Pope Benedict on the Year of Faith

Howdy, folks!

We are currently heading into the “Year of Faith” proclaimed by Pope Benedict. In this “interview” (where I composed the questions and took the answers from Pope Benedict’s writings), we get the story straight from the man himself.

Let’s begin . . .

1) Your Holiness, thank you for speaking with us.

What concerns led you to proclaim the Year of Faith?

Ever since the start of my ministry as Successor of Peter, I have spoken of the need to rediscover the journey of faith so as to shed ever clearer light on the joy and renewed enthusiasm of the encounter with Christ.

It often happens that Christians are more concerned for the social, cultural and political consequences of their commitment, continuing to think of the faith as a self-evident presupposition for life in society.

In reality, not only can this presupposition no longer be taken for granted, but it is often openly denied. . . . A profound crisis of faith that has affected many people.

2) What should our response to this crisis be?

We cannot accept that salt should become tasteless or the light be kept hidden (cf. Mt 5:13-16).

The people of today can still experience the need to go to the well, like the Samaritan woman, in order to hear Jesus, who invites us to believe in him and to draw upon the source of living water welling up within him (cf. Jn 4:14).

We must rediscover a taste for feeding ourselves on the word of God, faithfully handed down by the Church, and on the bread of life, offered as sustenance for his disciples (cf. Jn 6:51).

Indeed, the teaching of Jesus still resounds in our day with the same power: “Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life” (Jn 6:27). The question posed by his listeners is the same that we ask today: “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” (Jn 6:28). We know Jesus’ reply: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (Jn 6:29).

Belief in Jesus Christ, then, is the way to arrive definitively at salvation.

 

3) And this was what led you to proclaim the Year of Faith?

In the light of all this, I have decided to announce a Year of Faith.

This will be a good opportunity to usher the whole Church into a time of particular reflection and rediscovery of the faith.

The Year of Faith . . . is a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Saviour of the world.

 

4) When will it take place?

It will begin on 11 October 2012, the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, and it will end on the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Universal King, on 24 November 2013.

The starting date of 11 October 2012 also marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a text promulgated by my Predecessor, Blessed John Paul II, with a view to illustrating for all the faithful the power and beauty of the faith.

 

5) Will this be the first time there has been a Year of Faith? 

It is not the first time that the Church has been called to celebrate a Year of Faith.

My venerable Predecessor the Servant of God Paul VI announced one in 1967, to commemorate the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul on the 19th centenary of their supreme act of witness [i.e., the 1900th anniversary of their martyrdom under the Emperor Nero, c. A.D. 67].

The great upheavals of that year made even more evident the need for a celebration of this kind.

It concluded with the Credo of the People of God, intended to show how much the essential content that for centuries has formed the heritage of all believers needs to be confirmed, understood and explored ever anew, so as to bear consistent witness in historical circumstances very different from those of the past.

In some respects, my venerable predecessor saw this Year as a “consequence and a necessity of the postconciliar period”, fully conscious of the grave difficulties of the time, especially with regard to the profession of the true faith and its correct interpretation.

 

6) At the opening of the Year of Faith, you will be meeting with the Synod of Bishops–a selection of bishops from all over the world–to discuss the “new evangelization” that is needed in areas where the faith has diminished.

How is the idea of the new evangelization linked to the Year of Faith? 

Through his love, Jesus Christ attracts to himself the people of every generation: in every age he convokes the Church, entrusting her with the proclamation of the Gospel by a mandate that is ever new.

Today too, there is a need for stronger ecclesial commitment to new evangelization in order to rediscover the joy of believing and the enthusiasm for communicating the faith.

In rediscovering his love day by day, the missionary commitment of believers attains force and vigour that can never fade away.

Faith grows when it is lived as an experience of love received and when it is communicated as an experience of grace and joy.

It makes us fruitful, because it expands our hearts in hope and enables us to bear life-giving witness: indeed, it opens the hearts and minds of those who listen to respond to the Lord’s invitation to adhere to his word and become his disciples.

Only through believing, then, does faith grow and become stronger; there is no other possibility for possessing certitude with regard to one’s life apart from self-abandonment, in a continuous crescendo, into the hands of a love that seems to grow constantly because it has its origin in God.

 

7) How should people celebrate the Year of Faith?  

We want to celebrate this Year in a worthy and fruitful manner. Reflection on the faith will have to be intensified, so as to help all believers in Christ to acquire a more conscious and vigorous adherence to the Gospel, especially at a time of profound change such as humanity is currently experiencing.

We will have the opportunity to profess our faith in the Risen Lord in our cathedrals and in the churches of the whole world; in our homes and among our families, so that everyone may feel a strong need to know better and to transmit to future generations the faith of all times.

Religious communities as well as parish communities, and all ecclesial bodies old and new, are to find a way, during this Year, to make a public profession of the Credo.

We want this Year to arouse in every believer the aspiration to profess the faith in fullness and with renewed conviction, with confidence and hope.

It will also be a good opportunity to intensify the celebration of the faith in the liturgy, especially in the Eucharist.

At the same time, we make it our prayer that believers’ witness of life may grow in credibility.

To rediscover the content of the faith that is professed, celebrated, lived and prayed, and to reflect on the act of faith, is a task that every believer must make his own, especially in the course of this Year.

 

8) Is it enough for people to believe in their hearts, or must they make a public profession of their faith?

A Christian may never think of belief as a private act.

Faith is choosing to stand with the Lord so as to live with him.

Faith, precisely because it is a free act, also demands social responsibility for what one believes.

The Church on the day of Pentecost demonstrates with utter clarity this public dimension of believing and proclaiming one’s faith fearlessly to every person.

It is the gift of the Holy Spirit that makes us fit for mission and strengthens our witness, making it frank and courageous.

 

9)  In many places people have been given only a sketchy knowledge of what the Church teaches.

How important is it that they learn the specifics of it, and where can they do that?

Evidently, knowledge of the content of faith is essential for giving one’s own assent, that is to say for adhering fully with intellect and will to what the Church proposes.

In order to arrive at a systematic knowledge of the content of the faith, all can find in the Catechism of the Catholic Church a precious and indispensable tool.

It is one of the most important fruits of the Second Vatican Council.

The Year of Faith will have to see a concerted effort to rediscover and study the fundamental content of the faith that receives its systematic and organic synthesis in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

 

10) Many people today–including in the “New Atheism” movement–pit faith against reason and science.

What should we make of this charge?

To a greater extent than in the past, faith is now being subjected to a series of questions arising from a changed mentality which, especially today, limits the field of rational certainties to that of scientific and technological discoveries.

Nevertheless, the Church has never been afraid of demonstrating that there cannot be any conflict between faith and genuine science, because both, albeit via different routes, tend towards the truth.

 

11) What about those who feel their faith challenged by the sin they see around them in world–and even in the Church, as with the recent scandals?

One thing that will be of decisive importance in this Year is retracing the history of our faith, marked as it is by the unfathomable mystery of the interweaving of holiness and sin.

While the former highlights the great contribution that men and women have made to the growth and development of the community through the witness of their lives, the latter must provoke in each person a sincere and continuing work of conversion in order to experience the mercy of the Father which is held out to everyone.

During this time we will need to keep our gaze fixed upon Jesus Christ, the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12:2): in him, all the anguish and all the longing of the human heart finds fulfilment.

The joy of love, the answer to the drama of suffering and pain, the power of forgiveness in the face of an offence received and the victory of life over the emptiness of death: all this finds fulfilment in the mystery of his Incarnation, in his becoming man, in his sharing our human weakness so as to transform it by the power of his resurrection.

 

12) What would you say to those who find their faith challenged by suffering?

Is this incompatible with the joy we are meant to have as Christians? 

The life of Christians knows the experience of joy as well as the experience of suffering.

How many of the saints have lived in solitude! How many believers, even in our own day, are tested by God’s silence when they would rather hear his consoling voice!

The trials of life, while helping us to understand the mystery of the Cross and to participate in the sufferings of Christ (cf. Col 1:24), are a prelude to the joy and hope to which faith leads: “when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).

We believe with firm certitude that the Lord Jesus has conquered evil and death.

With this sure confidence we entrust ourselves to him: he, present in our midst, overcomes the power of the evil one (cf. Lk 11:20); and the Church, the visible community of his mercy, abides in him as a sign of definitive reconciliation with the Father.

 

13) Do you have any closing thoughts for us?

Having reached the end of his life, Saint Paul asks his disciple Timothy to “aim at faith” (2 Tim 2:22) with the same constancy as when he was a boy (cf. 2 Tim 3:15).

We hear this invitation directed to each of us, that none of us grow lazy in the faith.

What the world is in particular need of today is the credible witness of people enlightened in mind and heart by the word of the Lord, and capable of opening the hearts and minds of many to the desire for God and for true life, life without end.

May this Year of Faith make our relationship with Christ the Lord increasingly firm, since only in him is there the certitude for looking to the future and the guarantee of an authentic and lasting love.

Thank you, Your Holiness.

• Pope Benedict has much more to say about the Year of Faith, which you can read in his apostolic letter Porta Fidei, from which the answers in this “interview” were taken.
• Also, be sure to check out the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s pastoral note with suggestions for the Year of Faith.
• And the Holy See now has a special web site devoted to the year of faith at www.AnnusFidei.va.

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