Jubilee Pilgrimage to St Joseph's Hartlepool
Thursday 13 November 2025
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A Jubilee pilgrimage of hope
Our parish made a Jubilee pilgrimage to St Joseph's Catholic Church in Hartlepool, organised by the SVP.
It was an early start. The first bus set off from Norton and picked up the rest of us in Billingham. At the church Father Mark led us through, stopping at each station along the way. The pilgrimage banners marked them out, and at every one he gave us something to sit with and reflect on. Father Adrian was there to hear confessions through the day, so anyone who wanted to go to Reconciliation could.
Hope was the theme. The eight stations took us into it a step at a time.
The photographs give a sense of the day. Father Mark and Father Adrian at the altar for Mass, both in green vestments. People at prayer through the Mass and through adoration. And the stations themselves, each one set out with care: a statue of Our Lady, a crucifix, baskets of verses, the commitment tags.
Afterwards we went over to St Joseph's hall for fish and chips, with tea and coffee, and a while to sit and talk before the buses took everyone home to St Thomas of Canterbury or St Joseph's in Norton.
Our thanks go to Father Mark and Father Adrian for leading us through the sacraments and the stations. And to the SVP, who do so much for the parish through the year, and who sorted out the buses and the fish and chips.
The pilgrimage
The pilgrimage
The Holy Door of Hope
Our reflection
Christ is the door to eternal hope. Stop here a moment at the Holy Door, and let your thoughts rest on Jesus, who is where that hope begins.
Walking through it is a sign of setting out again with God. You can leave your fear and your doubt at the threshold. What waits on the other side is His hope, and His love.
Jesus puts it plainly in John 10:9: 'I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.'
Background
A Holy Door is a sign of conversion and renewal. Passing through one lets pilgrims at home receive the full graces of a Jubilee year. St Joseph's in Hartlepool has one of only two in the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, put there for the sake of people who cannot get to Rome.
For centuries that was the only way to do it. You went to Rome, or you did not walk through a Holy Door at all. Pope Francis has been clear that God's mercy belongs to everyone, the people who could never afford the journey abroad included. For the Jubilee of Mercy in 2015 and 2016 he asked every Catholic diocese in the world to open a door of its own. It meant Catholics everywhere could receive those graces without leaving home.
Living Water of Hope
Our reflection
This station took us back to where our hope starts: the Sacrament of Baptism. We were asked to call our own baptism to mind, and to remember how God delights in us as His beloved children. The reading brought us to Christ's own baptism in Matthew 3:16. We blessed ourselves with holy water, praying for those getting ready for baptism, and for all Christians trying to live out the promises of theirs.
Background
The Living Water is the Holy Spirit, given to us by Jesus Christ. He promised it to the woman at the well. This water does not stay outside us. It becomes, in His words, 'a spring of water welling up to eternal life' (John 4:14). It is the grace that cleanses us, makes us new, and answers the deepest thirst we have, which is the thirst for God.
Hope is the theological virtue by which we trust God's promises, the promise of salvation above all. That trust does not rest on what we can manage by ourselves. It rests on the help and the grace of the Holy Spirit.
So when we speak of the Living Water of Hope, we mean the Holy Spirit at work inside us, keeping that trust alive. The grace is what lets us hope, with confidence, for eternal life, and it carries us along the way as we go.
Merciful Hope
Our reflection
At this station we looked at the places in our own lives where we still stand in need of God's mercy. Pilgrims were invited to lay a burden down by setting a pebble at the foot of the cross. The reading was Matthew 11:28, where Christ calls 'all who labour and are heavy laden' to come to him and find rest. The Sacrament of Reconciliation was there for us through the day as well, and with it the renewal that forgiveness brings.
Background
Mercy is God's love in action, the compassion and the forgiveness he holds out to us freely, sinners though we are. It is who God is, shown in full in the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Hope is the theological virtue by which we trust God's promise of eternal life.
Put the two together and you have Merciful Hope. Trusting God's mercy, and leaning on that rather than on anything we have earned, is a deeply Catholic instinct. It is the belief that even when we sin, God's wish to forgive runs deeper than our power to fail. That belief keeps despair at bay, the despair that tells us we are past saving. And it answers the opposite mistake too, the presumption that we have nothing to turn back from.
The Sacred Heart of Hope
Our reflection
This station gave us time for a closer, quieter sort of prayer, drawing on the teaching of Pope Francis. Christ holds out His heart to us, and as He does it He looks straight at us. The look is itself an invitation. Come close, He is saying. Talk to me. Trust me.
The image shows His hands, strong enough to hold us up, and His lips, which speak to each of us personally. We were asked to look to the Sacred Heart as the source of a love and a compassion that never runs dry, somewhere we can safely lay all our hopes and intentions. Pilgrims could take a short passage from the basket to sit with.
There was a ribbon, too. You wrote your name on it and placed it by the Sacred Heart, a sign, public and personal, that your hope and your trust rest wholly in Him. We ended by praying it three times over: 'O most Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in You!'
Background
In Catholic devotion the Sacred Heart means the actual, physical heart of Jesus. It stands for the love He bears us, a love that is personal, ardent, human and divine all at once. Call it the Sacred Heart of Hope and you are saying that this love is what our hope of salvation, our hope of eternal life, is built on, and what holds it firm.
The heart is usually shown pierced by the lance and crowned with thorns. A love that has suffered, then, and suffered for our sake. It is shown burning as well, ringed with flame, because it is a love still alive, still ardent, impossible to put out.
Catholic hope rests on a person. It is a firm trust in Jesus Christ, in who He actually is, and it is steadier than any vague feeling that things will come right in the end. Turning to His Sacred Heart sets that trust where it belongs, on His merciful love.
And the wounds stay. They are there in the image for good, a standing reminder that this love has already beaten sin and death. You can read the promise of His mercy in them.
The Blessed Sacrament: In the Presence of Perfect Hope
Our reflection
A time of silent adoration, this one. As we passed the Blessed Sacrament we were invited to genuflect, or to make a solemn bow. The hope and the strength of the station came from Christ being there with us, present and abiding, just as He promised: 'And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age' (Matthew 28:20).
Background
The Blessed Sacrament is the Catholic belief about the Eucharist. The consecrated Host, kept in the tabernacle, is no mere symbol. It is the real, true and substantial presence of Jesus Christ, His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.
Perfect Hope is Jesus Christ Himself. He is the one who has overcome sin and death, the living promise of our salvation and of eternal life.
So to be in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, as we are at Adoration, is to be in the actual, bodily presence of Jesus. He is the source of all our hope, its object, and the one in whom it is fulfilled. We are not only hoping for something still to come. At Adoration we are resting in the presence of Hope Himself, here with us now.
The Word of Hope: Scripture Reading
Our reflection
We turn to the Scriptures for guidance, and for the heart to keep going. Paul tells the Romans that hope comes to us through endurance, and through the encouragement the Scriptures hold (Romans 15:4). One of the community read the Gospel for this station aloud. It was John 2:13-22, the passage the Church appoints for the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica. The cleansing of the Temple. Jesus turns the traders out and says to them, 'Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.' They want a sign from Him. His answer: 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.' He meant the temple of His body.
Background
Scripture is no dead letter. It is a living word, and the story it tells is of God keeping faith with His people and carrying through His merciful plan to save us. Every Christian hope rests on that.
That hope runs the length of the Bible. The Old Testament waits for a Saviour and keeps the longing for Him alive. The New shows us who He proved to be. Christ's Resurrection is the surety of it all, the ground we stand on when we trust that our own hope of eternal life will hold.
And the reading does more than recall the past. When we hear the Scriptures, above all in the Liturgy, we believe we are meeting the living God, and that He is speaking to us as we listen. It feeds faith. It gives a life its bearings, and it adds weight to the hope we place in His promises.
Our Lady of Hope
Our reflection
At this station we turned to Mary, our Blessed Mother, and to her hope and her trust in God's plan. We prayed the First Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, the Annunciation, and asked her, the servant of the Lord, to take our needs to her Son (Luke 1:38).
Background
Mary is our intercessor. A Mother of Hope, she takes the fears and the worries of her children to her Son, and His heart is moved with compassion for them.
And she is our model. Hope ran right through her life. When the angel came to her, she believed God's promise. At the foot of the Cross she went on hoping. Then the long wait with the disciples for the Holy Spirit. From her we learn to trust God's mercy, above all when a situation seems hopeless.
The Cross of Hope
Our reflection
Here we gave thanks for what the Cross won for us, which is past all measuring: the hope of eternal life. Pilgrims wrote the names of those they love on the prayer tree, and gave thanks to God for the hope those people stir in them. They offered up their own crosses, the burdens each was carrying, trusting that the Lord is our help and our shield, and that the hope He gives does not disappoint (Psalm 33:20).
Background
The Cross is the sign of our salvation. It is where Jesus Christ, our Saviour, gave Himself as the perfect sacrifice to atone for the sins of the world. That offering threw heaven's gates open. What had been a thing of shame and defeat became the very emblem of our redemption.
You cannot separate it from the Resurrection. For Catholics the one does not stand without the other. The Cross is the road that had to be walked, and it leads to Christ's triumph over death, which is the ground our Christian hope of eternal life stands on and the surety that it will hold.
It also says something about our own suffering. Joined to Christ's sacrifice, pain is not wasted. It can be made to count for something, can carry a redeeming power. There is real hope in that for anyone going through it, the hope that God drew the greatest good of all, the Resurrection, out of the worst evil ever done, the Crucifixion. So He can do the same with ours.
Missionaries of Hope
Our reflection
The last station sent us out. The pilgrimage closed with Mass, said by both priests, and from there we were called to take the hope we had met during the day back into our ordinary lives, and to be a light of hope in the parish and the wider community. We signed a commitment board and chose a pledge of hope from the booklet, doing what Christ commands at the end of Mark: 'Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation' (Mark 16:15).
Background
The first task of a missionary of hope is to announce the kerygma, the core of the Gospel. Sin, suffering and death do not get the last word. God is merciful, Christ has beaten death by rising from it, and the promise of eternal life is held out to everyone.
This is hope you act on. It does more than point to something still to come, it shapes how a person lives now. Missionaries of hope put the message to work in plain deeds of charity, of justice, of standing alongside others. They go to the people who have most cause to despair, the poor, the sick, those pushed to the edges, those who have lost their way with God, and they serve them there.
They are called to be a visible sign of hope in a world that often runs on fear, or on a weary sort of cynicism. By their joy, by the way they trust God to provide, by the kindness in how they serve, they stand as living witnesses to the Resurrection.
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