Restarting the Economy: (Still) time to rest – the Jubilee Year as the world’s ‘Sabbath’

By Stefano Rozzoni

Stop.
Breathe.
Rest.

Can you sense the earth in distress? Can you feel the grip of those who lack freedom, the weight borne by those awaiting a gesture of forgiveness?

No?

Then breathe once more before you continue reading.

*

It is November, the eleventh month of the Jubilee Year inaugurated by Pope Francis under the motto Spes non confundit—“hope does not disappoint” (Rom 5:5)—and with the invitation to become pilgrims of hope: a powerful and necessary message, now more than ever, in an age when defeatist narratives about the future seem to dominate public discourse.

Nearly eleven months have passed since the opening of the Holy Door on 24 December 2024: a brief span of time, and yet one in which the world has witnessed many transformations, and not always for the better. Political actors change, modes of communication mutate, geopolitical situations are reconfigured, but the heart of the problems persists: inequality, exploitation, marginalisation are wounds that resist healing.

In light of this, one wonders: What has been my contribution, both for myself and for the world, during this Jubilee Year? What concrete gestures have I embodied? Have I truly brought peace, encouragement, and care to those who live in hardship – prisoners, the sick, young people, migrants, the elderly, the poor – as Pope Francis urged in the Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee?

There is still time, in any case, to provide your own contribution.
To hope.
To begin again with a different step.
To rest.

At its heart, the Jubilee is a particular form of active rest, far removed from inertia. Its roots lie in the Hebrew Jubilee, which every fifty years required the rest of the land, the restoration of property, and the liberation of slaves (Lev 25:10). Three concrete actions that reveal the three signs of the Jubilee – land, freedom, forgiveness – and their grounding in the ethic of care. A form of wisdom that has passed silently through the centuries; a memory as vital as it is easily set aside in favour of louder news. And yet, when we forget it, it is the Word that brings it back to us.

Isaiah takes up these themes (Isa 61:1–2), and Jesus makes them his own when he declares in himself the fulfilment of “the year of the Lord’s favour” (cf. Lk 4:18–19). It is the call to live the New Covenant also as a renewed covenant with the world.

The Jubilee thus represents a time of renewal, countering the persistent tendency to replicate, continuously and stubbornly, exclusive and dualistic paradigms. The earth – and the Earth – continues to be exploited; marginalisation persists; ever new forms of exploitation emerge, while conditions of fragility show no sign of diminishing.

This is why a moment of mindful rest – shabbat, the act of “ceasing” – becomes essential to interrupt this tendency. In the Torah, the Sabbath recalls the seventh day of Creation, when God completed his work, stopped, and blessed the day, consecrating it. It is not a mere pause but a privileged moment of renewal in which to celebrate God’s presence. From it also derives the sabbatical year, the Shemittah, in which the land was left fallow and its spontaneous produce reserved for the poor, the foreigner, and the animals. Again, stopping becomes an opening to the other, a paradoxical interplay of action and non-action.

For without granting ourselves time for transformation, how can we imagine transforming ourselves and the world? How can habits of thought and life change if no space for breathing opens up?

In this sense, the Jubilee evokes the need for a sabbath of the world: a great time of suspension and care that reminds humanity of the possibility of a renewed covenant with creation. And in 2025 this renewed covenant echoes what Pope Francis has repeatedly urged, especially upon the young: the need “to enter into a ‘covenant’ to change today’s economy and to give a soul to the economy of tomorrow.” (1 May 2019).

The Ordinary Jubilee will conclude with the closing of the Holy Door on 6 January 2026. A symbolic deadline that calls us to assume responsibility for the time that remains. A deadline, yes, but also an invitation to recognise that there is still time for all this.

Time for the Earth.
Time for freedom.
Time for forgiveness.

And so, if you have not yet done so:

Stop.
Breathe.
Rest.