Pope John Paul II has called on the Church to celebrate a great jubilee to usher in the new millennium. The entire year is to be marked by Christian celebrations, pilgrimages and thanksgiving, along with a strong expectation of an outpouring of graces from the Holy Spirit. While the Year 2000 Jubilee has mostly spiritual implications, the Pope is not ignoring the economic principles of the Jubilee as he calls for a reduction of the crushing debt load on poor countries.

The Year 2000 Jubilee traces its origin back to the Jewish jubilee that occurred every 50 years. Most people are aware that the Jews were to take one day off every week for rest and worship: the Sabbath day. Many are unaware of the ancient Jewish practice of allowing the land to rest one complete year every seven years. The seventh year was regarded as a Sabbath year (Leviticus 25:4). Since ancient Israel was mostly an agricultural economy, the Sabbath year had strong economic overtones as the land, the workers, and the economy were able to rest.

A special blessing for the poor every seventh year was the requirement that Israelites were to be released from all debts (Deuteronomy 15:1-11). In ancient Israel debt was not the economic lifestyle it has become in the modern world. Debt was regarded as a form of economic servitude. As Proverbs 22:7 says, "The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender." Debt was avoided by all, except by those whose extreme poverty drove them into it.

The seventh year cancellation of all debts put a brake on any tendency for ancient Israel to become a permanently indebted economy. Things such as thirty-year loans were prohibited. There was no long-term incentive for lenders to promote debt. It was impossible for the nation to slip into a lifestyle of debt.

After 49 years, expressed as "seven weeks of years" in Leviticus 25:8, there was to be a super Sabbath year called the Jubilee. In addition to the economy being allowed a Sabbath year’s rest and debts being released, the Jubilee laws in Leviticus had two more economic provisions.

The first provision was that family land that had been sold because of economic necessity was to be returned. The Jubilee prevented conglomerates from permanently gobbling up the land and extinguishing the small family farm. God wanted each family in ancient Israel to be able to provide for its own needs. Having land as a family inheritance was the pathway to economic freedom for generation after generation of Israelite families.

The second Jubilee law provided freedom from servitude (Leviticus 25:39-41). If an Israelite fell into dire economic straits, frequently stemming from the inability to repay debts, he could indenture himself as a hired servant. The Jubilee freed all Israelites from this servitude. God’s Jubilee provision meant that none of his people were to be permanently trapped in economic bondage.

While the exact application of the Old Testament Jubilee legislation is not binding in the New Covenant, the principles of economic justice are certainly timeless. Violating these principles brings servitude to the poor, debt lifestyles, and depressions instead of jubilees.

In his Apostolic Letter, As the Third Millennium Draws Near, Pope John Paul II says that "The custom of jubilees, which began in the Old Testament … continues in the church." He then explains that "On the basis of the juridical norms contained in these [jubilee] prescriptions a kind of social doctrine began to emerge … which would then more clearly develop beginning with the New Testament …

The jubilee year was meant to restore social justice" (Sections 11-13). On the basis of these jubilee principles the Pope and other Vatican leaders have called upon international banks to free poor countries from the crushing debt load that is enslaving the Third World.

[Do you think the Church’s voice is going to be heeded by the world’s bankers? I doubt it, unless they manage to craft a scheme to keep their profits by passing the debt obligations on in the form of taxes to our children and grandchildren.]

God’s laws and the principles deriving from them are ordered in reality. Release from debt will eventually occur, either through the pains of a depression, or through the joys of a jubilee. The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia is inscribed with, "Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land," a quotation from Leviticus 25:10 announcing the Year of Jubilee. But we live in a land that wants freedom, while ignoring the true source of liberty: God’s word.

Modern economies seem bent on violating the Sabbath Year and Jubilee Year principles. An endless treadmill of activity in the world of business and commerce has displaced God’s pattern of work and rest. Family businesses are gobbled up by the latest chain of superstores, while the family farm disappears and the ability of a working man to earn a wage sufficient to support his family is a distant memory. Instead of breaking the cycle of poverty, we have managed to create a welfare system that perpetuates trans-generational poverty in the world’s most prosperous nation. Rather than minimizing indebtedness, we have pumped personal, corporate, and government debt into the largest "bubble economy" in human history. When the bubble finally pops - and it will - we will realize that our addiction to debt has brought us a depression instead of a jubilee.