see and Now's the Time to Say something about it so uh with the encouragement of Chris Erikson at Aus Road and and the staff of the St Paul Center um I undertook to write a popular book uh on the Jubilee trying to explain its biblical roots and really trying to head off all the negative responses that I think come from the announcement of the Jubilee you know when Pope Francis
• 08:00 - 08:30 announced the Jubilee a lot of people just ignored it that's one kind of response that's kind of like the seed that falls on the path okay and then others I think outside mostly outside the Catholic Church heard about the Jubilee year 2025 and just smirked at it and I think all my old calvinist friends probably did that and thought the same thing I did back in 2000 there they are at it again some you know religious reason to raise money for the Vatican an excuse to have a lot of pilgrimages
• 08:30 - 09:00 where people are going to leave money in Rome and uh you know pay for indulgences or what what have you so I understand that mindset very well so that's that cynicism I think others have heard of the announc of the Jubilee year and just met met it with a kind of well-meaning confusion like well what's this all about you know what do I do during a jubilee year why is it special what where does it come from and um
• 09:00 - 09:30 uh you know very few I think have really uh received the Jubilee year the way that Pope Francis I believe hoped and intended which is with great joy and uh a sense that wow this is a a time of Grace where I can really enter in and and become more intimate with my God and with my Lord and uh experien The Graces for myself and my family I think that last response the response of joy is
• 09:30 - 10:00 what I really want to encourage people to have and so I'm I have written and we're now releasing this book Jesus and the Jubilee uh the uh biblical roots of the year of God's favor um to try to help people to move from whatever kind of initially perhaps negative or even neutral uh response to the Jubilee Year to one of reception and Joy so in order
• 10:00 - 10:30 to do that we need to delve into what are the biblical roots of this Jubilee practice I think there's a lot of folks out there that think that the Jubilee years are something that were invented during the Middle Ages again maybe to generate uh pilgrimage income for Rome Etc but in fact there are deep biblical roots for this principle of the Holy year and it really goes back to Le
• 10:30 - 11:00 Leviticus 25 um beginning in verse 8 it says uh and this is God speaking to Moses at Mount Si okay so let's get the context this is at SI within one year after they've come out of Egypt from The Exodus and the golden calf debacle has already taken place and now God is giving a body of uh imperative law or
• 11:00 - 11:30 you might even think of it as penitential law to the people of Israel designed to help them to make reparation for this the the great sin of idolatry that they had committed with the calf and and also to preserve them from further sin really to conserve the goods that have been gained by The Exodus and so God commands Moses to tell the people of Israel you shall count seven weeks of years 7times 7 years so a
• 11:30 - 12:00 total of 49 years and then you shall send abroad the loud trumpet on the 10th day of the seventh month on the day of atonement and you shall hallow the 50th year and Proclaim Liberty throughout the land look at that phrase Proclaim Liberty it's very distinctive in Hebrew and it's actually what's uh inscribed on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia you shall Proclaim Liberty throughout the land is what they put on that famous Bell so it's had a the idea of the
• 12:00 - 12:30 Jubilee has had a powerful impact even indeed on American culture you shall Proclaim Liberty throughout the land it shall be a jubilee for you and each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family well there's a lot that we could say about this uh first of all let's observe that the Jubilee was part of the Mosaic liturgy and the Liturgy of Moses had holy
• 12:30 - 13:00 Seasons not only just within a year annual observances as we're familiar with every year we have the same feast days Etc but there are also super annual observations in the Mosaic liturgy for example every seven years you had a Sabbath year where you didn't rest for a day but you rested for a whole year and you ceased from agricultural labor and allow God to provide from you from the goodness of the earth whatever would grow of itself and then after seven of
• 13:00 - 13:30 these holy Sabbath years you you observed a second uh year of rest and that was the 50th year that was the Year of Jubilee so the Jubilee was the climax of the entire Mosaic liturgy it was the observation that had the longest cycle a 50-year cycle and brought everything to a climax and this year was an unusual year just as just as says for example Pope
• 13:30 - 14:00 Francis has declared that the Jubilee year 2025 will begin not on January 1 the beginning of the Civil year but on uh New Year uh excuse me Christmas Eve December 24th so he has the power to do that to say that the Year this holy year will begin on a lurgical observation or a sity so likewise the Jubilee year was uh init was established to begin on the
• 14:00 - 14:30 day of atonement which was the 10th day of the seventh month that's when the Holy year began and the day of atonement was the highest holiest day and it still is of the Jewish lurgical calendar it's the day when the high priest would enter into the holy place and sprinkle Blood on the Ark of the Covenant three times once for his sins once for the sins of the priest and once for the sins of all the people and having made atonement for the entire nation he would exit the most holy place
• 14:30 - 15:00 and go outside where the people were gathered for the observation and he would bless them three times actually pronouncing the name of the Lord in that famous blessing from numbers six the Lord bless you and keep you the more Lord make his face to shine upon you Etc and so that was very dramatic and this is the highest holiest day of the year where all the sin of the people was atoned for that's important because the Jubilee is a socioeconomic expression of the Interior reconciliation that was
• 15:00 - 15:30 accomplished through the day of atonement so first the whole nation is made right With God all the nation's debts of sin are paid to God through the atoning ritual of the day of atonement and then that's manifest externally by an erasing of all debt between human beings it's very much the principle with which The Lord's Prayer concludes in Matthew 6 where our Lord says unless you forgive your brother from the heart
• 15:30 - 16:00 neither will your father forgive your trespasses and so God as God has forgiven the nation through the day of atonement so we will forgive each one his brother and then we see too in this uh passage about the Jubilee year what the real goals of the Jubilee were which was that each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family so what the Jubilee the Jubilee was not
• 16:00 - 16:30 just you know a one-time event but actually the economy of Israel was set up to operate in such a way that if you sold land you always did so cognizant of the fact that the Jubilee year was approaching and so you would sell the use of the land but you couldn't sell the land permanently and so if you bought land you had to calculate to when the Jubilee year was coming and you would just buy the use of of the land you would rent it like give a rental
• 16:30 - 17:00 amount until the coming of the Jubilee likewise there was no true slavery in ancient Israel but if people sold their labor to pay off their debts you would buy them so to speak for the amount that the labor was worth up until the coming of the Jubilee so everything was pro-rated and it worked its way down so when the Jubilee came it was everything was down to zero and all the land went back to the original owner and all um indentured servants essentially were
• 17:00 - 17:30 freed and were able to return to their property and so we see that the Jubilee was really meant to institutionalize The Exodus the problem is this God has freed his entire people from slavery how do we make sure that they never slide back into slavery once more you know unless measures were taken it could easily be the case that having escaped slavery to Pharaoh they would
• 17:30 - 18:00 become a nation in the promised land and slowly through the progression of indebtedness in the ancient economy you'd reach a situation where all the people were surfs or slaves to maybe four or five very wealthy Israelites and so rather than slaving for Pharaoh they're slaving for a little Israelite oligarchy but it's not much better and it's not much different than what they were freed from Egypt so how do we perpetuate the gains that we accomplished Through The Exodus well the
• 18:00 - 18:30 Jubilee is the institution to institutionalize and perpetuate the freedom of the Exodus every 50 years everyone's going to return to his property that means freedom that means you're not a slave if you're owning property you're not a slave so everyone experiences that freedom and everyone will return to his family as well will'll be freed from any servitude that they that they had engaged upon themselves by selling their labor to pay off debt so debts worked down to zero everything that the whole economy
• 18:30 - 19:00 rebooted and everybody was restored to their land to their independence and especially to their family and the family is the most important thing here the Jubilee was meant to prevent the family from being destroyed by economic forces it was meant to prevent the family from being destroyed and from Israelite families losing their identity forgetting who they were being broken up and dispersed through slavery and
• 19:00 - 19:30 indebtedness and and passing out of the consciousness of God's people and so the Jubilee was was how to prevent this and this is all very important and I've been you know over the course of my career since I worked on this professionally been invited many times to address different um groups that were working on the issue of the application of the Bible to economic theory and I've been asked to come in and give addresses on this question and how does the Jubilee apply in the modern economy well our modern economy is very
• 19:30 - 20:00 different from the ancient economy of Israel which is mostly sub subsistence agriculture is what they were engaged in we're not we're no longer doing that so you can't simply take the pr you know the the rules of the Jubilee and apply them unchanged in the Contemporary day but I've always suggested to economists that if they want to replicate the the meaning of the Jubilee in modernity they need to seek for ways to institutionalize free freedom from
• 20:00 - 20:30 indebtedness and ways to combat individual families from losing their identity and their transgenerational uh continuity because of economic stress and however that might be okay that is what it means to to uh to do the Jubilee in in in the modern time and uh so it was really focused around the family and we need to regain
• 20:30 - 21:00 that and and the the property was kind of a stakeholder for the identity and the continuity of the family having that physical piece of land to which they could periodically return and where their ancestors were buried became a symbol and a repository for the family member memories and the family identity and memory is identity if you get knocked on the head and have amnesia you literally forget who you are and you're not the same person so memories create
• 21:00 - 21:30 identity and we don't want the memory of the individual Israelite families lost so that's a lot a lot to think about I for for modern social planners and politicians and economists how can we set up modern society so that preserves families rather than destroying them through you know things like uh increase of debted or transgenerational debt Etc so every 50 years we had the Jubilee it was a law that they mostly
• 21:30 - 22:00 did not keep it's it's so crazy how we we avoid these forms of Freedom that God God tells us just rest every seven days rest we can't do that it's like the easiest command in the world just lay there relax no no I got to work now we're lazy throughout the whole week when he comes to suay like oh I got to work and with these sabatical years as well and so they failed to keep the
• 22:00 - 22:30 Sabbath the Sabbath uh Sabbath years and the Jubilee was one of the Sabbath years it was the climactic Sabbath year and so there's kind of an Epitaph on the nation of Israel written hundreds of years after Moses uh was given this law when the people due to their many sins and due to Breaking the Covenant that Moses had given them they finally lost their land much as Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden so Israel got kicked out of the Promised Land and we read at the end of Chronicles he Nebuchadnezzar
• 22:30 - 23:00 King of Babylon took into Exile in Babylon those who had escaped from The Sword until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths all the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years that's the number of Sabbath years in in a total of almost 500 years uh all told so the Epitaph on the nation of Israel is that
• 23:00 - 23:30 they did not keep the Sabbath for half a millennia the Sabbath year I should say and at the at the end of that half Millennia God's patience was up and he decided Well if you're not going to give the land the rest it deserves willingly I'll make you give the land rest unwillingly so you can either have my way or you can have my way uh do it the easy way or the hard way cooperatively or not it's kind of how I parented my kids but anyway um
• 23:30 - 24:00 it's good fatherhood um so that's that's what all the days that lay desolate to to keep Sabbath so unfortunate was uh a great failure on their part that they broke uh this command of the Lord which would have been so beneficial to them and uh brought such peace to their society and so the prophets during these centuries where they observed that the people of Israel were not keeping the
• 24:00 - 24:30 law and among those laws that they were not keeping were these laws of these uh years of rest and this year of Freedom the Jubilee the prophets began to realize that Israel would never fulfill the meaning of the Jubilee if left to their own devices and so the prophets began to look for the Messiah to bring about the Jubilee and a great example of this is is actually the prophet
• 24:30 - 25:00 Isaiah who looking far into the future speaks in the first person as if he were the anointed one that would come one day to bring Liberty to Israel and so Isaiah speaking as the servant says the spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor he has sent me to bind up the Brokenhearted to Proclaim Liberty to the captives and
• 25:00 - 25:30 there he's quoting aric Hebrew Hebrew that had not been part of common speech for centuries since the time of Moses and you can recognize it as a quote from the Torah from the Books of Moses by its unique phraseology this is lifted straight from Leviticus 2510 in the Year of Jubilee you will Proclaim Liberty throughout the land and the opening of the prison to those who are bound to
• 25:30 - 26:00 proclaim the year of the Lord's favor this is the Jubilee year the day of Vengeance of our God and to comfort all who mourn so what's being expressed here is the hope of the prophet Isaiah that Al although Israel has never observed Jubilee consistently or even at all uh one day God's servant the anointed one and anointed in Hebrew is mashak and so the mesiah or mesiah we say is the
• 26:00 - 26:30 anointed one he's going to come and Proclaim this year of Liberty which is going to last indefinitely now the only Prophet uh of the uh prophets of Israel Who provided a chronology for when this wonderful arrival of the anointed one and the beginning of the Eternal Jubilee would take place is Daniel and Daniel chapter 9 Daniel is praying very intensely on
• 26:30 - 27:00 behalf of his people and the angel Gabriel comes in answer to Daniel's prayers to explain to Daniel how long it will take until Daniel's prayers are fulfilled and Gabriel Daniel reports said to me oh Daniel 70 weeks of years that's 490 years or 10 Jubilee periods that's what that really is see a jubilee cycle was 49 years so 10 cycles of the
• 27:00 - 27:30 Jubilee 10 was a number of perfection and completion okay are decreed for your people and the holy city to finish the transgression to put an end to sin and to atone for iniquity to bring in Everlasting righteousness to seal both vision and prophit and to anoint a Most Holy you say a Most Holy what that's all the text says to anoint a most holy person
• 27:30 - 28:00 maybe Place possibly but it's just left ambiguous so translators have a tendency to render it one way or the other some think this means a Most Holy place and Aro it's the consecration of the temple others think it means the most holy person in other words the Messiah but we really don't have to choose between those two options right because when the Messiah comes he goes
• 28:00 - 28:30 up to cleanse the temple in John 2 that makes a lot of people upset and they come and say what sign do you have to perform that you have the authority to do these things and he replies tear down this Temple and I will restore it in three days and they say it's taken us 46 years to build this Temple you're going to build it back in three days and John explains in John 2:21 he was speaking of the Temple of his body so the most holy person and the most
• 28:30 - 29:00 holy Place become one and the same thing because the body of the Messiah is the new Temple in any event if you look at these things finish transgression put an end to sin atone for iniquity bringing Everlasting righteousness this is the New Covenant that's being described these are all the effects of the arrival of the New Covenant so when is this going to take place well Gabriel tells Daniel from the going forth of the word to restore
• 29:00 - 29:30 Jerusalem to the coming of literally Messiah Prince really the indefinite article isn't in the Hebrew but from Jus to the coming of Messiah Prince there shall be seven weeks and 62 weeks now if you look in your English translations of your Bibles in Daniel 9 none of you will see this because all the English translations currently available follow the punctuation of the Hebrew which says from the word to restore
• 29:30 - 30:00 Jerusalem to the coming of Messiah Prince there shall be seven weeks period and for 62 weeks it shall be built up it goes on to say that is how the Hebrew is punctuated but that is a postchristian syntactical development in what we call the mastic text if you look at all the ancient translations like the Septuagint uh the theodocian the the version of theodocian um the ethiopic um the uh Latin the
• 30:00 - 30:30 Syriac all the ancient translations read as I have it here from the time of the word to restore Jerusalem to the coming of Messiah Prince there shall be seven weeks in 62 weeks now it is an odd way to phrase 69 weeks um there's there's some reason it's being broken up that way but then combined I don't know exactly what the reason is but that's that's how all the ancient interpretations read it they
• 30:30 - 31:00 brought that together why is that significant that's significant because when you read it that way then Messiah Prince comes near the end of the roughly 500 year period and that is in fact how things unfolded he did come near the end of the 500 year or the 490 year period and then throw in uh some things that Jeremiah says Jeremiah told the judeans
• 31:00 - 31:30 that there would be 70 years uh for Babylon and then God would visit his people and would fulfill his promise that led the people of Israel rightly so to assume that the time of Exile would be 70 years however there is a condition both to Jeremiah's promise prophecies and to others in Scripture that this 70-year Exile was contingent or dependent on the
• 31:30 - 32:00 people of Israel repenting and Daniel actually admits in Daniel 9 that despite the passage of 70 years the people had not repented and he attempts to repent on behalf of the people very much like Moses in Exodus 32 attempting to repent on behalf of Israel after the golden calf those two prayers are actually they're connected and it's a set of great penitential prayers in the Bible Nehemiah has one Ezra has one
• 32:00 - 32:30 Daniel has one Moses has one these great penitential prayers where they try to repent on behalf of God's people now the problem is there's a principle articulated in Leviticus 26 that if God disciplines you and you do not repent he will Smite you Sevenfold and uh Daniel admits in Daniel 9 All This calamity has come upon us and yet we have not intreated the favor of the Lord Our God turning from our
• 32:30 - 33:00 iniquities and giving heed to thy truth so if God punished them for 70 years and they did not repent how does that principle from lcus 26 apply 70 times seven absolutely and so that's the exegetical logic behind Gabriel's message that's why it's now 70 weeks of years and so this leads to a reality that was very very fashionable to study when I was working on my
• 33:00 - 33:30 dissertation which was the idea of the continued Exile okay during second temple Judaism or what we think of as late Judaism prior to the destruction of the temple the uh many many of the uh Jewish people had a sense that the Exile had never really come to an end even though they had come back to their land their King had never been restored they had never regained their independence under the son of David they had never experienced the New Covenant that Jeremiah had prophesied and so they were
• 33:30 - 34:00 still waiting for all these good things that would definitively Mark the end of the Exile and so they were even even those who had returned to the physical land of Judea were waiting for God to bring the exile to an end and that kind of idea is communicated here in Daniel 9 you've got now have like a 500e period of Exile because you didn't repent after the 70 years all right so
• 34:00 - 34:30 that's the case so those Prophecies of Isaiah of the anointed servant who's going to proclaim the Jubilee if you put that together with the 490 years of Daniel you would assume that Messiah Prince of whom Daniel speaks is going to come at the end of that period and Proclaim Liberty to God's people and so the essenes that very devout Holiness sect of the Jews that was similar in size to the Sadducees and the
• 34:30 - 35:00 Pharisees and who are spoke who are spoken of rather extensively by the Jewish historian Josephus who writes far more about the Essen sect than about the Sadducees and Pharisees combined in his two great works the Jewish War and the Jewish Antiquities I I would estimate he writes three to four times more in description of the scenes than he does either about his own sect the Pharisees or the Sadducees he gives the Sadducees like
• 35:00 - 35:30 half a column he gives maybe a column and a half to his own group the Pharisees and then just page after page after page of the esss who is obviously completely fascinated with them and their lifestyle and he tried to join them but I think that he found their their spiritual disciplines just a little bit too much uh for himself to handle so in any event he never though ceased to admire them and the essenes alone among the different sects of Jews practiced celibacy and
• 35:30 - 36:00 monasticism and in fact they established a monastery on the shores of the Dead Sea and the library of that Monastery was preserved in caves when the Roman soldiers came to destroy them around the year 70 they ran their their precious Scrolls and hid them in caves and then went out to fight the Romans and they lost miserably and were massacred and so their most precious preservation or their most precious I should say possession remained in those caves and
• 36:00 - 36:30 were uh stumbled upon in 1947 by a couple of bedwin shepherds who tried to sell them for some money and could hardly get 25 bucks for them uh until William foxell Albright realized that one of the Scrolls they were carrying was a copy of Isaiah from the 3D Century BC about a millennia older than any copy of any complete uh copy of a Biblical book that we had had up until
• 36:30 - 37:00 that point so when that was figured out and they knew what they had then the the rush was on and they eventually found 11 caves in which the monks had sequestered their precious Scrolls and in the last cave that was discovered they found some of the most precious finds of the full of the whole collection and one of them was a document that was prophetic it prophet prophesied the return of a
• 37:00 - 37:30 Divine melchisedec let's look what it said this is the document known as 11q mlisc it's not actually 11 q1 mkdc that's a typo need to take that out but 11q mkdc that is schol scholarly jargon 11q means it was found in the 11th kumran cave melkisedek specifies the topic of the document so it's the document about milisic found in the 11th cave and it reads concerning what scripture
• 37:30 - 38:00 says in this Year of Jubilee you shall return every one of you to your property that's a quote of Leviticus 25:13 and what is also written and this is the manner of their mission every creditor shall remit the claim that he has held against his neighbor because God's remission has been proclaimed that's Deuteronomy 15:2 it's very interesting um 40 years after the laws of Leviticus were given when Moses was about to die he gave another set of laws
• 38:00 - 38:30 and he changed things around a little bit and he instituted a seven-year debt release um this we're not sure exactly how this worked together with the Jubilee year it might have just kind of cut the Jubilee process off at the knees so so to speak by eliminating debt debt every seven years it may be that uh that Moses near the end of his life did not think that the people of Israel could manage such an elegant but uh but long
• 38:30 - 39:00 duration uh economic process like the Jubilee was and so he introduced something more quick and dirty uh to eliminate debt on a regular basis there's different theories about how this year of remission was to operate but we see that these ancient essenes who wrote this scroll just take these two debt release laws and merge them together we call that conflation and they go on to say about it they they
• 39:00 - 39:30 give an interpretation for these years of debt release the interpretation is that it applies to the last days and concerns the captives just as Isaiah said to proclaim the Jubilee to the captives look at that from Isaiah 611 and uh actually the word Jubilee doesn't occur in Isaiah 611 but they put it in because that's what they know that's what's being talked about and then we
• 39:30 - 40:00 are missing some text and then we pick up the text again it says even from the inheritance of melkisedek for they are the inheritance of melkisedek who will return to them sorry will will return them to what is rightfully theirs see this this evokes the context of Genesis 14 where Abraham defeated the Mesopotamian Kings and returned to lot and to the other inhabitants of s Sodom
• 40:00 - 40:30 and Gomorrah what was rightfully theirs that is their cities and their lands and melkisedek was associated with that because he's the great priest king that shows showed up to bless the whole occasion and he referring to melkisedek will Proclaim to them the Jubilee thus releasing them from the debt of all their sins so look at this creat ative exegesis that's going on uh centuries
• 40:30 - 41:00 before the birth of our Lord these essene scripture Scholars are combining these laws of freedom from the Mosaic Torah and then they're joining them to Daniel 9 and Isaiah 61 which indeed is there on to something because those passages very much do draw on Leviticus 25 and the idea of these holy years on patterns of seven and and then they're joining it to uh this mysterious figure
• 41:00 - 41:30 melchisedec who's so exalted that He blesses Abraham and Abraham ties to him tithes to him which is a sign of respect and out of all of this uh they're coming up with a vision that a a Heavenly melkisedek is going to come in the latter days at the end of time and he's going to Proclaim this Jubilee that will free people not from money debt but from the debt of
• 41:30 - 42:00 sin and then he goes on and said this word will thus come in the first week of the Jubilee period That's a set of 49 years that follows the nine Jubilee periods oh this is again out of Daniel 9 reading it as 7 and 62 weeks a total is 69 weeks okay so at the end of this period Then the the day of atonement shall follow at the end of the 10th
• 42:00 - 42:30 Jubilee period That's the 490 years when he shall atone for all the sons of Light and the people who are predestined to melchisedec okay so all this goodness is going to happen at the end of this roughly 500e period that was foreseen by Daniel okay continuing to read in 11q mezc this document that was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls we read for this is the time
• 42:30 - 43:00 decreed for the year of melchisedec's favor that's an intentional modification of Isaiah 61:2 which says the year of the Lord's favor huh is it the Lord or mlisc is it the Lord or mzc yes yes and his hosts together with the Holy ones of God for a kingdom of judgment just as it is written
• 43:00 - 43:30 concerning him in the songs of David God has taken his place in the Council of God in the midst of the Angels he holds judgment I don't know if you followed everything that just happened there but the gist of that is the ancient Essen author is identifying God in Psalm 821 as melkisedek and then he goes on to say therefore melchisedec will thoroughly prosecute the Vengeance required by
• 43:30 - 44:00 God's statutes in that day he will deliver them from the power of belile this is their word for Satan or be elel and from the power of all the spirits predestined to him so this Jubilee proclaimed by the Heavenly melchisedec is going to free you not from monetary debt from but from the debt of sin and not from Human slavery but From Slavery to Satan and then they go on to say it is
• 44:00 - 44:30 written concerning him who says to Zion your god reigns very famous passage from Isaiah 52 Zion is the sons of righteousness who uphold the Covenant and turned from walking in the way of the people it's a classic allegorical interpretation okay the Zion is is the righteous people of God your God is melkisedek he will deliver them from the power of bile okay wow concerning what scripture says then
• 44:30 - 45:00 you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all the land and then they continue to interpret Leviticus and it breaks off and the worms ate the rest of the scroll and so we just to have this tantalizing portion available to us but again God is being identified as meisd so this is absolutely fascinating so we have the one of the three largest groups of Jew Jews in the time of our Lord and they are putting together
• 45:00 - 45:30 Isaiah 61 Daniel 9 Leviticus 25 Deuteronomy 15 and other passages and joining it all together in a potent prophetic stew and the outcome of that is that a Divine milis is going to come back at the end of this sacred period of 500 years and he's going to Proclaim this Jubilee of freedom from sin and from
• 45:30 - 46:00 Satan okay then let's move to the gospels the Gospel of Luke and this is the beginning of our Lord's Ministry in the Gospel of Luke a passage that we are going to read this year 2025 in January 26th the last Sunday in January which is also the third Sunday of ordinary time which Pope Francis several years ago proclaimed as the Sunday of the word of
• 46:00 - 46:30 God Pope Francis set set aside the third Sunday of ordinary time which in the Vatican 2 lectionary is the Sunday where we begin to read consecutively the gospel of the year which in this case is Luke so we start the consecutive reading an ordinary time of the Gospel of the year on this third Sunday and so it's an appropriate Sunday to be set set aside annually for one day out of the year for the Catholic Church
• 46:30 - 47:00 to cultivate Devotion to scripture and this is what Pope Francis intended there's a wonderful Moto propri about this called aaroi Elis he appeared to them from uh Dr hans's favorite Bible passage which is the Emmas Road episode and he appeared to them and did not our hearts burn within us as he opened the scriptures to us that idea so we're going to have this coming up on the third Sunday of ordinary time we're
• 47:00 - 47:30 going to read this passage as we begin uh the um the Lord's M the Lord's Galilean Ministry according to the gospel of the year which is Luke and so we read how he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up and went to the synagogue well let me tell you something about Nazareth that was only discovered about a decade ago about a decade ago maybe a few more years than that maybe 12 to 15 years years ago now archaeologists were working in the vicinity of Nazareth and they were
• 47:30 - 48:00 digging down through the archaeological column down to the soil horizon from the first century and when when they got to that soil from the first century Nazareth they found something very interesting they did a chemical analysis of this ancient soil and they found some things and they did not find other things and something that they did not find which they thought was surprising was any evidence of human excrement and I might think well big
• 48:00 - 48:30 deal so they didn't find any you know poop in uh in the soil from the first century why is that significant well because virtually all the different groups of Jews used excrement as a fertilizer in their agricultural practice in the first century except for one group which considered it gross and unclean and that was the essenes they would not use human excrement it was too profane and so they used other ways of
• 48:30 - 49:00 fertilizing the field Etc and so what that told the archaeologist was the the nazarin the the inhabitants of this town from the first century the time of our Lord were following Essen farming practices so draw what conclusion you will from that uh the conclusion that most draw from that is they were either sympathetic if not part of the asene movement now this document 11 Q MDC it looks to have been copied at about 100 BC BC about a a century before the birth
• 49:00 - 49:30 of our Lord so we know that this essene movement had these expectations about the Jubilee uh even before our Lord was born so let's look at this now he went to the synagogue as his custom was on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah oh what a coincidence he opened the book and found the place where it was written the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he
• 49:30 - 50:00 has anointed me to preach good news to the poor he has sent me to Proclaim Liberty to the captives and the recovery of sight to the blind to set at Liberty those who are oppressed to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord wow what a passage to pick espec especially considering the expectations that were swirling in
• 50:00 - 50:30 Jewish culture at that time about this passage so Jesus reads that and I'm sure a lot of the people in synagogue are like he chose to go there he read that does he realize what the Essen think about that maybe what we think about that and so the atmosphere is a bit electric and he closes the book and gives it back to the intendant and then he say that down and now it really becomes
• 50:30 - 51:00 electrified I never understood this growing up because IID read this passage and said he reads the passage and they sat down I thought well that means he's not going to preach right because in our tradition You Preach standing up and at the end of your homy you sit down so if you sit down right after the reading it means no homy for daily mass right and to go right into something else or go into the collect or something like that but no that's not how Judaism worked if you sat down it meant you were going going to preach so he reads and then he
• 51:00 - 51:30 sits down and now everybody's picking up not only is he going to read which in itself was an a scholarly Endeavor he's gonna preach on this passage what on Earth is he GNA say about this text of scripture which one of the largest groups of the Jews interpreted as being about a Divine melchisedec who would return to Proclaim an eternal Jubilee to free people from sin and from Satan
• 51:30 - 52:00 so he sits down and all the eyes of the synagogue were fixed on him you better believe it you could have heard a pin drop like what is he going to say and this is his homy today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing woo I am the Fulfillment this scripture is talking
• 52:00 - 52:30 about me what a claim to make can you believe that who the heck do you think you are do you think you're the Divine mesc come back to proclaim the Eternal Jubilee [Music] yes yes I do okay amazing well but the issue is talk is
• 52:30 - 53:00 cheap any you can make that claim let's see your game Let's ball okay what do you got let's see what you got so right after this they go down to Capernaum and in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon and he cried out ah what have you to do with us Jesus of Naz wrath have you come to destroy us I know who you are the Holy
• 53:00 - 53:30 One Of God my best demon voice but Jesus rebuked him be silent and come out of him and he came out of him having done him no harm and they were all amazed and said what is this word for with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits and they come out and then the reports of him went out into every every region place every place in the surrounding region
• 53:30 - 54:00 freeing people from the power of bile check next chapter behold men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed but finding no way to bring him in they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed into the midst before Jesus and when he saw their faith he said man your sins are forgiven you the scribes and the Pharisees began to question saying who
• 54:00 - 54:30 can forgive sins but God all right freeing people from the debt of their sin check all right we are delivering on all the expectations of the Divine melchisedec who would come and announce the Perpetual Jubilee but how is Jesus going to make sure that this Contin indefinitely into time well in Mark 3:13
• 54:30 - 55:00 we read he went up on the mountain and called to them Those whom he desired and they came to him and he appointed 12 to be with him and to be sent out to preach and to have authority to cast out demons that's Jubilee power that's the power of the Divine melkisedek and he's now sharing this power with those who are The Fountain Head of holy orders the apostles themselves they are ministers
• 55:00 - 55:30 of Jubilee Simon whom he surnamed Peter James the son of zebede and John Etc and then that is authority to cast out demons what about the authority to forgive sins well at that time the disciples came to Jesus and he says truly I say to you whatever you bind on Earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on Earth shall be loosed in heaven Heaven there's different senses to what it means to bind and loose it was a very
• 55:30 - 56:00 comprehensive power that included such things as interpreting God's word authoritatively for God's people but it also included the decision to bind which meant to retain sin and decline to release someone from the debt of their sin and the power to lose which is the power to forgive or to free someone from the debt of their sin and that is more explicit in John 20
• 56:00 - 56:30 where it says he breathed on them and said to them receive the Holy Spirit if you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven if you retain the sins of any they are retained this is the power to bind and to loose so these Jubilee powers of freeing people from the power of Satan and from the debt of their sins Jesus did not uh confined to himself but in his generosity shared with those that he had appointed to a role of authority within his uh early uh his Ecclesia his
• 56:30 - 57:00 church and so uh James says uh much later is any among you sick let him call for the presbyter of the church and let them pray over him these are the successors of the Apostles we usually think of apostolic succession in terms of the Bishops it's very interesting you look at the fathers and they talk about presutural succession no less in Authority than Augustine himself when asked what keeps you within
• 57:00 - 57:30 the bosom of the Catholic Church one of the first things he says is the succession of priests the succession of presbyter beginning from St Peter down to the Contemporary episcopate so interesting it's a presal trans transition um we could talk about that later um I think it's there's a way of working that all out with in compatibility with Catholic teaching but uh so even even the the presbyter the
• 57:30 - 58:00 priests continue the ministry of the Apostles that's why St Peter says in 1 Peter 51 I write to you as a fellow preser urging you to Shepherd the flock that's in your midst and the prayer of faith will save the sick man and if he has committed sins he will be forgiven this is this is both anointing of the sick and also the sacrament of reconciliation therefore confess your sins to one another that you may be healed okay so
• 58:00 - 58:30 this develops into the the form of the sacrament that we practice now and uh just you know super quickly I remember this passage very well because in my early pastorate when I was about 24 25 and uh was first pastoring a small congregation in downtown Grand Rapids Michigan um I started preaching sermon series through the very various Epistles of the New Testament and I did I think it was like Philippians Ephesians and
• 58:30 - 59:00 Galatians and I thought well let me try one that's not from Paul let me do James and so I preached a sermon series beginning in James 1 that went fine James two went fine James three went fine James four went fine James five halfway through hit this what am I going to tell my people look at there therefore confess your sins to one or that you may be healed I'm like okay how are we going to do that in my little congregation maybe we can pass a
• 59:00 - 59:30 mic the Sunday morning service nah small groups small groups find three people go to a corner confess your sins what could go wrong suffice it to say I couldn't think of a single way to implement this and I was so shamefaced because I pride myself in being a new testament Christian and pastoring a new Testament congregation and yet I uh could not think of how to
• 59:30 - 60:00 apply this new testament passage in any way other than the way Catholics did it and I began to reflect on the sacrament of reconciliation seemed like a beautiful solution to me of confessing sins to one another the way I saw it Catholics went to their Pastor who is the spiritually the head of the congregation so if you confess to your pastor you're confessing to the congregation in a spiritual sense and you do so confidential confidential confidentially thus avoiding the problems of Scandal or bad counsel Etc and um so I really began
• 60:00 - 60:30 to admire the sacrament of reconciliation and desire it for myself um and that desire eventually helped to lead me into the Catholic Church reconciliation not only forgives sins but it's also the first lines of defense against the slavery to Satan no less in Authority than father Gabriel Amor the former Chief Exorcist of the dasis of Rome under St John Paul Paul II writes in one of his books many times I have written that Satan is much more
• 60:30 - 61:00 enraged when we take Souls away from him through the confession than when we take away bodies through exorcism and in another passage that I don't have on a on a slide father Amor says um he writes in to answer a reader's question and the reader writes my my uh excuse me my pastor says a confession is the best exorcism and father Amor the highest Authority on exorcism in the Catholic church at the time answers back and says your pastor
• 61:00 - 61:30 is correct confession is the first line of defense against Satan the easiest way to rest Souls from his control and when I was a Protestant Minister we had instances of demonic Affliction in my congregation and um we practiced Deliverance Ministry and what the what the older Deliverance ministers had discovered who who trained me in turn what they discovered was rather than doing a power
• 61:30 - 62:00 encounter which is like a formal exorcism where you try to cast a demon out by force what was more what was more uh successful would be to lead people through what we would think of as a general confession and if they LED people through a process of confession through a long long examination of conscience where they where people would confess everything that they ever had done they found that the demons would leave and the idea that we had as Protestant Deliverance ministers was that sins were like handholds that that the demons
• 62:00 - 62:30 could grasp onto you and if you confessed and repented of the sin you were like slick like one of those greased pigs in a uh State Fair you know you can't hold the demons can't hold on to you they can't they can't get a grip on you uh if you confess everything and uh so he developed this methodology of confession as a way of practicing Deliverance Ministry as Protestants without ever thinking about the connections with the Catholic Church well needless to say this made it much
• 62:30 - 63:00 easier when the time came for my actual conversion to Catholicism well so we want to wrap up tonight and what we want to say is Israel's hopes for jubbly were fulfilled in Jesus Christ and of all the New Testament books it's probably go the The Gospel of Luke that shows that uh most dramatically um I did not anticipate finding these connections I discovered this connection between 11 qisc and Luke 4 and5 by accident while
• 63:00 - 63:30 working to research my book Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls and uh I didn't expect to find that because all the scrolls are written in Hebrew and I believed like many people believe that Luke was a gentile and he was Greek speaking and he wasn't really into Jew uh Hebrew speaking culture Etc and so Luke would not be the part of the New Testament that you would go to find connections to this very eristic very conservative very throwback
• 63:30 - 64:00 group like the essenes but to my surprise I discovered that the Gospel of Luke looks in many ways like a gospel written for essene of angelism who'd have thought it you know and I now hold to the position that father pabl odens defends in his recent commentary on Luke where he says we've been thinking about this wrong this Luke the same Luke he's probably the lucus of sirene that's mentioned as a Kinsman of
• 64:00 - 64:30 St Paul in uh Romans and um indeed he was probably a Jew a Jew who had very good Training in the Greek language but also moved effortlessly within like Hebrew speaking Judaism that is beginning to make much more sense to me of the Gospel of vuk as a whole so Israel's hopes for Jubilee were fulfilled in Jesus Christ and the New Covenant is an era of Perpetual Jubilee and the closet of the confessional is not a courtroom it is really a Liberation chamber where we go to be
• 64:30 - 65:00 freed from the shackles of Satan and this upcoming Jubilee year is a time a precious time of Grace where the Holy Father has set apart a whole year for us to reflect on the purpose of the Gospel which is to liberate us okay it's not to bind us right Jesus didn't come to lay upon us a burden of law but to free Us From Slavery to the evil one and so we
• 65:00 - 65:30 want to lean into that reality and when we meditate on Jubilee we really find that the goods of the Jubilee are really the same as the goods of the gospel and that you can describe Jesus's whole gospel ministry as as bringing about Jubilee for the people of God um the great Goods of of um of reparation and Reconciliation and restoration and rest in the fullness of God and so during the
• 65:30 - 66:00 Jubilee year the Holy Father is going to lay a special emphasis on pilgrimage which is a kind of spiritual homegoing even if it's a home that you've never visited before and so places that are spiritual homes like Rome which is the home of the Holy Father on Earth or the Holy Land which is the home of Jesus we go to these spiritual homes and it's much like the ancient Israelite servant who when he heard the blast of the chofar horn on
• 66:00 - 66:30 the 50th year knew that he could go home and so he would leave his place of service and walk out on the highway and begin to Journey back to his ancestral property and we replicate that in a spiritual sense during Jubilee years where we go to pilgrimage sites that have been designated various every site of pilgrimage is a kind of spiritual home a place where God has made himself felt and welcomed us to experience him self as father and uh we we share in that Jubilee Dimension and another thing
• 66:30 - 67:00 that the Holy Father is going to emphasize is more frequent reception of the sacraments because the sacraments are the way that we receive that Jubilee Grace of the Holy Spirit and then finally to the Holy Father is emphasizing taking up that ancient Christian spirituality of um indulgences which is not as I thought meaning to indulge yourself in sin that's how I thought that's what I thought this meant the Catholics pay money and then they can go indulge
• 67:00 - 67:30 themselves pay you 50 bucks now I can go get drunk okay it's like no no that's not what it means um indulgences are really uh the release of the spiritual power of the church to bring about the healing of your soul um from the from the damage that you have done to it through your sin either your yourself or another person a deceased person and so there's great spiritual benefit into in
• 67:30 - 68:00 taking up that process that that that that habit of striving after those Perpetual indulgences that are attached to many things a half hour of reading scripture suffices if you do that without attachment to sin that is a work that is attached to a plenary Indulgence uh praying the rosary out loud with at least one other person uh in the presence of a crucifix and announcing the Mysteries this too is attached to a plary Indulgence or I should say a plary Indulgence is attached to that work and
• 68:00 - 68:30 then of course there's the usual requirements of a plenary Indulgence so pilgrimages sacraments and indulgences these are three practices of the Jubilee year that we really want to lean into ways of experiencing the Jubilee power that has been Unleashed for us in perpetuity by Jesus Christ the Divine melkisedek let's go to the Lord in prayer in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit amen heaven father we thank you for the church we thank you for the gospel we thank you for the amazing Harmony of your word and
• 68:30 - 69:00 yes Lord we even thank you for this devout movement of men these these ancient essenes who lived lives of poverty and austerity as they sought to prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness we thank you for their example and for the documents that they left behind which are so useful in Illuminating and understanding uh the writings of your Apostles and Apostolic men uh Lord bless our evening and help us to live the Jubilee year Well we ask this through Christ Our Lord amen name
• 69:00 - 69:30 of the father son and holy spirit amen