THE HOUSE OF THE LORD | KAIROS GLOBAL | JANUARY 2026

Author: Anil Israel

Intro: As we prepare for the Great Jubilee of 2033, Anil Israel invites us to introspect about our role in the great commission – that privileged call of every baptised Christian.

Jubilee is a time of commemoration. In the Old Testament, every fiftieth year (Leviticus 25:11) was observed as the year of Jubilee. During this year, debts were cancelled, slaves were freed, and land was returned to its original owners to prevent permanent poverty and ensure the land belonged to God. It was a special year – a year set apart: it shall be holy to you (Leviticus 25:12). It served as a reset for the community, promoting social justice, economic stability, and a return to a right relationship with God and one another. Jesus referred to the Jubilee as the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:19) to proclaim liberty to the captives and to set at liberty those who are oppressed (Luke 4:18). Indeed, Jubilee Year is a year of extraordinary grace. 

In the Catholic Church, a Jubilee year is a special time of grace, forgiveness and reconciliation that occurs every 25 years. It is marked by spiritual renewal, pilgrimages and the granting of plenary indulgences. Traditionally the passing through a ‘Holy Door’ as a symbolic act of leaving one’s old life and entering a renewed one, is widely practiced during the holy year. The 2025 Jubilee, concluding on 6 January 2026, encourages spiritual journeys with its theme ‘Pilgrims of Hope’.

An Extraordinary Jubilee Year is a special Holy Year, proclaimed by the pope outside the regular 25-year cycle, to focus on a specific them. The most recent example was the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2015-16, and the next one will be in 2033 to commemorate the 2,000th anniversary of Jesus’ Redemption. This mega jubilee invites us to reflect on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the profound significance of His resurrection. At the same time, it is also the 2,000th anniversary of the great commission: Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19-20).

By virtue of our baptism, we are implicitly given the mandate to participate in the great commission. With the jubilee of the great commission coming up in a few years, ought we not to awake ourselves, to respond to this privileged call of every baptised Christian? Am I aware that I am expected to get involved and commit myself to do my part? May we strive to equip ourselves to respond to this Holy assignment.

Pope John Paul II emphasised: ‘The universal call to holiness is closely linked to the universal call to mission. Every member of the faithful is called to holiness and to mission’ (Redemptoris Missio 90). Let us allow the Great Jubilee to be a great awakening in our lives. Am I embracing the pursuit of personal holiness by setting apart an exclusive time for personal prayer, journeying with the Word of God and frequent reception of the sacraments? ‘The Church exists in order to evangelize’ (Evangelii Nunitandi 14). Am I convinced that as a living member in the mystical body of Christ, I too need to actively contribute towards the Church’s mission of evangelisation?

Holy Scriptures portray vividly that the entire world is a macro temple, and the temple can be perceived as a microcosm of God’s cosmic habitation. Lord, you have stretched out the heavens like a tent (Psalm 104:2). If we were to look upward, we see the vast sky looming like a massive temple dome, over the entire earth. No wonder, temples resemble dome shaped structures. Creation, in one way, helps us become temple conscious and thereby direct our focus towards God.

The tabernacle is considered the most sacred place inside a Catholic church. It is the Holy of Holies (Hebrews 9:12;10:19) where the consecrated hosts are kept. Therefore, we also say: Jesus is there in the tabernacle. The word ‘tabernacle’ literally means ‘tent of God’. The temple is God’s holy habitation. The Lord is in his holy temple (Psalm 11:4). 

In the New Testament, we are given to understand that we are the temple of the living God (2 Corinthians 6:16). When we receive Jesus in Holy Communion, Jesus dwells in us and we become living tabernacles. ‘Our body is a cenacle; a monstrance: through its crystal the world should see God’ (St Gianna Beretta Molla). Am I treating my body as a living monstrance? Am I considering others as God’s dwelling place? Where God dwells, that sacred space is holy ground (Exodus 3:5; Acts 7:33). If we all become conscious that God dwells in each one of us, then we will learn to love as God loves. For when we try to love God dwelling in others, we learn to love well.

May we raise our level of temple consciousness. May we learn to treat one another with love and respect, since our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit (1Corinthians 6:19). And desecration of the temple amounts to a grave sin of sacrilege. If you love each other, everyone will know that you are my disciples (John 13:35). When we all love as Jesus loved, we do our part of the Great Commission. We emit the sweet fragrance of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:15) for He dwells in us – the temple of the Holy Spirit. When our lives reflect His dwelling place in us, it is then that we dwell in the house of the Lord (Psalm 23:6; 27:4). 

David – a man after God’s own heart – desperately desired to construct a dwelling place for God, but it was his son Solomon who built the Temple in Jerusalem. Responding to the call to ‘rebuild my church,’ St Francis of Assisi made drastic attempts in imitating Christ. All the saints who went ahead of us, made their lives an abode of God’s dwelling. Ought not this saintly attitude – willingness to radically sanctify our lives – be our hearts deepest desire? Shouldn’t we too wake up to the magnanimous call of the Great Jubilee and embrace the joyful contradiction of living upside down (Acts 17:6) lives, to build the house of the Lord (1 Kings 6:37)?