The Year of Faith begins -
and Benedict impresses yet again!
Translated from
October 14, 2012
It is more necessary today than 50 years ago because the desert has extended, the void has grown. But what is necessary? The same impulse that passionately moved the Conciliar Fathers to communicate the faith to contemnporary man with his doubts, his straying, his prejudices and darknesses, but above all, who continues to thirst for the living and true God, for the meaning and destiny of his human adventure.
The week just past has simply been impressivee. One has to ask from where the Pope draws his energy, the light he sheds that is at once gentle and cutting, joyful without triumphalism, humble and sure of himself at the same time.
His way of narrating the Second Vatican Council wipes out so much commonplace incrustations, so much fog, so much empty verbiage: There has never been a rupture with the Church of the past in these fifty years since the Council began. Christianity is branded in fire by the presence of the eternal God who entered into time, but it is always new, "like a tree in a perennial dawn, that is always young".
This continuing actuality of the faith is the profound sense of the word
aggiornamento, launched by John XXIII, and which Benedict XVI does not disdain - it expresses the continuing vitality of the Church.
It is not about reducing the faith and adapting it to the opinion of the times, as some would have it, but on the contrary, "to introduce God's today to the 'today' of our time".
So it was at the Council, so it is today even in new historical coordinates. It is true that the Council Fathers confidently opened up a dialog with the modern world, but they could do it only to the degree to which they were profoundly rooted in apostolic faith.
Without that rootedness, we have seen so clearly, dialog dissolves into simply assuming the mentality of the times. And if the salt turns tasteless, who will season the faith?
That is why the Pope reiterated it so often during this unforgettable week that we must go to the 'letter' of the Council = its 16 documents - which expresses the true conscience of the Church, stripped of ideological hypotheses and readings.
That is why it is urgent that the
Catechism of the Catholic Church be the master tool to educate the Christian people in the today in which we live.
Once more this week, we have seen the sheer joy of being Christian. But as Benedict XVI told the 40,000 Romans assembled by Catholic Action for the candlelight procession last Thursday, "today, our joy is perhaps more moderate and humble" because we are conscious of the difficulties and obstacles along the way, of contrary winds that threaten to sink the ship of the Church. of the weeds that gtow in the field of the Church. At times, the pressure has been such that, the Pope observed, "the Lord seemed to have retired and forgotten us".
But all this is just part of history and not its principal part. The important thing is that despite our fears, the Lord has not been asleep. The power of the Spirit has not stopped working, but in his own way, not according to our expectations.
In a most beautiful way, the Pope said that the flame of the Holy Spirit is "not a devouring fire - it is a flame of goodness and truth, which gives light and warmth".
And that is why we have seen the Christian novelty grow in various ways: the new charisms, the protagonism of today's Catholic youth, the new responsibility of laymen in the Church, the passionate leadership of John Paul II who gave the Church a new historical profile, the immense capacity of Benedict XVI to announce the faith and point to its human results in the forums of the post-modern world.
"The memory of the past is precious but it is not an end in itself." the Pope said to the bishops of the world who had come to Rome for this week. Today as yesterday the love of Christ urges us, the thirsting heart of man compels us. And so the Church cannot recreate itself in nostalgia - it is irrevocably launched towards the future.
The deserts of today - just turn on the TV - has made the thirst of men and women in our time even more ardent, even if at times they express this thirst in frightening ways. We must understand this Year of Faith as a pilgrimage through these deserts, said the Pope, "taking with us only what is necessary: neither staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, nor two tunics - but the Gospel and the faith of the Church".
But only those who are shaped by the faith and rooted in the Church can dare enter those deserts to offer the testimony of new life, transformed by God, of their full and joyful humanity even in the midst of storms.
Only they - saints, in effect - can introduce "God's eternal today into the 'today' of men in our time".
Once again, we have seen Peter teaching the people. And what a great display it was.