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Pope Benedict XVI opened the Year of Faith in Rome with a call for a
new evangelization rooted in an authentic interpretation of the
documents of the Second Vatican Council.
“I have often insisted on the need to return, as it were, to the
‘letter’ of the Council – that is to its texts – also to draw from them
its authentic spirit, and (it is) why I have repeated that the true
legacy of Vatican II is to be found in them,” the Pope said Oct. 11 to
approximately 30,000 pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the
opening Mass of the Year of Faith.
Speaking on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican
Council, the Pope said that “reference to the documents saves us from
extremes of anachronistic nostalgia and running too far ahead." Thus,
“the new” can be welcomed “in a context of continuity.”
In scenes deliberately reminiscent of the opening of the Second Vatican
Council on Oct. 11, 1962, the Mass began with a grand procession of
over 400 bishops from around the world. During the liturgy, the same
book of the Gospels that was used throughout the three years of the
council was placed on the same golden throne that cradled it 50 years
ago.
Pope Benedict also chose to concelebrate Mass with 14 of the 70 surviving Council Fathers.
As a young priest and academic, Pope Benedict XVI was present at the
Second Vatican Council in an advisory capacity to Cardinal Joseph Frings
of Cologne. Today in his homily the Pope recalled how he felt during
those years.
“During the Council there was an emotional tension as we faced the
common task of making the truth and beauty of the faith shine out in our
time, without sacrificing it to the demands of the present or leaving
it tied to the past,” he recalled.
He lamented that when the council closed in 1965 many Catholics
misinterpreted its documents and “embraced uncritically the dominant
mentality.” In doing so, they placed in doubt “the very foundations of
the deposit of faith, which they sadly no longer felt able to accept as
truths,” he said.
But the Second Vatican Council “did not formulate anything new in
matters of faith, nor did it wish to replace what was ancient,” Pope
Benedict stated. Rather, it was concerned with seeing 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.”
For that reason, the Pope said he hopes the Year of Faith will “revive
in the whole Church that positive tension” between “the eternal presence
of God” that transcends time but “can only be welcomed by us in our own
unrepeatable today.”
Despite predictions of an increasingly secularized world, Pope Benedict
said that he sees “innumerable signs, often expressed implicitly or
negatively, of the thirst for God, for the ultimate meaning of life.”
These signs include the upsurge in popularity of traditional pilgrimage
routes such as the Way of St. James in northern Spain.
Towards the close of the Mass, Pope Benedict XVI reenacted his
predecessor Pope Paul VI’s conclusion of the Second Vatican Council by
issuing a series of “Messages to the People of God,” including rulers,
scientists, artists, women, workers and the young.
American journalist Kathryn Lopez of the National Review Online
received the message to women, while Scottish composer James MacMillan
was entrusted with the message to artists.
Pope Benedict concluded the ceremony by entrusting the Year of Faith to
Our Lady, praying that “the Virgin Mary always shine out as a star
along the way of the new evangelization.”
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