Friar Alfonso Dávila reflects on the Jubilee of Hope as an ecclesial experience that has marked the universal Church and the Augustinian Recollect Family. Beyond figures and celebrations, the text invites us to discern what interior, community, and ecclesial doors we are still called to cross in order to live a hope that truly transforms life and mission.
The doors that we still have to cross
A little over a year ago, an ecclesial adventure began that has marked the spiritual pulse of the universal Church: the Jubilee of Hope. It was not only a call or a sum of liturgical acts and pilgrimages, but a call to get back on the road, to allow hope to stop being a motto and become a lived experience.
Today, with the Holy Door now closed, it is a time for grateful remembrance, but also—and above all—for discernment.
A truly global jubilee
According to official data from the Holy See, the Jubilee of Hope has mobilized 32.4 million pilgrims between December 25, 2024, and December 17, 2025, over 358 days, with an average of nearly 90,400 pilgrims per day. The figures confirm that this was not a local or isolated event, but an ecclesial experience of truly universal scope.
The origin of the pilgrims reflects this catholicity: Italy (36.34%), United States (12.57%), Spain (6.23%), Brazil (4.67%), United Kingdom (2.81%), China (2.79%), Mexico (2.37%), Argentina (1.63%), Colombia (1.30%), Philippines (0.9%), Taiwan (0.54%), Chile (0.54%), and Peru (0.54%), among other countries, make up the human map of this Jubilee.
In this same framework of peoples and cultures, the Augustinian Recollect Family is present, accompanying the people of God in America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. In all these contexts, the mission is embodied in parishes, schools, missions, sanctuaries, and communities inserted in very diverse realities, but crossed by the same questions of meaning and hope.
The Augustinian Recollect Family on the jubilee journey
As the Augustinian Recollect Family, we actively participated in many of the jubilee moments. The Jubilee of Consecrated Life brought together about 200 religious men and women from our family; the Jubilee of Youth brought together another 200 young people from the ARJs and our parishes; communicators also experienced our own jubilee at the meeting of journalists; and so, one after another, many members of our charismatic family set out on the road.
Overall, we can estimate around 1,000 pilgrims directly linked to the Augustinian Recollect Family. However, it would be a mistake to focus only on the count. Because the Jubilee is not measured in numbers, but in interior processes.
What did we really learn from the Jubilee?
Here arises the decisive question: what have we learned from the Jubilee of Hope?
Are we now more focused on hope? Do we let ourselves be guided by it in our personal and community decisions? Or are we still timid, clinging to securities that reassure, but do not transform?
The Jubilee reminded us, and we cannot forget, that there are still many doors to cross: interior, community, ecclesial doors. Doors that lead to a Church that is closer, more hospitable, more evangelical. It is of little use to cross a physical threshold if the heart remains closed.
Dreaming together from hope
One of the most significant jubilee moments I experienced was walking with the major superiors of the Order. We started in a way that was as simple as it was provocative: playing with Lego pieces, sharing what excites us, how we dream of our religious family, what Church we want to serve. That dynamic, apparently naive, was actually a deep exercise in hope: daring to imagine together.
Because only from hope is it possible to build a consecrated life and a society that do not live on inertia, but on the Gospel.
Being Magi today: the Pope’s call
The closing homily of Pope Leo expressed it this way: In contemplating the path of the Magi, he reminded us that before the manifestations of God, nothing remains the same: there is joy, but also turmoil; openness, but also fear. The Magi continue to exist—he affirmed—: they are those who accept the risk of setting out on the road, those who are not afraid to leave securities to seek the newness of God.
The Pope challenged us with an uncomfortable and necessary question: is there life in our Church? Is there room for what is born? Do we love and announce a God who sets us on the road? Millions of people crossed the Holy Door. What did they find? What hearts, what welcome, what reciprocity?
To be a jubilee Church is to learn to recognize in the visitor a pilgrim, in the unknown a seeker, in the different a fellow traveler. It is to resist reducing faith to a product and the human being to a consumer. It is to guard what is born, small and fragile, like the Kingdom of God.
The doors that remain open
Therefore, as we close this Jubilee, may we not remember how many times we crossed the Holy Door, nor how many pilgrims we counted, but everything that we still have to cross, to pilgrimage, to accompany.
The Holy Door has closed. But our hearts—hopefully—remain open. Let us remain restless. Let us continue on our way.
Because, as Saint Augustine taught us, we have to announce Christ wherever we can. Thank you for this jubilee year and happy Augustinian Recollect Missionary Year, which is rarely mentioned that its acronym, at least in Spanish and Portuguese, is: AMAR.
