Dear Brothers in the priesthood of Christ!

1. I wish to address myself to you, at the beginning of the Holy Year of the Redemption and of the special Jubilee, which was opened both in Rome and throughout the Church on 25 March. The choice of this day, the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord and at the same time of the Incarnation, has a particular eloquence of its own. In fact, the mystery of the Redemption had its beginning when the Word became flesh in the womb of the Virgin of Nazareth through the power of the Holy Spirit, and it reached its climax in the Paschal event with the death and Resurrection of the Redeemer. And it is from those days that we calculate our Jubilee Year, because we desire that precisely in this year the mystery of the Redemption should become particularly present and fruitful in the life of the Church. We know that this mystery is always present and fruitful, and that it always accompanies the earthly pilgrimage of the People of God, permeating it and shaping it from within. Nevertheless, the custom of making special reference to the periods of fifty years in this pilgrimage corresponds to an ancient tradition. We wish to remain faithful to that tradition, and we are also sure that it bears within itself a part of the mystery of the time chosen by God: that kairos in which the economy of salvation is accomplished.

And thus, at the beginning of this new Year of the Redemption and of the special Jubilee, a few days after its opening, there occurs Holy Thursday 1983. As we know, this day reminds us of the day on which, together with the Eucharist, the ministerial priesthood was instituted by Christ. The priesthood was instituted for the Eucharist, and therefore for the Church, which, as the community of the People of God, is formed by the Eucharist. This priesthood—ministerial and hierarchical—is shared by us, We received it on the day of our ordination through the ministry of the Bishop, who transmitted to each one of us the sacrament begun with the Apostles—begun at the Last Supper, in the Upper Room, on Holy Thursday. And therefore, though the dates of our ordination differ, Holy Thursday remains each year the birthday of our ministerial priesthood. On this holy day, each one of us, as priests of the New Covenant, was born into the priesthood of the Apostles. Each one of us was born in the revelation of the one and eternalpriesthood of the same Jesus Christ. In fact, this revelation took place in the Upper Room on Holy Thursday, on the eve of Golgotha. It was precisely there that Christ began his Paschal Mystery: he "opened" it. And he opened it precisely with the key of the Eucharist and the Priesthood.

For this reason, on Holy Thursday we, the "ministers" of the new covenant", (1) gather together with the Bishops in the Cathedrals of our local Churches, we gather together before Christ—the one and eternal source of our priesthood. In this union of Holy Thursday we find him once more, and, at the same time—through him, with him and in him—we once more find ourselves. Blessed be God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit for the grace of this union.

2. Therefore, at this important moment, I wish once more to proclaim the Year commemorating the Redemption and the special Jubilee. I wish to proclaim it in a special way to you and before you, venerable and dear Brothers in the priesthood of Christ—and I wish to meditate, at least briefly, together with you upon its meaning. In fact, this Jubilee refers in a special way to all of us, as priests of the New Covenant. If the Jubilee means an invitation to all believers, the sons and daughters of the Church, to reexamine their own lives and vocations in the light of the mystery of the Redemption, then a similar invitation is offered to us with, I would say, an even stronger insistence. The Holy Year of the Redemption, therefore, and the special Jubilee, mean that we should see our ministerial priesthood afresh in that light in which it is inscribed by Christ himself in the mystery of the Redemption.

"No longer do I call you servants...; but I have called you friends". (2) It was precisely in the Upper Room that those words were spoken, in the immediate context of the institution of the Eucharist and of the ministerial priesthood. Christ made known to the Apostles, and to all those who inherit from them the ordained priesthood, that in this vocation and for this ministry they must become his friends—they must become the friends of that mystery which he came to accomplish. To be a priest means to enjoy special friendship with the mystery of Christ, with the mystery of the Redemption, in which he gives his flesh "for the life of the world". (3) We who celebrate the Eucharist each day, the saving sacrament of the Body and Blood, must have a particular intimacy with the mystery from which this sacrament takes its beginning. The ministerial priesthood is explainable only and exclusively in the framework of this divine mystery—and only within this framework is it accomplished.

In the depths of our priestly being, thanks to what each one of us became at the moment of our ordination, we are "friends": we are witnesses who are particularly close to this Love, which manifests itself in the Redemption. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life". (4) This is the definition of love in its redemptive meaning. This is the mystery of the Redemption, defined by love. It is the only-begotten Son who takes this love from the Father and who gives it to the Father by bringing it to the world. It is the only-begotten Son who, through this love, gives himself for the salvation of the world: for the eternal life of all individuals, his brothers and sisters.

And we priests, the ministers of the Eucharist, are "friends": we find ourselves particularly close to this redeeming love which the Son has brought to the world—and which he brings continuously. Even if this fills us with a holy fear, we must nevertheless recognize that, together with the Eucharist, the mystery of this redeeming love is, in a sense, in our hands. We must recognize that it returns each day upon our lips, that it is lastingly inscribed in our vocation and our ministry.

How very deeply each one of us is constituted in his own priestly being through the mystery of the Redemption! It is precisely this that the liturgy of Holy Thursday brings home to us. It is precisely this that we must meditate upon during the Jubilee Year. It is upon this that our personal interior renewal must be concentrated, for the Jubilee Year is understood by the Church as a time of spiritual renewal for everyone. If we must be witnesses of this renewal for others, for our brothers and sisters in the Christian vocation then we must be witnesses to it, and spokesmen for it, to ourselves the Holy year of the Redemption as a Year of renewal in the priestly vocation.

By bringing about such an interior renewal in our holy vocation, we shall be able better and more effectively to preach "a year of favour from the Lord.. (5) In fact, the mystery of the Redemption is not just a theological abstraction, but an unceasing reality, through which God embraces man in Christ with his eternal love and man recognizes this love, allows himself to be guided and permeated by it, to be interiorly transformed by it, and through it he becomes "a new creation". (6) Man, thus created anew by love, the love that is revealed to him in Jesus Christ, raises the eyes of his soul to God and together with the Psalmist declares: "With him is plenteous redemption!. (7) 

In the Jubilee Year this declaration must rise with special power from the heart of the whole Church. And this must come about, dear Brothers, through your witness and your priestly ministry.

3. The Redemption remains connected in the closest possible way with forgiveness. God has redeemed us in Jesus Christ; God has caused us to become, in Christ, a "new creation", for in him he has granted us the gift of forgiveness.

God has reconciled the world to himself in Christ. (8) And preciselybecause he has reconciled it in Jesus Christ, as the firstborn of all creation, (9) the union of man with God has been irreversibly consolidated. This union, which the "first Adam" had, in himself, once consented to be taken away from the whole human family, cannot be taken from humanity by anyone, since it has been rooted and consolidated in Christ, the "second Adam". And therefore humanity becomes continually, in Jesus Christ, a "new creation". It becomes this, because in him and through him the grace of the remission of sins remains inexhaustible before every human being: "With him is plenteous redemption.

Dear Brothers, during the Jubilee Year we must become particularly aware of the fact that we are at the service of this reconciliation with God, which was accomplished once and for all in Jesus Christ. We are the servants and ministers of this sacrament, in which the Redemption is made manifest and is accomplished as forgiveness, as the remission of sins.

How eloquent is the fact that Christ, after his Resurrection, once more entered that Upper Room in which on Holy Thursday he had left to the Apostles, together with the Eucharist, the sacrament of the ministerial priesthood, and that he then said to them: "Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained". (10)

Just as he had previously given them the power to celebrate the Eucharist, or to renew in a sacramental manner his own paschal Sacrifice, so on this second occasion he gave them the power to forgive sins.

During the Jubilee Year, when you meditate on how your ministerial priesthood has been inscribed in the mystery of Christ’s Redemption, you should have this constantly before your eyes! The Jubilee is in fact that special time when the Church, according to a very ancient tradition, renews within the whole community of the People of God an awareness of the Redemption through a singular intensity of the remission and forgiveness of sins: precisely that remission of sins of which we, the-priests of the New Covenant, have become, after the Apostles, the legitimate ministers.

As a consequence of the remission of sins in the Sacrament of Penance, all those who, availing themselves of our priestly service, receive this Sacrament, can draw even more fully from the generosity of Christ’s Redemption, obtaining the remission of the temporal punishment which, after the remission of sins, still remains to be expiated in the present life or in the next. The Church believes that each and every act of forgiveness comes from the Redemption accomplished by Christ. At the same time, she also believes and hopes that Christ himself accepts the mediation of his Mystical Body in the remission of sins and of temporal punishment. And since, upon the basis of the mystery of the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church, there develops, in the context of eternity, the mystery of the Communion of Saints, in the course of the Jubilee Year the Church looks with special confidence towards that mystery.

The Church wishes to make use, more than ever, of the merits of Mary, of the Martyrs and Saints, and also of their mediation, in order to make still more present, in all its saving effects and fruits, the Redemption accomplished by Christ. In this way the practice of the Indulgence, connected with the Jubilee Year, reveals its full evangelical meaning, insofar as the good deriving from Christ’s redeeming Sacrifice, through the entire generations of the Church’s Martyrs and Saints, from the beginning up to the present time, once more bears fruit, by the grace of the remission of sins and of the effects of sin, in the souls of people today.

My dear Brothers in the priesthood of Christ! During the Jubilee Year, may you succeed in being in a special way the teachers of God’s truth about forgiveness and remission, as this truth is constantly proclaimed by the Church. Present this truth in all its spiritual richness. Seek the ways to impress it upon the minds and consciences of the men and women of our time. And together with the teaching, may you succeed in being, during this Holy Year, in a particularly willing and generous way, the ministers of the Sacrament of Penance, in which the sons and daughters of the Church gain the remission of their sins. May you find, in the service of the confessional, that irreplaceable manifestation and proof of the ministerial priesthood, the model of which has been left to us by so many holy priests and pastors of souls in the history of the Church, down to our own times. And may the toil of this sacred ministry help you to understand still more how much the ministerial priesthood of each one of us is inscribed in the mystery of Christ’s Redemption through the Cross and the Resurrection.

4. By the words that I am writing to you, I wish to proclaim in a special way for you the Jubilee of the Holy Year of the Redemption. As you know from the documents already published, the Jubilee is being celebrated simultaneously in Rome and throughout the Church, from 25 March 1983 and continuing until Easter of next year. In this way the particular grace of the Year of the Redemption is being entrusted to all my Brothers in the Episcopate, as the Pastors of the local Churches in the universal community of the Catholic Church. At the same time the same grace of the special Jubilee is being entrusted also to you, dear Brothers in the priesthood of Christ. In fact, you, in union with your Bishops, are the pastors of the parishes and of the other communities of the People of God in all parts of the world.

In fact, the Year of the Redemption is to be lived in the Church beginning precisely from these basic communities of the People of God. Inthis regard, I wish to refer at this point to certain passages in the Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee Year, passages which explicitly state that this is necessary: 

"The Year of the Redemption", as I wrote, (11) "should leave a special imprint on the Church’s whole life, so that Christians may learn to rediscover in their daily experience all the riches of the salvation which is communicated to them from the time of their baptism". In fact, "the profound meaning and hidden beauty of this Year that the Lord enables us to celebrate is to be seen in the rediscovery and lived practice of the sacramental economy of the Church, through which the grace of God in Christ reaches individuals and communities". (12)

To sum up, the Jubilee Year is meant to be "a call to repentance and conversion", for the purpose of "bringing about a spiritual renewal of individuals, families, parishes and dioceses, of religious communities and the other centres of Christian life and apostolate". (13) If this call is generously received, it will bring about a sort of movement "from below", which, beginning with the parishes and various communities, as I recently said to my dear presbyterate of the Diocese of Rome, will give fresh life to the dioceses and thus cannot fail to exercise a positive influence on the whole Church. Precisely in order to favour this dynamic movement, in the Bull I limited myself to offering some guidelines of a general character, and I left "to the Episcopal Conferences and to the Bishops of the individual dioceses" the task of laying down "more concrete pastoral regulations and suggestions..., in accordance with local attitudes and customs as well as with the objectives of the 1950th anniversary of Christ’s death and Resurrection". (14)

5. For this reason, dear Brothers, I ask you with all my heart to reflect on the way in which the holy Jubilee of the Year of the Redemption can and should be celebrated in each parish, as also in the other communities of the People of God in which you exercise your priestly and pastoral ministry. I ask you to reflect on how it can and should be celebrated in the framework of these communities and, at the same time, in union with the local and universal Church. I ask you to devote special attention to these sectors which the Bull expressly mentions, such as cloistered men and women Religious, the sick, the imprisoned, the old and those suffering in other ways. (15) We know in fact that the words of the Apostle: "in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" (16) are accomplished ceaselessly and in different ways.

May the special Jubilee, thanks to this pastoral solicitude and zeal, thus truly become, in the words of the Prophet, a the year of the Lord’s favour" (17) for each one of you, dear Brothers, as also for all those whom Christ, priest and Pastor, has entrusted to your priestly and pastoral ministry.

Accept for the sacred day of Holy Thursday 1983 my present words, as a manifestation of my heartfelt love; and also pray for the one who writes to you, that he may never lack this love, about which Christ the Lord three times questioned Simon Peter. (18) With these sentiments I bless you all.

Given in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, on 27 March, Passion (Palm) Sunday, 1983, the fifth year of the Pontificate. 

1) Cf. 2 Cor 3:6. 
2) Jn 15:15.
3) Jn 6:51. 
4) Jn 3:16. 
5) Lk 4:19 cf. Is 61:2. 
6) 2 Cor 5:17.
7) Ps 130 [129]:7.
8) Cf. 2 Cor 5:19. 
9) Cf.Col 1:15.
10) Jn 20:22 f.
11) Bull Aperite Portas Redemptori,no. 3. 
12) Ibid.
13) Loc. cit., no. 11.
14) Ibid.
15) Loc. cit., No. 11, A and B.
16) Col 1:24.
17) Is 61:2; cf. Lk 4:19.
18) Cf. Jn 21:15 ff.