Pope Benedict: Year of Faith "summons to...conversion to the Lord"
A new "Motu Proprio" has been released on the "Year of Faith" Pope Benedict announced
on Sunday. In his letter, Pope Benedict writes the "Year of Faith "is a summons to
an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Saviour of the world."
Full
text of the Apostolic Letter "Porta Fidei"
Apostolic Letter “Motu Proprio
data”
Porta Fidei
of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI
for the
Indiction of the Year of Faith
The “door of faith” (Acts 14:27) is
always open for us, ushering us into the life of communion with God and offering entry
into his Church. It is possible to cross that threshold when the word of God is proclaimed
and the heart allows itself to be shaped by transforming grace. To enter through
that door is to set out on a journey that lasts a lifetime. It begins with baptism
(cf. Rom 6:4), through which we can address God as Father, and it ends with the passage
through death to eternal life, fruit of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, whose
will it was, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, to draw those who believe in him into
his own glory (cf. Jn 17:22). To profess faith in the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy
Spirit – is to believe in one God who is Love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8): the Father, who in the
fullness of time sent his Son for our salvation; Jesus Christ, who in the mystery
of his death and resurrection redeemed the world; the Holy Spirit, who leads the Church
across the centuries as we await the Lord’s glorious return. Ever since the start
of my ministry as Successor of Peter, I have spoken of the need to rediscover the
journey of faith so as to shed ever clearer light on the joy and renewed enthusiasm
of the encounter with Christ. During the homily at the Mass marking the inauguration
of my pontificate I said: “The Church as a whole and all her Pastors, like Christ,
must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards
friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.”
It often happens that Christians are more concerned for the social, cultural and political
consequences of their commitment, continuing to think of the faith as a self-evident
presupposition for life in society. In reality, not only can this presupposition
no longer be taken for granted, but it is often openly denied. Whereas in the past
it was possible to recognize a unitary cultural matrix, broadly accepted in its appeal
to the content of the faith and the values inspired by it, today this no longer seems
to be the case in large swathes of society, because of a profound crisis of faith
that has affected many people. We cannot accept that salt should become tasteless
or the light be kept hidden (cf. Mt 5:13-16). The people of today can still experience
the need to go to the well, like the Samaritan woman, in order to hear Jesus, who
invites us to believe in him and to draw upon the source of living water welling up
within him (cf. Jn 4:14). We must rediscover a taste for feeding ourselves on the
word of God, faithfully handed down by the Church, and on the bread of life, offered
as sustenance for his disciples (cf. Jn 6:51). Indeed, the teaching of Jesus still
resounds in our day with the same power: “Do not labour for the food which perishes,
but for the food which endures to eternal life” (Jn 6:27). The question posed by
his listeners is the same that we ask today: “What must we do, to be doing the works
of God?” (Jn 6:28). We know Jesus’ reply: “This is the work of God, that you believe
in him whom he has sent” (Jn 6:29). Belief in Jesus Christ, then, is the way to arrive
definitively at salvation. In the light of all this, I have decided to announce
a Year of Faith. It will begin on 11 October 2012, the fiftieth anniversary of the
opening of the Second Vatican Council, and it will end on the Solemnity of Our Lord
Jesus Christ, Universal King, on 24 November 2013. The starting date of 11 October
2012 also marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, a text promulgated by my Predecessor, Blessed John Paul II, with
a view to illustrating for all the faithful the power and beauty of the faith. This
document, an authentic fruit of the Second Vatican Council, was requested by the Extraordinary
Synod of Bishops in 1985 as an instrument at the service of catechesis and it was
produced in collaboration with all the bishops of the Catholic Church. Moreover,
the theme of the General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops that I have convoked for
October 2012 is “The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith”.
This will be a good opportunity to usher the whole Church into a time of particular
reflection and rediscovery of the faith. It is not the first time that the Church
has been called to celebrate a Year of Faith. My venerable Predecessor the Servant
of God Paul VI announced one in 1967, to commemorate the martyrdom of Saints Peter
and Paul on the 19th centenary of their supreme act of witness. He thought
of it as a solemn moment for the whole Church to make “an authentic and sincere profession
of the same faith”; moreover, he wanted this to be confirmed in a way that was “individual
and collective, free and conscious, inward and outward, humble and frank”. He thought
that in this way the whole Church could reappropriate “exact knowledge of the faith,
so as to reinvigorate it, purify it, confirm it, and confess it”. The great upheavals
of that year made even more evident the need for a celebration of this kind. It concluded
with the Credo of the People of God, intended to show how much the essential content
that for centuries has formed the heritage of all believers needs to be confirmed,
understood and explored ever anew, so as to bear consistent witness in historical
circumstances very different from those of the past. In some respects, my venerable
predecessor saw this Year as a “consequence and a necessity of the postconciliar period”,
fully conscious of the grave difficulties of the time, especially with regard to the
profession of the true faith and its correct interpretation. It seemed to me that
timing the launch of the Year of Faith to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of
the opening of the Second Vatican Council would provide a good opportunity to help
people understand that the texts bequeathed by the Council Fathers, in the words of
Blessed John Paul II, “have lost nothing of their value or brilliance. They need to
be read correctly, to be widely known and taken to heart as important and normative
texts of the Magisterium, within the Church's Tradition ... I feel more than ever
in duty bound to point to the Council as the great grace bestowed on the Church in
the twentieth century: there we find a sure compass by which to take our bearings
in the century now beginning.” I would also like to emphasize strongly what I had
occasion to say concerning the Council a few months after my election as Successor
of Peter: “if we interpret and implement it guided by a right hermeneutic, it can
be and can become increasingly powerful for the ever necessary renewal of the Church.” The
renewal of the Church is also achieved through the witness offered by the lives of
believers: by their very existence in the world, Christians are called to radiate
the word of truth that the Lord Jesus has left us. The Council itself, in the Dogmatic
Constitution Lumen Gentium, said this: While “Christ, ‘holy, innocent and undefiled’
(Heb 7:26) knew nothing of sin (cf. 2 Cor 5:21), but came only to expiate the sins
of the people (cf. Heb 2:17)... the Church ... clasping sinners to its bosom, at once
holy and always in need of purification, follows constantly the path of penance and
renewal. The Church, ‘like a stranger in a foreign land, presses forward amid the
persecutions of the world and the consolations of God’, announcing the cross and death
of the Lord until he comes (cf. 1 Cor 11:26). But by the power of the risen Lord
it is given strength to overcome, in patience and in love, its sorrow and its difficulties,
both those that are from within and those that are from without, so that it may reveal
in the world, faithfully, although with shadows, the mystery of its Lord until, in
the end, it shall be manifested in full light.”
The Year of Faith, from
this perspective, is a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord,
the one Saviour of the world. In the mystery of his death and resurrection, God has
revealed in its fullness the Love that saves and calls us to conversion of life through
the forgiveness of sins (cf. Acts 5:31). For Saint Paul, this Love ushers us into
a new life: “We were buried ... with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness
of life” (Rom 6:4). Through faith, this new life shapes the whole of human existence
according to the radical new reality of the resurrection. To the extent that he freely
cooperates, man’s thoughts and affections, mentality and conduct are slowly purified
and transformed, on a journey that is never completely finished in this life. “Faith
working through love” (Gal 5:6) becomes a new criterion of understanding and action
that changes the whole of man’s life (cf. Rom 12:2; Col 3:9-10; Eph 4:20-29; 2 Cor
5:17). “Caritas Christi urget nos” (2 Cor 5:14): it is the love of
Christ that fills our hearts and impels us to evangelize. Today as in the past, he
sends us through the highways of the world to proclaim his Gospel to all the peoples
of the earth (cf. Mt 28:19). Through his love, Jesus Christ attracts to himself the
people of every generation: in every age he convokes the Church, entrusting her with
the proclamation of the Gospel by a mandate that is ever new. Today too, there is
a need for stronger ecclesial commitment to new evangelization in order to rediscover
the joy of believing and the enthusiasm for communicating the faith. In rediscovering
his love day by day, the missionary commitment of believers attains force and vigour
that can never fade away. Faith grows when it is lived as an experience of love received
and when it is communicated as an experience of grace and joy. It makes us fruitful,
because it expands our hearts in hope and enables us to bear life-giving witness:
indeed, it opens the hearts and minds of those who listen to respond to the Lord’s
invitation to adhere to his word and become his disciples. Believers, so Saint Augustine
tells us, “strengthen themselves by believing”. The saintly Bishop of Hippo had good
reason to express himself in this way. As we know, his life was a continual search
for the beauty of the faith until such time as his heart would find rest in God.
His extensive writings, in which he explains the importance of believing and the truth
of the faith, continue even now to form a heritage of incomparable riches, and they
still help many people in search of God to find the right path towards the “door of
faith”.
Only through believing, then, does faith grow and become stronger;
there is no other possibility for possessing certitude with regard to one’s life apart
from self-abandonment, in a continuous crescendo, into the hands of a love that seems
to grow constantly because it has its origin in God. On this happy
occasion, I wish to invite my brother bishops from all over the world to join the
Successor of Peter, during this time of spiritual grace that the Lord offers us, in
recalling the precious gift of faith. We want to celebrate this Year in a worthy
and fruitful manner. Reflection on the faith will have to be intensified, so as to
help all believers in Christ to acquire a more conscious and vigorous adherence to
the Gospel, especially at a time of profound change such as humanity is currently
experiencing. We will have the opportunity to profess our faith in the Risen Lord
in our cathedrals and in the churches of the whole world; in our homes and among our
families, so that everyone may feel a strong need to know better and to transmit to
future generations the faith of all times. Religious communities as well as parish
communities, and all ecclesial bodies old and new, are to find a way, during this
Year, to make a public profession of the Credo. We want this Year to arouse in
every believer the aspiration to profess the faith in fullness and with renewed conviction,
with confidence and hope. It will also be a good opportunity to intensify the celebration
of the faith in the liturgy, especially in the Eucharist, which is “the summit towards
which the activity of the Church is directed; ... and also the source from which all
its power flows.” At the same time, we make it our prayer that believers’ witness
of life may grow in credibility. To rediscover the content of the faith that is professed,
celebrated, lived and prayed, and to reflect on the act of faith, is a task that every
believer must make his own, especially in the course of this Year.
Not
without reason, Christians in the early centuries were required to learn the creed
from memory. It served them as a daily prayer not to forget the commitment they had
undertaken in baptism. With words rich in meaning, Saint Augustine speaks of this
in a homily on the redditio symboli, the handing over of the creed: “the symbol of
the holy mystery that you have all received together and that today you have recited
one by one, are the words on which the faith of Mother Church is firmly built above
the stable foundation that is Christ the Lord. You have received it and recited it,
but in your minds and hearts you must keep it ever present, you must repeat it in
your beds, recall it in the public squares and not forget it during meals: even when
your body is asleep, you must watch over it with your hearts.” At
this point I would like to sketch a path intended to help us understand more profoundly
not only the content of the faith, but also the act by which we choose to entrust
ourselves fully to God, in complete freedom. In fact, there exists a profound unity
between the act by which we believe and the content to which we give our assent.
Saint Paul helps us to enter into this reality when he writes: “Man believes with
his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved” (Rom
10:10). The heart indicates that the first act by which one comes to faith is God’s
gift and the action of grace which acts and transforms the person deep within.
The
example of Lydia is particularly eloquent in this regard. Saint Luke recounts that,
while he was at Philippi, Paul went on the Sabbath to proclaim the Gospel to some
women; among them was Lydia and “the Lord opened her heart to give heed to what was
said by Paul” (Acts 16:14). There is an important meaning contained within this expression.
Saint Luke teaches that knowing the content to be believed is not sufficient unless
the heart, the authentic sacred space within the person, is opened by grace that allows
the eyes to see below the surface and to understand that what has been proclaimed
is the word of God. Confessing with the lips indicates in turn that faith implies
public testimony and commitment. A Christian may never think of belief as a private
act. Faith is choosing to stand with the Lord so as to live with him. This “standing
with him” points towards an understanding of the reasons for believing. Faith, precisely
because it is a free act, also demands social responsibility for what one believes.
The Church on the day of Pentecost demonstrates with utter clarity this public dimension
of believing and proclaiming one’s faith fearlessly to every person. It is the gift
of the Holy Spirit that makes us fit for mission and strengthens our witness, making
it frank and courageous. Profession of faith is an act both personal and communitarian.
It is the Church that is the primary subject of faith. In the faith of the Christian
community, each individual receives baptism, an effective sign of entry into the people
of believers in order to obtain salvation. As we read in the Catechism of the Catholic
Church: “ ‘I believe’ is the faith of the Church professed personally by each believer,
principally during baptism. ‘We believe’ is the faith of the Church confessed by
the bishops assembled in council or more generally by the liturgical assembly of believers.
‘I believe’ is also the Church, our mother, responding to God by faith as she teaches
us to say both ‘I believe’ and ‘we believe’.” Evidently, knowledge of the content
of faith is essential for giving one’s own assent, that is to say for adhering fully
with intellect and will to what the Church proposes. Knowledge of faith opens a door
into the fullness of the saving mystery revealed by God. The giving of assent implies
that, when we believe, we freely accept the whole mystery of faith, because the guarantor
of its truth is God who reveals himself and allows us to know his mystery of love. On
the other hand, we must not forget that in our cultural context, very many people,
while not claiming to have the gift of faith, are nevertheless sincerely searching
for the ultimate meaning and definitive truth of their lives and of the world. This
search is an authentic “preamble” to the faith, because it guides people onto the
path that leads to the mystery of God. Human reason, in fact, bears within itself
a demand for “what is perennially valid and lasting”. This demand constitutes a permanent
summons, indelibly written into the human heart, to set out to find the One whom we
would not be seeking had he not already set out to meet us. To this encounter, faith
invites us and it opens us in fullness. In order to arrive at a
systematic knowledge of the content of the faith, all can find in the Catechism of
the Catholic Church a precious and indispensable tool. It is one of the most important
fruits of the Second Vatican Council. In the Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum,
signed, not by accident, on the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Second
Vatican Council, Blessed John Paul II wrote: “this catechism will make a very important
contribution to that work of renewing the whole life of the Church ... I declare it
to be a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion and a sure norm for
teaching the faith.”
It is in this sense that that the Year of Faith will
have to see a concerted effort to rediscover and study the fundamental content of
the faith that receives its systematic and organic synthesis in the Catechism of the
Catholic Church. Here, in fact, we see the wealth of teaching that the Church has
received, safeguarded and proposed in her two thousand years of history. From Sacred
Scripture to the Fathers of the Church, from theological masters to the saints across
the centuries, the Catechism provides a permanent record of the many ways in which
the Church has meditated on the faith and made progress in doctrine so as to offer
certitude to believers in their lives of faith. In its very structure, the Catechism
of the Catholic Church follows the development of the faith right up to the great
themes of daily life. On page after page, we find that what is presented here is
no theory, but an encounter with a Person who lives within the Church. The profession
of faith is followed by an account of sacramental life, in which Christ is present,
operative and continues to build his Church. Without the liturgy and the sacraments,
the profession of faith would lack efficacy, because it would lack the grace which
supports Christian witness. By the same criterion, the teaching of the Catechism
on the moral life acquires its full meaning if placed in relationship with faith,
liturgy and prayer. In this Year, then, the Catechism of the Catholic
Church will serve as a tool providing real support for the faith, especially for those
concerned with the formation of Christians, so crucial in our cultural context. To
this end, I have invited the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, by agreement
with the competent Dicasteries of the Holy See, to draw up a Note, providing the Church
and individual believers with some guidelines on how to live this Year of Faith in
the most effective and appropriate ways, at the service of belief and evangelization.
To
a greater extent than in the past, faith is now being subjected to a series of questions
arising from a changed mentality which, especially today, limits the field of rational
certainties to that of scientific and technological discoveries. Nevertheless, the
Church has never been afraid of demonstrating that there cannot be any conflict between
faith and genuine science, because both, albeit via different routes, tend towards
the truth. 13. One thing that will be of decisive importance in this Year is
retracing the history of our faith, marked as it is by the unfathomable mystery of
the interweaving of holiness and sin. While the former highlights the great contribution
that men and women have made to the growth and development of the community through
the witness of their lives, the latter must provoke in each person a sincere and continuing
work of conversion in order to experience the mercy of the Father which is held out
to everyone. During this time we will need to keep our gaze fixed upon Jesus Christ,
the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12:2): in him, all the anguish and all
the longing of the human heart finds fulfilment. The joy of love, the answer to the
drama of suffering and pain, the power of forgiveness in the face of an offence received
and the victory of life over the emptiness of death: all this finds fulfilment in
the mystery of his Incarnation, in his becoming man, in his sharing our human weakness
so as to transform it by the power of his resurrection. In him who died and rose
again for our salvation, the examples of faith that have marked these two thousand
years of our salvation history are brought into the fullness of light. By faith,
Mary accepted the Angel’s word and believed the message that she was to become the
Mother of God in the obedience of her devotion (cf. Lk 1:38). Visiting Elizabeth,
she raised her hymn of praise to the Most High for the marvels he worked in those
who trust him (cf. Lk 1:46-55). With joy and trepidation she gave birth to her only
son, keeping her virginity intact (cf. Lk 2:6-7). Trusting in Joseph, her husband,
she took Jesus to Egypt to save him from Herod’s persecution (cf. Mt 2:13-15). With
the same faith, she followed the Lord in his preaching and remained with him all the
way to Golgotha (cf. Jn 19:25-27). By faith, Mary tasted the fruits of Jesus’ resurrection,
and treasuring every memory in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19, 51), she passed them on to
the Twelve assembled with her in the Upper Room to receive the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts
1:14; 2:1-4). By faith, the Apostles left everything to follow their Master (cf.
Mk 10:28). They believed the words with which he proclaimed the Kingdom of God present
and fulfilled in his person (cf. Lk 11:20). They lived in communion of life with
Jesus who instructed them with his teaching, leaving them a new rule of life, by which
they would be recognized as his disciples after his death (cf. Jn 13:34-35). By faith,
they went out to the whole world, following the command to bring the Gospel to all
creation (cf. Mk 16:15) and they fearlessly proclaimed to all the joy of the resurrection,
of which they were faithful witnesses. By faith, the disciples formed the first
community, gathered around the teaching of the Apostles, in prayer, in celebration
of the Eucharist, holding their possessions in common so as to meet the needs of the
brethren (cf. Acts 2:42-47). By faith, the martyrs gave their lives, bearing witness
to the truth of the Gospel that had transformed them and made them capable of attaining
to the greatest gift of love: the forgiveness of their persecutors. By faith,
men and women have consecrated their lives to Christ, leaving all things behind so
as to live obedience, poverty and chastity with Gospel simplicity, concrete signs
of waiting for the Lord who comes without delay. By faith, countless Christians have
promoted action for justice so as to put into practice the word of the Lord, who came
to proclaim deliverance from oppression and a year of favour for all (cf. Lk 4:18-19). By
faith, across the centuries, men and women of all ages, whose names are written in
the Book of Life (cf. Rev 7:9, 13:8), have confessed the beauty of following the Lord
Jesus wherever they were called to bear witness to the fact that they were Christian:
in the family, in the workplace, in public life, in the exercise of the charisms and
ministries to which they were called. By faith, we too live: by the living recognition
of the Lord Jesus, present in our lives and in our history. 14. The Year of Faith
will also be a good opportunity to intensify the witness of charity. As Saint Paul
reminds us: “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is
love” (1 Cor 13:13). With even stronger words – which have always placed Christians
under obligation – Saint James said: “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says
he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is
ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be
warmed and filled’, without giving them the things needed for the body, what does
it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But some one will say,
‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I
by my works will show you my faith” (Jas 2:14-18). Faith without charity bears
no fruit, while charity without faith would be a sentiment constantly at the mercy
of doubt. Faith and charity each require the other, in such a way that each allows
the other to set out along its respective path. Indeed, many Christians dedicate
their lives with love to those who are lonely, marginalized or excluded, as to those
who are the first with a claim on our attention and the most important for us to support,
because it is in them that the reflection of Christ’s own face is seen. Through faith,
we can recognize the face of the risen Lord in those who ask for our love. “As you
did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40). These
words are a warning that must not be forgotten and a perennial invitation to return
the love by which he takes care of us. It is faith that enables us to recognize Christ
and it is his love that impels us to assist him whenever he becomes our neighbour
along the journey of life. Supported by faith, let us look with hope at our commitment
in the world, as we await “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells”
(2 Pet 3:13; cf. Rev 21:1). Having reached the end of his life,
Saint Paul asks his disciple Timothy to “aim at faith” (2 Tim 2:22) with the same
constancy as when he was a boy (cf. 2 Tim 3:15). We hear this invitation directed
to each of us, that none of us grow lazy in the faith. It is the lifelong companion
that makes it possible to perceive, ever anew, the marvels that God works for us.
Intent on gathering the signs of the times in the present of history, faith commits
every one of us to become a living sign of the presence of the Risen Lord in the world.
What the world is in particular need of today is the credible witness of people enlightened
in mind and heart by the word of the Lord, and capable of opening the hearts and minds
of many to the desire for God and for true life, life without end.
“That
the word of the Lord may speed on and triumph” (2 Th 3:1): may this Year of Faith
make our relationship with Christ the Lord increasingly firm, since only in him is
there the certitude for looking to the future and the guarantee of an authentic and
lasting love. The words of Saint Peter shed one final ray of light on faith: “In
this you rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials,
so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable
is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honour at the revelation of
Jesus Christ. Without having seen him you love him; though you do not now see him
you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy. As the outcome of
your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet 1:6-9). The life of Christians
knows the experience of joy as well as the experience of suffering. How many of the
saints have lived in solitude! How many believers, even in our own day, are tested
by God’s silence when they would rather hear his consoling voice! The trials of life,
while helping us to understand the mystery of the Cross and to participate in the
sufferings of Christ (cf. Col 1:24), are a prelude to the joy and hope to which faith
leads: “when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). We believe with firm certitude
that the Lord Jesus has conquered evil and death. With this sure confidence we entrust
ourselves to him: he, present in our midst, overcomes the power of the evil one (cf.
Lk 11:20); and the Church, the visible community of his mercy, abides in him as a
sign of definitive reconciliation with the Father. Let us entrust this time of
grace to the Mother of God, proclaimed “blessed because she believed” (Lk 1:45).
Given
in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, on 11 October in the year 2011, the seventh of my Pontificate. BENEDICTUS
PP. XVI Listen to our report: