VATICAN
THIRD MILLENNIUM
A Road for Europe
The European Synod has ended. A month of work on the future of the Old Continent. Faithfulness to the event of grace that is the person of Jesus of Nazareth, present today in the Church, the company of those whom He has chosen. The challenge of witness
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The Challenge of the Future
We present here some passages from the homily of John Paul II during the Eucharistic concelebration at the close of the Second Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for Europe, St. Peter's, October 23rd
"Jesus Christ of Nazareth... crucified... whom God raised from the dead…" (Acts 4:10) At the beginning of the Church, Peter's firm words echoed in Jerusalem: it was kerygma, the Christian announcement of salvation destined, by Christ's will, for all men and to all the peoples on earth. After twenty centuries, the Church presents herself at the threshold of the third millennium with this same announcement, which constitutes her only treasure: Jesus Christ, the Lord; in Him, and in no one else there is salvation (cf. Acts 4:12); He is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. (cf. Heb. 13:8) This is the cry that comes from the hearts of the disciples of Emmaus, returning to Jerusalem after meeting the Risen One. They listened to his ardent words and they recognized Him in the breaking of the bread. This synodal Assembly, the second for Europe, placed opportunely in the light of the biblical image of the disciples of Emmaus, closes with the sign of the joyous witness that comes from the experience of Christ, alive in His Church. The source of hope, for Europe and for the entire world, is Christ, the Word made Flesh, the only mediator between God and man. And the Church is the channel through which the wave of grace flows and spreads, coming from the pierced Heart of the Savior. "Believe in God, believe also in me.... If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know Him and have seen Him." (Jn. 14:1,7) With these words the Lord comforts our hope and invites us to look toward the heavenly Father. This year, the last of the century and of the millennium, the Church makes the disciples' invocation her own: "Lord, show us the Father" (Jn. 14:8), and receives Christ's comforting response: "He who has seen me has seen the Father.... I am in the Father and the Father is in me." (Jn. 14:9-10) Christ is the source of life and hope, because "in Him the fullness of deity dwells." (Col. 2:9) In the human history of Jesus of Nazareth, the Transcendent entered into history, the Eternal into time, the Absolute into the precariousness of the human condition.
Therefore with firm conviction the Church repeats to the men and women of the Year 2000 and in a special way to those living immersed in relativism and materialism: welcome Christ into your lives! Those who encounter Him encounter Truth, discover Life, find the Way that leads to Him. (cf. Jn. 14:6; Ps. 15:11) Christ is man's future: "For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12) …You have not feared to open your eyes to the reality of the continent, pointing out its lights as well as its shadows. Indeed faced with the problems of the present time, you have indicated useful orientations to make the face of Christ increasingly visible by a more incisive annunciation corroborated by a consistent witness.
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A Place of Grace
BY ANDREA TORNIELLI
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What took place in the Vatican over the last few weeks was a Synod under the sign of unity. For the second Special Assembly for Europe avoided the forced clashes of the past between the charismatic and institutional souls of the Church, between parishes, associations, movements; between hierarchy and new ecclesial realities. In the same way the clash was avoided, just as forced, between optimists and pessimists; in other words between those who retain that in Europe all are still Christians and those who instead see only the catastrophe of de-christianization and the assault of Islam. Thanks to some interventions it was made evident to all that the time we are living in is certainly a time of great testing for Christians, but precisely for this reason it is also a time in which it emerges more strongly that it is the Lord who is guiding the Church and that her existence and her spreading even in the Old Continent is the fruit of grace and not of pastoral strategies planned around a table. This is a time in which the contribution of everyone and of all sensitivities is necessary.
Opening the work of the Synod, John Paul II pointed out with realism that "the enthusiasms aroused by the fall of the ideological barriers and the peaceful revolutions of 1989 seem unfortunately to be rapidly dulled by the impact with political and economic selfishness." But he invited Europe "of the third millennium not to give in to discouragement," not to resign itself "to the ways of thinking and living that have no future because they are not based on the solid certainty of the Word of God."
"Jesus Christ is living in His Church," said the Pope, "and from generation to generation continues to 'come near' to man and to 'walk' with him. He knows the grave temptations of the generations that are preparing to cross the threshold of the third millennium." Before this situation Wojtyla clarified at once that "the invitation to hope is not founded on a utopian ideology like those that in the last two centuries have ended up trampling underfoot the rights of man, and especially those of the weakest. It is on the contrary the unfailing message of salvation proclaimed by Christ: "The Kingdom of God is amongst you, be converted and believe in the Gospel!" And again "Europe of the third millennium, the Church proposes you Christ, true hope of man and of history. She proposes Him to you not only and not so much with words, but especially with witness."
Two of the interventions in the Hall summarize well the crucial points tackled by the Synod and give us a picture of the reality of the moment we are living. On the morning of October 4th, Cardinal Adrianus Simonis, Archbishop of Utrecht in Holland, began by recalling the phrase of André Malraux, "'There are no more ideals for which we can sacrifice ourselves, because of our incapacity to know the truth….' He describes the present climate of delusion: humanity is living at the present time with many 'truths,' consequences of the claim to dominate reality in an absolute way, but he no longer knows the truth. He has the presumption to be able to decide what is possible and what is not."
"The relationship with the Mystery as the foundation of reality," continues Simonis, "has been broken. As a consequence, since the reality and the nature of man are incomprehensible, the world has become all a game, and the State seems to represent the only-even though suffocating-safeguard of society." "Today the Church is a minority," he continues, "Only few know who Christ is and how to find Him. Even the Church is influenced by the dominant mentality, with the risk of reducing the Gospel to a repetition of words or moral appeals that, in any case, do not give the answers necessary to a world that lives in confusion. The Christian faith consists essentially in an encounter with the living Christ. The Church is invited to encounter Him with the joy experienced at the beginning. His presence realizes the desires of our hearts and our thoughts, and will transform the perception of ourselves and morality."
"I would like to stress the meaning of the new ecclesial movements," Simonis concluded, "In communion with the hierarchy, these movements share the positive experience of Christian love, reaching environments where the knowledge of the faith is absent and giving testimony, thanks to their activity, of a new society in a disoriented society."
A just question
The following day, October 5th, Cardinal Godfried Daneels, Archbishop of Malines-Brussels, spoke in the assembly. "Modern European man is thirsting for happiness: a happiness based on material goods, many and immediate. But this thirst represents a pressing appeal for the Church to 'Sing the Gospel in tune.' The sects have understood this well. If the answer of contemporary man is often false, the question is a just one: the message of Christ is therapeutic and must make people happy."
"For our contemporaries all religions are the same and Christ is only one of the great prophets. Obviously this is not sufficient for expressing His true nature. Never in the course of the history of theology has the question of the uniqueness of Christ been expressed so acutely. It will force us to think and affirm more deeply our faith in the Man-God."
Daneels then hinted at the problem of Islam, without indulging in catastrophism. "Islam is more and more present in Europe. A certain type of Islam, with its monolithic faith, language and culture, its economic and political powers, is a difficult, almost impossible partner to dialogue with, but there is another Islam that teaches us once again the meaning of the transcendence of God, of prayer and of fasting, of the impact of religion on social life." As for de-christianization, the primate of Belgium observed, "In many countries the Church becomes a minority, poor in personnel, in financial resources, in power, and in prestige. Perhaps God is leading us toward a sort of new 'Babylonian exile' in order to teach us to become humbler and to live the doctrine of the omnipotence of grace. Not all is negative in the situation of those who 'sat down on the banks of the rivers of Babylon.' If it is true that perhaps a spiritual night is falling on Europe, let's imitate the wise virgins and set ourselves on the watch: the Bridegroom is coming. But to be on the watch does not mean to be afraid and run away. Let's take up our lamps and our oil. Christ will provide the oil (the Gospel). Let us bless Him. But the lamps (enculturation) are the men of all ages who offer them to us day after day. Let us therefore thank our own age, too: not everything is so negative after all."
At the Synod ecumenism, collegiality, and the valuing of women and of lay-people were also discussed. Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini asked explicitly for new forms of co-responsibility among bishops in order to deal with "shortages of ordained ministers, sexuality, marriage discipline, penitential practice, relationships with the sister Churches of Orthodoxy, the relationship between democracy and civil values and moral laws." Many read into his words the idea of a new Council, even though the Archbishop of Milan clarified that that was not exactly his intention.
"Thus says the Lord:
'Stop on the road and look,
ask about the ways of the past,
where the good road is and take it,
so you will find peace for your souls.'"
(Jer. 6:16)
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Dawning of a New Humanity
The text published by L'Osservatore Romano October 7, 1999, of the interventions of Juana and Jesus Carrascosa, from the International Center of CL, who were invited to the Synod as "auditors." (Carras and his wife spoke at the plenary assembly on October 5th)
BY JUANA CARRASCOSA
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I want first of all to express my gratitude for the invitation offered me by His Holiness to take part in this Synod. I thank the Holy Father in the name of Communion and Liberation, which is the experience that generated me and permits me to deepen the Christian event.
Some days ago, while talking with Fr. Giussani about this Assembly, we were saying that Europe has gotten its physiognomy from Christianity, in other words from the place and the company that ensures man the discovery and rediscovery of all the factors fundamental to existence.
In fact, the Christian experience exalts the dignity of man as a reasonable creature, and therefore as self-awareness of creation, since he discovers himself as direct relationship with the Mystery who makes all things, and as freedom. Christian experience acknowledges that all depends on God and that every movement of existence must coincide with the will of God. Therefore every action of man is obedience, even though always out of proportion with the Mystery.
Every forgetfulness or rebellion represents a lie for man's self-awareness, a lie that is called sin. No one is born so just as to avoid experiencing in his existence the trace of original sin, that is to say the impossibility with his own powers to be truly what he is destined to be. From this impossibility Jesus of Nazareth frees us, God incarnate, human companionship to our destiny.
Christ frees the world through the continuation, in time and space, of His event that is the Church, source of light and strength for man's behavior and judgment. The participation in the Sacraments-effective sign of the presence of Christ-in which man lives his existence for the will of God, represents the breaking of the Eternal into time and space. In this way, the baptized is made a new protagonist on the world scene, first of all through the witness of his own change, as the Pope reminded us in his inaugural discourse: "Europe of the third millennium, the Church… proposes you Christ, true hope of man and of history. She proposes Him to you not only and not so much with words, but especially with the eloquent witness of holiness." This change can reach so far as the generation of works differing in their usefulness for man, places of true humanity in the darkness of a barbarism that is looming over Europe today, for the human glory of Christ in history.
BY JESUS CARRASCOSA
Holy Father, in the name of Fr. Giussani, along with all the friends of the Movement of Communion and Liberation, I, too, express my gratitude to Your Holiness for the invitation to participate in this Synod.
I must confess that I began to perceive what the event of Christ is as the answer to the whole of life after having searched for it in many other ways without result: the ways of ideology, that seemed to me immediately more attractive and convincing in the power to explain and change reality. But all of a sudden they were revealed to my eyes for what they are: incapable of fulfilling the promise of completeness and happiness that vibrates in the heart of man. Only upon finding Christ in the flesh of His Church did I experience the correspondence with the needs and the questions of my heart, reason and affection. What in those days, many years ago, had led me to lose the presence of Christ in my existence was a dualistic conception: I was separating faith from life, faith from reason, reducing Christ to a social prophet or a moral inspiration.
Precisely for the experience I have lived I think I can observe that this temptation to dualism continues to be present among the Christians of Europe. If in the sixties this resolved itself in a social and political activism that was strongly ideological, today it takes the form of a disincarnate spiritualism to the point of an inevitable moralism, a slave to the law.
The dawn of a new beginning for me, already an adult, was a human encounter. The exceptionality of Christ made itself present to me through the concrete fragility of the sign He chose: a group of friends, a company that was a lived communion, whose life was more attractive and complete than that of the group of Christian anarchists of which I was part (cf. Instrumentum laboris, n.45: "A Church, true place of communion"). The encounter did not happen in the shadow of a sacristy, because I had not gone to Church for a good while. It happened instead in a school where I was teaching.
What struck me in those friends was that they did not give me talks about Christ but rather they proposed His real presence as a reasonable answer; that is to say, an answer that reached all aspects of my life, and their friendship as the place of verification of that correspondence.
Were Christianity to be just a doctrine or a morality, it would be difficult to announce it, a matter for specialists and experts, that would interest few people or nobody. Questioning ourselves about the difficulties of the mission in Europe means rediscovering the absolute simplicity of the method of Christ, of God with us: Jesus is a human presence that invests the whole of life and changes it. So we need Christians who are so aware and convinced as to make the Church present in their community.
This change exalts the original factors of human experience according to three dimensions: new judgment that becomes culture; that is to say, critical and systematic awareness of one's experience and an eye that values every slightest piece of good that is in the other (ecumenism); charity as the impetus of sharing and the gratuitous affirmation of the destiny of the other, of his good which is Christ, to the point of forgiveness; and mission as awareness that everything is given us by Christ and that life spent for Him (cf. 2Cor. 5) becomes deep longing for everyone to know Him, within the materiality of existence. Thus the Christian offers a witness sustained by the Sacraments and by Authority.
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The Church Makes Us
Contemporaries of Jesus
BY JOSEPH RATZINGER
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A summary of the intervention of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published in L'Osservatore Romano October 9, 1999
For the work of evangelization, faith is fundamental, as it opens the path to the mystery of Christ and the hope of the Gospels. How faith is formed, what faith is, appears in the dialogue between Jesus and his Twelve Apostles at Caesarea of Philippi, which gave birth to the Church's Creed: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." Jesus distinguishes the opinions of the "people" about whom He is, and the knowledge given to "You," that is to say, the Twelve. These Twelve share the life and path of Jesus, they share His solitude, they see His lasting being-with-the-Father. Out of this communion of life comes true knowledge: faith. Faith therefore presupposes a communion of life with Jesus, a dialogue between Jesus and the Us of the disciples. This Us exists also after the time of the apostles: it is the Church. The Church makes us contemporaries of Jesus. Faith is communion with Jesus in the Church, it is not the invention of a group; it is a gift of the Holy Spirit that unites the Church. The disciples, who have seen Jesus praying, in a dialogue with the Father, recognize him as the Son. True Christology is theo-logy; it responds to the questions, "Who is God? Where do we come from? Where are we going?" The fact that Peter pronounces the confession of faith in the name of the Twelve shows that communion with Peter indicates where the Us of the disciples is formed, the Church of Christ. The difference between "people" and the "Us" of the disciples will probably last until the end of time. But the Church is not an agency closed in on itself: its borders are always open: with all its being it must give the invitation to enter in, and even if it does not correspond to everyone, it is for everyone, being the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
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