As the Catholic Church cel­e­brates 2025 as its Ju­bilee Year, Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don is call­ing on the faith­ful to re­ject the neg­a­tiv­i­ty of­ten spread through vi­ral so­cial memes.

Preach­ing at the Pro-Cathe­dral of Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help in San Fer­nan­do on Tues­day night, Gor­don lament­ed that one of the na­tion’s chal­lenges is its ten­den­cy to wal­low in de­spair, de­spon­den­cy and de­pres­sion. These is­sues, he said, are ev­i­dent in pub­lic dis­course on me­dia plat­forms and in oth­er fo­rums.

“What you hear is so neg­a­tive, as if there is noth­ing good that hap­pens in our coun­try,” Gor­don told the con­gre­ga­tion.

With the Ju­bilee theme be­ing Pil­grims of Hope, he urged his lis­ten­ers to avoid par­tic­i­pat­ing in such neg­a­tiv­i­ty. He en­cour­aged them to delete memes with neg­a­tive mes­sages and to re­ply to the senders, say­ing, “You do not need to pass around neg­a­tiv­i­ty any more.”

“As a pil­grim of hope, let us look at find­ing the beau­ti­ful things about our na­tion. A pil­grim of hope will see the truth of the beau­ty of this beau­ti­ful na­tion of ours and recog­nise in our peo­ple, of such di­ver­si­ty, a grace that God has giv­en us, which we should be cel­e­brat­ing every sin­gle day,” Gor­don said.

He called on Catholics to en­gage their faith in new ways in 2025. Draw­ing a par­al­lel, he asked the con­gre­ga­tion if they had ever faced a debt they could not re­pay and wished some­one would step in to set­tle it. He said even if they lived 25,000 life­times, they could nev­er re­pay their debt to God be­cause of their sins. How­ev­er, he em­pha­sised that this was why God sent Je­sus in­to the world.

Ex­plain­ing that a Ju­bilee Year is a time when God’s mer­cy is giv­en in su­per­abun­dance, Gor­don shared a per­son­al sto­ry of en­coun­ter­ing a young man at the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion last Sun­day. The man, whom Gor­don had known as a child, had a spo­radic re­la­tion­ship with God.

Gor­don told him, “This is the year to get your re­la­tion­ship right, as God can for­give you for all your sins.”

He high­light­ed that the Year of Ju­bilee of­fers a spe­cial grace of mer­cy, where all debts are for­giv­en.

In­vok­ing the bib­li­cal prin­ci­ple that char­i­ty be­gins at home, Gor­don en­cour­aged Catholics to ex­tend for­give­ness to oth­ers, start­ing with­in their own fam­i­lies. He ac­knowl­edged that those clos­est to us are of­ten the ones who ir­ri­tate us the most, and urged the con­gre­ga­tion to ex­am­ine their re­la­tion­ships for any lin­ger­ing re­sent­ment.

“You know some­times you are vexed with some­body, and you have been vexed with them so long, you can­not even re­mem­ber why? If you are vexed with some­one for so long that you have for­got­ten the rea­son, or even if you do re­mem­ber, do not let this year end with vex­a­tion in your fam­i­ly or your thoughts.”

Gor­don likened vex­a­tion to a mill­stone around one’s neck, drag­ging peo­ple to places they should not go. He re­mind­ed the con­gre­ga­tion that “un­for­give­ness” is one of the great sins against God, who has been ex­ceed­ing­ly gen­er­ous in for­giv­ing hu­man­i­ty.

“What God for­gives us for, we could not re­pay in ten life­times, yet some­times we can­not for­give oth­ers for lit­tle fool­ish­ness that is not even worth re­mem­ber­ing, far less hold­ing on to for so long,” he said.