Sacred Heart Mission Crucifix: the symbol of the Jubilee in eastern Oklahoma

Father Bryan Ketterer, pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Wilburton, Oklahoma, lent his church’s historical mission crucifix to the Diocese of Tulsa to be displayed at Holy Family Cathedral at the beginning of Jubilee 2025.

A mission crucifix is a cross with a corpus (the statue of Jesus’s body) erected before or after a parish mission, a time of renewal for Catholics in a particular town or city. Parish missions were common in America and Europe in the Nineteenth Century. Oklahoma parishes hosted many missions in the early Twentieth Century including Wilburton’s Sacred Heart and Tulsa’s Holy Family.

 

The Universal Church and the Jubilee Year

The Catholic Church celebrates a jubilee year every twenty-five years since 1470 A.D. and every fifty years earlier. The jubilee is a time for debts to be forgiven and for each of us to restore our relationship with each other and with God.

What is a Jubilee? https://www.iubilaeum2025.va/en/giubileo-2025/segni-del-giubileo.html

 

 

Eastern Oklahoma and the Jubilee Year

dioceseoftulsa.org/jubilee-2025

The Diocese of Tulsa & Eastern Oklahoma will offer many opportunities to celebrate the jubilee beginning with a small, joyful procession on December 29 at 2:00 p.m. moving from downtown Tulsa’s Chapman Centennial Green park to Holy Family Cathedral where Bishop David Konderla will celebrate an Opening Mass for the Jubilee Year and the reading of the Jubilee Proclamation.

The Diocese has designated several churches as pilgrimage sites. Pilgrims may gain a plenary indulgence when they visit.

 

The Jubilee Prayer

Father in heaven,

may the faith you have given us

in your son, Jesus Christ, our brother,

and the flame of charity enkindled

in our hearts by the Holy Spirit,

reawaken in us the blessed hope

for the coming of your Kingdom.

 

May your grace transform us

into tireless cultivators of the seeds of the Gospel.

May those seeds transform from within both humanity and the whole cosmos

in the sure expectation

of a new heaven and a new earth,

when, with the powers of Evil vanquished,

your glory will shine eternally.

 

May the grace of the Jubilee

reawaken in us, Pilgrims of Hope,

a yearning for the treasures of heaven.

May that same grace spread

the joy and peace of our Redeemer

throughout the earth.

To you our God, eternally blessed,

be glory and praise for ever.

Amen.