Another
year is drawing to a close, as we await the start of a new one: with
some trepidation, with our perennial desires and expectations.
Reflecting on our life experience, we are continually astonished by how
ultimately short and ephemeral life is. So we often find ourselves
asking: what meaning can we give to our days? What meaning, in
particular, can we give to the days of toil and grief? This is a
question that permeates history, indeed it runs through the heart of
every generation and every individual. But there is an answer: it is
written on the face of a Child who was born in Bethlehem two thousand
years ago, and is today the Living One, risen for ever from the dead.
From within the fabric of humanity, rent asunder by so much injustice,
wickedness and violence, there bursts forth in an unforeseen way the
joyful and liberating novelty of Christ our Saviour, who leads us to
contemplate the goodness and tenderness of God through the mystery of
his Incarnation and Birth. The everlasting God has entered our history
and he remains present in a unique way in the person of Jesus, his
incarnate Son, our Saviour, who came down to earth to renew humanity
radically and to free us from sin and death, to raise us to the dignity
of God’s children. Christmas not only recalls the historical fulfilment
of this truth that concerns us directly, but in a mysterious and real
way, gives it to us afresh.
How
evocative it is, at this close of a year, to listen again to the joyful
message addressed by Saint Paul to the Christians of Galatia: “when the
time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under
the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might
receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5). These words penetrate the
heart of the history of us all and illumine it, or rather, they save it,
because since the Day of the Lord’s Nativity, the fullness of time has
reached us. So there is no more room for anxiety in the face of time
that passes, never to return; now there is room for unlimited trust in
God, by whom we know we are loved, for whom we live and to whom our life
is directed as we await his definitive return. Since the Saviour came
down from heaven, man has ceased to be the slave of time that passes to
no avail, marked by toil, sadness and pain. Man is son of a God who has
entered time so as to redeem it from meaninglessness and negativity, a
God who has redeemed all humanity, giving it everlasting love as a new
perspective of life.
The
Church lives and professes this truth and intends to proclaim it today
with fresh spiritual vigour. In tonight’s celebration we have special
reasons to praise God for his mystery of salvation, active in the world
through the ministry of the Church…
In the Diocese of Rome, as elsewhere, the most urgent pastoral challenge facing us is the quaestio fidei.
Christ’s disciples are called to reawaken in themselves and in others
the longing for God and the joy of living him and bearing witness to
him, on the basis of what is always a deeply personal question: why do I
believe? We must give primacy to truth, seeing the combination of faith
and reason as two wings with which the human spirit can rise to the
contemplation of the Truth (cf. Fides et Ratio, Prologue); we
must ensure that the dialogue between Christianity and modern culture
bears fruit; we must see to it that the beauty and contemporary
relevance of the faith is rediscovered, not as an isolated event,
affecting some particular moment in our lives, but as a constant
orientation, affecting even the simplest choices, establishing a
profound unity within the person, so that he becomes just, hard-working,
generous and good. What is needed is to give new life to a faith that
can serve as a basis for a new humanism, one that is able to generate
culture and social commitment.
Within
this framework, at the Diocesan Conference held last June, the Diocese
of Rome launched a programme which sets out to explore more deeply the
meaning of Christian initiation and the joy of bringing new Christians
into the faith. To proclaim faith in the Word made flesh is, after all,
at the heart of the Church’s mission, and the entire ecclesial community
needs to rediscover this indispensable task with renewed missionary
zeal. Young generations have an especially keen sense of the present
disorientation, magnified by the crisis in economic affairs which is
also a crisis of values, and so they in particular need to recognize in
Jesus Christ “the key, the centre and the purpose of the whole of human
history” (Gaudium et Spes, 10).
Parents
are the first educators in faith of their children, starting from a
most tender age, and families must therefore be supported in their
educational mission by appropriate initiatives. At the same time it is
desirable that the baptismal journey, the first stage along the
formative path of Christian initiation, in addition to fostering
conscious and worthy preparation for the celebration of the Sacrament,
should devote adequate attention to the years following Baptism, with
appropriate programmes that take account of the life conditions that
families must address. I therefore encourage parish communities and
other ecclesial groupings to engage in continuing reflection on ways to
promote a better understanding and reception of the sacraments, by which
man comes to share in the very life of God…
Dear friends, ever since God sent his only-begotten Son, so that we might obtain adoptive sonship (cf. Gal 4:5), we can have no greater task than to be totally at the service of God’s plan…
Te Deum laudamus!
We praise you, O God! The Church suggests that we should not end the
year without expressing our thanks to the Lord for all his benefits. It
is in God that our last hour must come to a close, the last hour of time
and history. To overlook this goal of our lives would be to fall into
the void, to live without meaning. Hence the Church places on our lips
the ancient hymn Te Deum. It is a hymn filled with the wisdom of many
Christian generations, who feel the need to address on high their
heart’s desires, knowing that all of us are in the Lord’s merciful
hands…
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