At the beginning of the Roman Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope, the doors of four basilicas were opened. Those who passed through them and met certain other conditions, the RCC teaches, received full plenary indulgences for the temporal punishment (in Purgatory) of their confessed and forgiven sins.
Now those doors are being closed.
But Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, archpriest of the Marian basilica, assured worshipers that “it is not divine grace that is being closed but a special time for the Church, and what remains open forever is the merciful heart of God.”
I agree with the archpriest. God’s grace and mercy are forever available, not just during special times of religious observances available only to a select few. God’s mercy is available to anyone at any time who will place his or her trust in Christ.
As Jesus said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
