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Year 2000 Book Preparing For The Year 2000, Urbi et Orbi Communications, New Hope, KY, USA 40052, 258 pages. ($14.95) Reviewed By Inside the Vatican Staff The contents of Preparing for The Year 2000, are simply stated: it is a practical and theoretical guide to how the Church intends to mark the 2,000th anniversary of the Incarnation. Containing both the complete text of John Paul II`s Apostolic Letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente (As the Third Millennium Draws Near), and 15 essays prepared by the Vatican's Committee on the Great Jubilee, the book is authoritative, informed, and enlightening. It seems to be the only such book presently available that deals with what the Church will celebrate and explaining why the celebration of the millennium is of incalculable importance not only to Christians but to every human being. The volume begins with introductions to John Paul II's 41-page Tertio Millennio. That Letter places the millennium in the context of salvation history, and is followed by essays of experts analyzing and developing Tertio Millennio's major ideas. These commentaries treat scriptural-historical, theological, and pastoral dimensions. They are written with a minimum of specialized terminology and provide excellent, in-depth treatments of such subjects as the history of jubilees, the importance of Vatican II, faith, conversion, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Fatherhood of God, Mary, martyrs, ecumenism, conversion, and the place of local churches in the celebration. Key to John Paul II's Pontificate As historian Alessandro Galuzzi makes clear in his essay, "The Jubilee Years in the History of the Church," there is no other document quite like Tertio Millennio among the earlier documents. He writes, "The Jubilee Year 2000 must be understood as a new stage in the history... of Jubilee practices." Among the scores of papal letters announcing jubilees and magnificent celebrations, there is none with the boundless evangelical view and universal appeal of John Paul II's. The Holy Father doesn't merely see the coming millennium as important, he sees it as offering a new age to the Church and is convinced that his pontificate has been and is being used by Providence to initiate that age. He seems to tell us that if we would understand him, we could do no better than begin by understanding his thoughts concerning the millennium. "Preparing for the Year 2000," he writes, "has become as it were a hermeneutical key of my pontificate." [Section 23] The Pope sees his pontificate and the millennium as stages in the divine plan for salvation. Just as he has aimed his pontificate toward restoring the Church and evangelizing the world, so he looks toward the Great Jubilee as a period of joyous re-evangelization of Catholicism and Christianity and reaching out with widespread arms of love to the whole world. This reaching out will be Christological in the deepest sense. Its focus will be Christ, "Son of God," "begotten not made," Second Person of the Trinity, Child of the Virgin Mary, "Word made flesh," "true God and true man." Because Christ is One with the Triune God, the Second Person of the Trinity, the celebration must also be simultaneously Trinitarian. And because Mary is the indispensable human agent in the coming of Christ, the Holy Father sees a Marian dimension to the millennial celebration from outset to conclusion. The New Advent The best liturgical example of what will be celebrated is the season of Advent. The Pope often uses the phrase "the new Advent" in connection with the year 2000. The celebration is "Great" because it includes the birth of Christ and the Incarnation and all the previous Jubilees, the 2,000 Advents of the Church, the 20 centuries during which the Redemption has been known to the world. The Pope stresses that the Jubilee must be understood as part of the redemption and sacramentalization of time itself: "In Christianity time has a fundamental importance. Within the dimension of time the world was created, within it the history of salvation unfolds, finding its culmination in the `fullness of time' of the Incarnation and its goal in the glorious return of the Son of God at the end of time. In Christ, the Word made flesh, time becomes a dimension of God, who is himself eternal. With the coming of Christ there begin `the last days' (cf. Heb. 1:2), `the last hour' (cf 1 John 2:18) and the time of the Church, which will last until the Parousia." (Section 10) Christians celebrate the fact, the Pope goes on, that "Christ is the Lord of time, he is its beginning and its end; every year, every day and every moment are embraced by his Incarnation and Resurrection, and thus become part of `fullness of time'." Two Phases, Three Years The Jubilee will take place in two phases, preparatory and celebratory. The preparatory phase, which ends in 1996, consists of study and planning. The celebratory phase will begin with a three-year Trinitarian cycle: 1997 will center on Christ, faith, baptism, examination of conscience; 1998 on the Holy Spirit, hope, confirmation; 1999 on God the Father, the Eucharist, penance, ecumenism. Throughout the three years Holy Scripture will be repeatedly stressed, as will the role of the Blessed Virgin as model for all Christians. Each year is discussed separately by the Pope, and at the end of each discussion he returns to the importance of Mary's role in the observances. The Jubilee concludes in 2000 with two key events: 1. intense interreligious dialogue, where dialogue with Jews and Muslims "ought to have a pre-eminent place"; 2. an International Eucharistic Congress in Rome to highlight Christ's "living and saving presence in the Church and in the world." [53] The Pope adds: "in the Sacrament of the Eucharist the Savior, who took flesh in Mary's womb twenty centuries ago, continues to offer himself to humanity as the source of divine life." [55] The dominant note of the Great Jubilee is that Christ's coming is the source of unmitigated hope and joy. And that is the note that is sounded early and often in this volume. As Roger Cardinal Etchegaray writes in introducing Tertio Millennio Adveniente: "If ever there were a pontifical document that Christians have handed on to one another with joyous enthusiasm, like relay runners passing the baton...," it is the Pope's Letter, which has "aroused the sincerest enthusiasm everywhere." "Love the Lord your God" and "The Year...of Favor" This hope and joy can be attained only through conversion, conversion linked with holiness and salvation as revealed in scripture and in the Church's teaching. The Pope's view very much follows from Jesus's summing up the Commandments in Matthew: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart... You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Mt 22:37-40). To achieve this holiness the Pope counsels a turning away from sin, evil, selfishness, and indifference. This should evolve from such actions as individual and group examination of conscience, reception of the sacraments, obedience to he magisterium, and living life on earth in the light of eternity. These steps will lead to works of love, to a new oneness among Christians, and increased tolerance and love everywhere on earth. The Letter never fails to point out the obstacles to true conversion: "The call to conversion as the indispensable condition of Christian love is particularly important in contemporary society, where the very foundations of an ethically correct vision of human existence often seems to have been lost." [49] The Pope's foundational text for associating this global awakening with the Great Jubilee is Jesus' reading of a passage from Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16-30): "The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of prisons to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Is 61:1-2), [11]. John Paul describes this passage and its place in Mystery of Salvation as follows: "The day of salvation had come, the `fullness of time.' All Jubilees point to this `time' and refer to the messianic mission of Christ who came as the `anointed' by the Holy Spirit, the one `sent by the Father'." Love of Neighbor The inseparable relationship between the love of God and love of neighbor leads to the Pope's two most spectacular proposals -- one a reaching out to other religions, the other an appeal on behalf of the poor. He writes of trying to arrange a meeting with leaders of the three monotheistic, "Abrahamic," religions (Jewish, Muslim, Christian) "in places of exceptional symbolic importance like Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Mount Sinai." Once again he also reminds us of pitfalls, here the danger "of syncretism and of a facile and deceptive irenicism." His appeal for the poor is directed to first world countries asking them to forgive, entirely or in part, debts owed by third world countries. The interest on these loans is crippling the economies of many third world countries. The Pope points to a precedent for such action in Leviticus (25:8-12), where during the "Year of the Lord's favor" debts were to be forgiven, lost land restored, and slaves freed. Tertio Millennio and Prophecy In the Church's history every jubilee is prepared for by Divine Providence" [17], the Pope writes, and he clearly sees the hand of Providence preparing for the Great Jubilee. The "intellectual legacy" of Pius XII helped prepare for Vatican II, which was a profound and precise preparation for the Jubilee. The Council is seen by the Pope as having, in its great documents, practically drawn up blueprints for the Church of the third millennium. Is the Holy Father predicting something apocalyptic, the Second Coming? "Certainly not," he responds. It is "not a matter of indulging in a new millenarianism; rather, it is aimed at an increased sensitivity to all that the Spirit is saying to the Church and to the Churches (cf. Rev. 2:7ff), as well as to individuals through charisms meant to serve the whole community. The purpose is to emphasize what the Spirit is suggesting to the different communities...cultures, societies and sound traditions. Despite appearances, humanity continues to await the revelation of the children of God and lives by this hope like a mother in labor...." [23] There is a clear tension between the Pope's irrepressible Christian hope, and his sense of anxiety and foreboding at the moral and ethical confusion rampant in today's world. But he emphatically insists on the hope found through Jesus Christ, His Gospel, in the sacramental life of the Church, and the work of the Holy Spirit. The only thing that can dull the hope of the millennium is mankind's refusal of grace offered. As far as John Paul is concerned, the "great springtime of Christian life" will take place if Christians open themselves to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Tertio Millennio's Invitation Tertio Millennio is a clear, challenging, and passionate invitation not only to Catholics, not only to Christians, not only to the three great monotheistic religions, but to the whole world to join in prayer and acts of charity and justice. It invites us to seek out the faith of the first Christians who believed totally that eternal life came from the Messiah, his teaching, his sacrificial death and Resurrection. To grasp that we are allowed only a few years to accept and live this faith. To hold hard to the faith that sees life always approaching eternity. "For," as Paul reminds his converts struggling to hold and grow in this faith, "Salvation is nearer us now than when we first believed" (Rom. 13:11). We are told that the road to the Jubilee requires three years. It is an Advent road, apparently celebrating the new Advent which will connect the Incarnation and Nativity in Palestine 2000 years ago with the sense of its providential unfolding in the history of the Church and the world, an unfolding which will be variously recalled in the next few years. The markings on this road are of many kinds. There are signs to Jerusalem and Rome, recollections of other Church jubilees, historical events, both global and local, but above all it is a personal and individual journey of faith for all who desire a deeper understanding of the Incarnation, their own existence, and the existence of all humanity. It is a journey that can be fixed with historical dates, 1 A.D. and 2000 A.D., yet it begins before time and ends in timelessness because it is concerned with Jesus Christ "the same yesterday and today" (Heb 13:8). It is a pilgrimage of one life and of a lifetime, of an age, of the whole quest of mankind for the supernatural. Its goal is the Holy Door, the Door of Faith, once carved and polished to an almost heavenly splendor by the holy people of the past. But in our age the Holy Door has been almost covered with rot and corruption, almost forgotten. "Seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;/ And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell," in the words of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. But the door is still there, and the Holy Father will symbolically re-open it and invite us in to mark the third millennium of Jesus' birth. Through the door the pilgrim will, each in his own way, each at his own pace, move towards the presence of the One, uncreated Creator, the all-good, all-just, all-loving God, the Being Who Is, the Redeemer and Sustainer of all life and living, the "seen and unseen, visible and invisible," the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The great goal of the Holy Jubilee in John Paul II's eyes is not only to bring Christians into the unimaginable joy of this Presence, but to bring all peoples even from "the very ends of the earth." It is a vision worthy of the Gospels, worthy of the great prophets of the Old Testament, and worthy of this lost and confused generation. It is a key not only to John Paul II's pontificate, but a revelation of the mind and soul of the man. |
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