Year of the Father

26 November 1998 10:20

Beginning of the ‘Year of the Father’

VATICAN CITY, NOV 24 (Zenit).- The year 2000 is the most awaited event by Peter’s successor. Sunday, November 29 will be a very special day. In the atrium of Saint Peter’s Basilica, John Paul II will read the bull of convocation of the Great Jubilee, a document full of surprises.

The ‘second Moses,’ as described in a best seller published in Italy some years ago, will see his ‘promised land’ from a distance. The prophecy made by the Cardinal Primate of Poland, Stefan Wyszynski, on the day Karol Wojtyla was elected twenty years ago, is closer than ever: “You shall lead the Church to the year 2000.”

The ceremony, culminating with the celebration of Mass in the largest basilica in Christendom, will coincide with the start of the third year of preparation for the Jubilee, dedicated to God the Father. An initiative with which the Pope hopes to “widen the horizons of the believer in keeping with Christ’s vision: the vision of the ‘celestial Father’.”

In the letter of preparation for the great appointment of
Christianity with the next millennium, ‘Tertio Millennio Adveniente,’ John Paul II highlights charity as the theological virtue to be lived in the coming year. “In this regard — he explains in number 51 –, recalling that Jesus came to ‘evangelize the poor’ (Mt 11, 5; Lk 7,22), how can we not emphasize, ever more strongly, the Church’s preferential option for the poor and the isolated?

First and foremost, it must be said, the commitment to peace and justice in a world like ours, characterized by so many conflicts and intolerable social and economic injustice, is an outstanding preparation for the celebration of the Jubilee.”

In keeping with the biblical spirit of the Jubilee, the Pope requests for the coming year, “among other things, a sizeable reduction, or the total cancellation, of the international debt which weighs so heavily on the future of many nations.” In this connection, “the Jubilee might also offer the opportunity to meditate on the challenges of the present as, for example, the difficulty of dialogue among different cultures, and the problems relating to the rights of woman, the support of the family and marriage.”

To help people become more aware of these issues, the Holy See is planning a world summit of voluntary workers and a congress of all Christian charitable institutions active in the world today.

The year 1999 will also be the year of dialogue among believers, as requested by the Pope. In light of the events of the last few decades, the “vigil of the year 2000 will be a great occasion for inter-religious dialogue,” Because of this, there will be a great summit of religions in Rome in the month of October.

The Holy Father revealed in ‘Tertio Millennio Adveniente’ that the situation is being studied with an end to holding historic meetings in Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Sinai, places of great symbolic value, to intensify the dialogue with the Jews and the faithful of Islam, as well as meetings with the representatives of the great religions of the world in other cities.”

The Pope calls souls to conversion in the year 1999. “In that year, the idea of “the road to the Father” should lead everyone to undertake, in union with Christ redeemer of man, a journey of true conversion, which includes a ‘positive’ aspect of choosing good, revealed in the ethical values contained in natural law, and confirmed and deepened by the Gospel.

This is the right framework for the rediscovery and the intense celebration of the sacrament of penance in its deepest meaning. The announcement of conversion as an imperative condition of Christian love is especially important in our present society, where very often the foundations of an ethical vision of human existence seem to have vanished.”