Pope launches Year of Faith

(October 11, 2012) Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday launched the Year of Faith with a colourful solemn Mass in St. Peter’s Square in Rome which was attended by thousands of faithful. Concelebrating with the Pope were 400 patriarchs, cardinals, synod fathers, and the major archbishops of the Oriental Catholic Churches. They included 191 archbishops and bishops of the synod, and 104 presidents of the bishops’ conferences from around the world. Among the concelebrants were also 15 who took part in the Second Vatican Council II, half a century ago, like Pope Benedict himself as a young priest and expert theologian. The large number of concelebrants was possible because the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization currently in session in the Vatican, Oct. 7-28. Present at the Mass among others were also two leading exponents of the divided Church of Christ – Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the spiritual head of Orthodox Christians worldwide, and Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, the spiritual head of the Anglican communion worldwide.
The Year of Faith which began on Thursday, Oct. 11, will conclude on Nov 24, 2013. The inaugural date Oct. 11, was chosen as on this day 50 year ago, in 1952, the Second Vatican Council started in St. Peter’s Basilica Blessed John XXIII. The Council’s announced purpose was spiritual renewal of the church and reconsideration of the position of the church in the modern world. It concluded in 1965, under Pope Paul VI. Oct. 11 was also the day, 20 years ago, in 1992 , that the Catechism of the Catholic Church was released.
The Second Vatican Council, or simply Vatican 2, from 1962 to ‘65, is in continuity with the major ecumenical or worldwide councils of Christianity held through the centuries, and hence in this regard Vatican 2 is the 21st ecumenical council. Though the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15 and Galatians 2) was the first such Church Council, attended by the Apostles, the first ecumenical or world-wide gathering of the Church was held in 325 in the city of Nicaea, just south of Constantinople in Asia Minor, in what is today Iznik in Turkey. And now the Year of Faith, October 11 – Nov. 24, 2013, aims to revive the faith of Catholics across the globe in an age where God, religion and morals are being pushed to the margins of life. This was the core message of Pope Benedict XVI’s homily at Thursday’s inaugural Mass. From the experience of spiritual desertification, the void of a world without God, the Pope said, we can again discover the joy of believing, as today’s world there are innumerable signs of the thirst for God, for the ultimate meaning of life.
Pope Benedict said that Vatican II’s “true meaning was and remains faith in Christ, the apostolic faith, animated by the inner desire to communicate Christ to individuals and all people, in the Church’s pilgrimage along the pathways of history.” The Year of Faith “is linked harmoniously with the Church’s whole path over the last fifty years,” he said, pointing to Council itself as well as the Year of Faith in 1967 under Pope Paul VI, and the Great Jubilee of the year 2000 under Blessed John Paul II, which re-proposed to all humanity Jesus Christ as the one Saviour, yesterday, today and forever. Between these two Popes, Paul VI and John Paul II, there has been a deep and profound convergence upon Christ as the center of the cosmos and of history, and upon the apostolic eagerness to announce him to the world. “Jesus Christ,” the Pope stressed, “is not only the object of the faith but he is “the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith.”
Referring to the Mass’ Gospel reading from St. Luke, where Jesus says, ““The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor,” the Pope said that this mission and movement of Christ continues “in space and time, over centuries and continents.” It starts with the Father and, in the power of the Spirit, and goes forth to bring the good news to the poor, in both a material and a spiritual sense. Through Christ, God is the principal subject of evangelization in the world; but Christ himself wished to pass on his own mission to the Church, until the end of time pouring out his Spirit upon the disciples
Citing Pope Paul VI, Pope Benedict said that “even though the Second Vatican Council does not deal expressly with the faith, it talks about it on every page, it recognizes its vital and supernatural character, it assumes it to be whole and strong, and it builds upon its teachings. The council was, however, animated by a desire, as it were, to immerse itself anew in the Christian mystery so as to re-propose it fruitfully to contemporary man. We need only recall some of the Council’s statements in order to realize the essential importance that the Council, consistent with the doctrinal tradition of the Church, attributes to the faith, the true faith, which has Christ for its source and the Church’s Magisterium for its channel.” In this regard Pope Benedict recalled Blessed John XXIII, who in presenting the principal purpose of the Council in the opening speech insisted “that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine be safeguarded and taught more effectively […]” “Therefore, the principal purpose of this Council is not the discussion of this or that doctrinal theme… a Council is not required for that… [but] this certain and immutable doctrine, which is to be faithfully respected, needs to be explored and presented in a way which responds to the needs of our time.”
Pope Benedict said that the most important thing of the Year of Faith, just starting, “is to revive in the whole Church that positive tension, that yearning to announce Christ again to contemporary man.” For this to happen, it needs to be built on the “concrete and precise basis” of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the place where it found expression. Pope Benedict explain that Vatican II did not formulate anything new in matters of faith, nor did it wish to replace what was ancient. Rather, it concerned itself with seeing that the same faith might continue to be lived in the present day, that it might remain a living faith in a world of change. Pope Benedict said that the Council Fathers wished to present the faith in a meaningful way; and if they opened themselves trustingly to dialogue with the modern world it is because they were certain of their faith, of the solid rock on which they stood. Unfortunately, Pope Benedict noted that in the following years, many embraced uncritically the dominant mentality, placing in doubt the very foundations of the deposit of faith, which they sadly no longer felt able to accept as truths.
If today the Church proposes a new Year of Faith and a new evangelization, the Pope said, it is not to honour an anniversary, but because there is more need of it, even more than there was fifty years ago! He said the creation of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization in September 2010, is to be understood in this context. The Pope noted that recent decades have seen the advance of a spiritual “desertification”. In the Council’s time it was possible to know what a life or a world without God looked like, but now, Pope Benedict said, we see it every day around us. “This void has spread”. “But it is in starting from the experience of this desert, from this void, that we can again discover the joy of believing, its vital importance for us, men and women.” “In the desert we rediscover the value of what is essential for living; thus in today’s world there are innumerable signs, often expressed implicitly or negatively, of the thirst for God, for the ultimate meaning of life. And in the desert people of faith are needed who, with their own lives, point out the way to the Promised Land and keep hope alive. Living faith opens the heart to the grace of God which frees us from pessimism.” Today, more than ever, evangelizing means witnessing to the new life, transformed by God, and thus showing the path.
Pointing to the wisdom of the wayfarer in the Mass’ first reading from the Book of Sirach, Pope Benedict said “the journey is a metaphor for life, and the wise wayfarer is one who has learned the art of living, and can share it with his brethren.” “This, then, is how we can picture the Year of Faith,” the Pope said – “a pilgrimage in the deserts of today’s world, taking with us only what is necessary: neither staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, nor two tunics – as the Lord said to those he was sending out on mission, but the Gospel and the faith of the Church, of which the Council documents are a luminous expression, as is the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published twenty years ago.”
Concluding his homily, Pope Benedict recalled that Oct. 11, 1962 was the Feast of Mary Most Holy, Mother of God. He urged the synod fathers to entrust to her the Year of Faith, as he did at Italy’s Marian shrine of Loreto last week, Oct. 7. “May the Virgin Mary always shine out as a star along the way of the new evangelization,” the Pope wished.
At the end of the Mass, Orthodox head, Patriarch Bartholomew I delivered an address holding up the Second Vatican Council as a milestone not just for Catholics but for all Christians. He recalled that one of the principal thrusts generated by the Council in the past 5 decades has been dialogue among the divided followers of Christ. “The door, then, must remain open for deeper reception, pastoral engagement, and ecclesial interpretation of the Second Vatican Council,” Patriarch Bartholomew urged. As the start of the year of Faith marked the golden jubilee of Vatican II and the 20th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict then handed a few some of the faithful the messages of the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.