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The awesome story behind the Jubilee Year logo

 

The logo design and the motto together reveal a fitting summary of what the Jubilee Year is all about…



 
Note from Peggy:  The Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy started December 8, 2015 and will end November 20, 2016 — we're already halfway through.  The above logo is posted in every church and chapel, but most, like me, would maybe just take it for granted.  I found this short description of its relevance and significance in a small booklet in church at today's mass today — and thought I'd share it with all…

The motto “Merciful Like the Father” (taken from the Gospel of Luke, 6:36) serves as an invitation to follow the merciful  example of the Father who asks us not to judge or condemn but to forgive and to give love and forgiveness without measure (cfr. Lk 6:37-38). 

The logo – the work of Jesuit Father Marko I. Rupnik – presents a small summa theologiiae of the theme of mercy.

In fact, it represents an image quite important to the early Church: that of the Son having taken upon his shoulders the lost soul demonstrating that it is the love of Christ that brings to completion to mystery of His incarnation culminating in redemption. 

The logo has been designed in such a way so as to express the profound way in which the Good Shepherd touches the flesh of humanity and does so with a love with the power to change one’s life.  One particular feature worthy of note is that while the Good Shepherd, in His great mercy, takes humanity upon Himself,  His eyes are merged with those of man.  Christ sees with the eyes of Adam, and Adam with the eyes of Christ.  Every person discovers in Christ, the new Adam, one’s own humanity and the future that lies ahead, contemplating, in His gaze, the love of the Father.

The scene is captured within the so-called mandorla (the shape of an almond), a figure quite important in early and medieval iconography, for it calls to mind the two natures of Christ, divine and human.  The three concentric ovals, with colors progressively lighter as we move outward, suggest the movement of Christ who carri
es humanity out of the night of sin and death.  Conversely the depth of the darker color suggests the impenetrability of the love of the Father who forgives all.

From: The Year of Mercy Issue 01: Compassion (published by the Office for the New Evangelisation. Singapore 2016)

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