The Year Of Faith Declared

Pope Benedict XVI declared a “Year of Faith” which will start this October 2012, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. He did so while presiding over the celebration of the Holy Eucharist at Vatican City on October 16th, 2011.The Year of Faith will run from October 11th, 2012, till November 24th, 2013, which is the Solemnity of Christ the King.  “It will be a period of grace and dedication to a more complete conversion to God, to strengthen our faith in Him and proclaim Him with joy to the people of our time,” stated the Pope, making his announcement at Sunday Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Pope said in his address that it will provide “brand-new incentive to the objective of the whole Church to lead men out of the desert in which they often find themselves, to the place  of life, of relationship with Christ.” He additionally said that “factors, functions and rules” for the year will be set out in an Apostolic Letter entitled Porta Fidei.  (Please click here to listen to this Apostolic Letter)

The huge congregation at the Mass consisted mostly of those associated with the “new evangelization,” who were in Rome for a summit organized by the just recently formed Pontifical Council for Promotion of the New Evangelization.  The new evangelization aspires to revive Catholicism in traditionally Christian countries which have been negatively impacted by secularization in recent decades.

Drawing upon the Scripture readings of that day, the Pope laid out a roadmap for the new evangelizers. In the first reading, the Prophet Isaiah recounts how King Cyrus, the Persian Emperor in the 6th century B.C., played his role in satisfying a divine plan regardless of that fact that he “did not know” God and was not even Jewish.

“Even the mighty Cyrus, the Persian Emperor, is part of a greater plan, that just God knows and carries forward,” observed the Pope.

This shows, he stated, the demand for a brand-new “theology of history” as an “essential part” of the new evangelization “because “the men of our time, after the disastrous season of totalitarian empires of the 20th century, have to locate an extensive vision of the globe and time,” more appropriate with the vision of the Church.

In the second reading of that day, taken from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, the Pope said new evangelizers are reminded that “it is the Lord who touches hearts by His Word and His Spirit, by calling people to faith and communion in the Church.”

The fact that it is God and not the evangelist who touches hearts, reveals the value of recognizing God as the prime mover in any type of apostolic activities which “must constantly be preceded, accompanied and followed by prayer,” he stated.

Pope Benedict also highlighted the importance of having collaborators like St. Paul who had Silvanus and Timothy as his friends in his work, and said today’s new evangelizers should also look for co-workers in spreading out the Gospel.

He said that the Gospel reading provided the essential message the new evangelizers must bring to the world.   In the Gospel Reading of that day, Jesus tells the Pharisees to, “give to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar, and to God the things that are God’s.” This is a reminder that the Church’s message is not mainly a political one, the Pope said.

“The purpose of the Church, like Christ,” he stated, “is practically to speak of God, to commemorate His sovereignty, reminding every person, specifically Christians and Catholics, who have lost their identity, of God’s right over what belongs to Him, which is our lives.”

Later on that morning, the Pope utilized his Sunday Angelus address to more describe his plans for a “Year of Faith” to over 40,000 pilgrims gathered in St. Peters Square. He summed up the initiative as “proclaiming Christ to those who do not know him or have, in fact, diminished him to a mere historical character.”

He completed his address by putting all those involved in new evangelization under the protective care of the Virgin Mary who “helps every Christian to be a legitimate witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”