Pope: A Year for “living faith” in a world that has become a spiritual desert

Pope: A Year for “living faith” in a world that has become a spiritual desert
by Benedetto XVI
Benedict XVI opens the Year of Faith, 50 years after Vatican II. Returning to the “real” documents of the Council to save us from “extremes of anachronistic nostalgia and running too far ahead”. Today more than ever evangelization means witnessing to a new life, transformed by God, and thus showing the path.”
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – “Reviving in the whole Church that positive tension, that yearning to announce Christ again to contemporary man” that animated the Second Vatican Council. Proclaiming it in a world that in the 50 years since that event has seen “a void,” a “spiritual desertification” spread in which there is need for ” people of faith…who, with their own lives, point out the way to the Promised Land and keep hope alive” because “today more than ever evangelizing means witnessing to the new life, transformed by God, and thus showing the path”. A pilgrimage in the deserts of the contemporary world” is the purpose of the Year faith, opened today by Benedict XVI on the day of the 50th anniversary of Vatican II and 20 years after the promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The long procession of bishops in green robes and white miter, such as that used during the Council, composed of all those taking part in the Synod, all the presidents of Episcopal conferences in the world and 14 Council Fathers. Splashes of different colours were visible in the vestments of the Eastern Catholic Patriarchs and Bishops and those of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of the Anglican Communion, Rowan Williams. Then the enthronement of the Gospels, the same one used during Vatican II and at the end of the Mass, the delivery of the final seven messages of the Council, which Paul VI who gave on closing the ecumenical gathering, delivered again, along with the Catechism Catholic Church to different categories of people. To Governments, Men and Women of science and thought, to Artists, to Women, to the Workers, the Poor, the Sick and Suffering, the Young and Catechists.
Nearly 400 concelebrated: 80 cardinals, 8 patriarchs of the Eastern Churches, 191 archbishops and 104 bishops, synod fathers and presidents of episcopal conferences. 15 council fathers. Benedict XVI greeted them “with particular affection”, he took part in that meeting as a consultant theologian and expert. In his audience yesterday, the Pope recalled those days and, like yesterday, he again warned of the “need” to return to the documents of the Council “freeing them – he said yesterday – from a mass of publications which often instead of making them known, have hidden them” to “save ourselves – he says today – from the extremes of anachronistic nostalgia and running too far ahead.”
Just like 50 years ago is “to see
that the same faith might continue to be lived in the present day, that it might remain a living faith in a world of change.”
Below the full text of the Pope’s homily:
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