(Vatican Radio) On Thursday Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass marking the 50th anniversary
of the Opening of the Second Vatican Council and launching the Year of Faith.
Below
the full text of the Holy Father’s Homily:
Dear Brother Bishops, Dear
brothers and sisters!
Today, fifty years from the opening of the Second Vatican
Ecumenical Council, we begin with great joy the Year of Faith. I am delighted to
greet all of you, particularly His Holiness Bartholomaois I, Patriarch of Constantinople,
and His Grace Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. A special greeting goes to
the Patriarchs and Major Archbishops of the Eastern Catholic Churches, and to the
Presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences. In order to evoke the Council, which some
present had the grace to experience for themselves - and I greet them with particular
affection - this celebration has been enriched by several special signs: the opening
procession, intended to recall the memorable one of the Council Fathers when they
entered this Basilica; the enthronement of a copy of the Book of the Gospels used
at the Council; the consignment of the seven final Messages of the Council, and of
the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I will do before the final blessing.
These signs help us not only to remember, they also offer us the possibility of going
beyond commemorating. They invite us to enter more deeply into the spiritual movement
which characterized Vatican II, to make it ours and to develop it according to its
true meaning. And its 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
which we launch today is linked harmoniously with the Church’s whole path over the
last fifty years: from the Council, through the Magisterium of the Servant of God
Paul VI, who proclaimed a Year of Faith in 1967, up to the Great Jubilee of the year
2000, with which Blessed John Paul II 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 was a deep and profound convergence, precisely upon Christ as
the centre of the cosmos and of history, and upon the apostolic eagerness to announce
him to the world. Jesus is the centre of the Christian faith. The Christian believes
in God whose face was revealed by Jesus Christ. He is the fulfilment of the Scriptures
and their definitive interpreter. Jesus Christ is not only the object of the faith
but, as it says in the Letter to the Hebrews, he is “the pioneer and the perfecter
of our faith” (12:2).
Today’s Gospel tells us that Jesus Christ, consecrated
by the Father in the Holy Spirit, is the true and perennial subject of evangelization.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good
news to the poor” (Lk 4:18). This mission of Christ, this movement of his continues
in space and time, over centuries and continents. It is a movement which starts with
the Father and, in the power of the Spirit, goes forth to bring the good news to the
poor, in both a material and a spiritual sense. The Church is the first and necessary
instrument of this work of Christ because it is united to him as a body to its head.
“As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (Jn 20:21), says the Risen One to
his disciples, and breathing upon them, adds, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (v.22). 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; he did so, and continues to do so,
until the end of time pouring out his Spirit upon the disciples, the same Spirit who
came upon him and remained in him during all his earthly life, giving him the strength
“to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set
at liberty those who are oppressed” and “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord”
(Lk 4:18-19).
The Second Vatican Council did not wish to deal with the theme
of faith in one specific document. It 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. The Servant of God Paul VI, two years after the end of the Council
session, expressed it in this way: “Even if the 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.
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” (General Audience, 8 March 1967). Thus said Paul VI.
We now turn to the one who convoked the Second Vatican Council and inaugurated
it: Blessed John XXIII. In his opening speech, he presented the principal purpose
of the Council in this way: “What above all concerns the Ecumenical Council is this:
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” (AAS 54 [1962], 790,791-792).
In the light of these words, we can understand what I myself felt at the
time: during the Council there was an emotional tension as we faced the common task
of making the truth and beauty of the faith shine out in our time, without sacrificing
it to the demands of the present or leaving it tied to the past: the eternal presence
of God resounds in the faith, transcending time, yet it can only be welcomed by us
in our own unrepeatable today. Therefore I believe that the most important thing,
especially on such a significant occasion as this, is to revive in the whole Church
that positive tension, that yearning to announce Christ again to contemporary man.
But, so that this interior thrust towards the new evangelization neither remain just
an idea nor be lost in confusion, it needs to be built on a concrete and precise basis,
and this basis is the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the place where it
found expression. This is why I have often insisted on the need to return, as it
were, to the “letter” of the Council – that is to its texts – also to draw from them
its authentic spirit, and why I have repeated that the true legacy of Vatican II is
to be found in them. Reference to the documents saves us from extremes of anachronistic
nostalgia and running too far ahead, and allows what is new to be welcomed in a context
of continuity. The Council 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.
If we place ourselves in harmony with
the authentic approach which Blessed John XXIII wished to give to Vatican II, we will
be able to realize it during this Year of Faith, following the same path of the Church
as she continuously endeavours to deepen the deposit of faith entrusted to her by
Christ. 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. In the years
following, however, 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, it is not to honour an anniversary, but because there is
more need of it, even more than there was fifty years ago! And the reply to be given
to this need is the one desired by the Popes, by the Council Fathers and contained
in its documents. Even the initiative to create a Pontifical Council for the promotion
of the new evangelization, which I thank for its special effort for the Year of Faith,
is to be understood in this context. Recent decades have seen the advance of a spiritual
“desertification”. In the Council’s time it was already possible from a few tragic
pages of history to know what a life or a world without God looked like, but now 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. The first reading spoke to us of the wisdom of the wayfarer (cf. Sir 34:9-13):
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 – as happens to pilgrims along the
Way of Saint James or similar routes which, not by chance, have again become popular
in recent years. How come so many people today feel the need to make these journeys?
Is it not because they find there, or at least intuit, the meaning of our existence
in the world? This, then, is how we can picture the Year of Faith: 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 (cf. Lk 9:3), 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.
Venerable and dear Brothers, 11 October
1962 was the Feast of Mary Most Holy, Mother of God. Let us entrust to her the Year
of Faith, as I did last week when I went on pilgrimage to Loreto. May the Virgin
Mary always shine out as a star along the way of the new evangelization. May she
help us to put into practice the Apostle Paul’s exhortation, “Let the word of Christ
dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom […] And whatever
you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks
to God the Father through him” (Col 3:16-17). Amen.