The most obvious changes were in the liturgy, especially in the Mass. Before the Council Mass was in Latin and the priest had his back to the people for most of it. The Council wanted to encourage full and active participation by everybody in the Mass, so we began to worship in our own languages and with the priest facing us. The Council stressed the importance of the scriptures too. The place of the Word of God in all the sacraments and especially in the Mass was restored. Before the Council the bible was regarded by many Catholics as a Protestant book. Now we were encouraged to read it and pray the scriptures. We were reminded that ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ.
There were a host of other changes but underlying all of them was the goal of rediscovering the message of Jesus in all its richness and vitality and to communicate the liberating power of his message to a new generation, to a new culture and a new world. As we celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the Council we need to set our sights once again on that goal.
We are living in a world that could hardly have been imagined 50 years ago. The culture we live in today is radically changed even from what it was at the time of the Council. Faith is under challenge as never before. Our Churches are full only on special occasions. In many urban areas only the old and the very young are seen in Church regularly. Vocations to the priesthood and the religious life are few and far between. The words of Jesus in St Luke’s Gospel come to mind: When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? Will he find faith in Ireland? Will he find faith in the diocese of Kilmore? Today, the fundamental question facing us is the question of faith.
It is very timely then that on Thursday last, as part of the commemoration of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Benedict launched the Year of Faith to commemorate the opening of the Council. In his letter, Porta Fidei, issued to inaugurate the Year, Pope Benedict encourages us to take up the challenge of bringing Christ into the world again through the witness of our lives. The first step is to rediscover and renew our own faith. The Pope speaks of the importance of experiencing the joy and enthusiasm of faith. The secret of that joy and enthusiasm is finding out that faith is not primarily about believing in dogmas or obeying rules, but about meeting a living person, the person of Jesus, the risen Lord: “Ever since the start of my ministry as Successor of Peter”, the Pope says, “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.”
The Holy Father highlights three important objectives for us to aim at during the Year of Faith:
The first is personal conversion, renewal of our own faith. We live in a world which is at best indifferent and at worst hostile to faith. Our beliefs and our values are under attack as never before. The constant drip wears the stone, and the constant drip of cynicism, criticism and ridicule of our faith and our Church in the world we inhabit inevitably takes its toll on our own personal faith and practice. We need to go back to the wellsprings that nourish our faith. We need to drink again at the well of God’s Word and the Eucharist. We need to hear again Christ’s call to repent and to follow him. We need to meet Christ as the rich young man in the Gospel today met him. We need to know that he also looks on us and loves us. And we need to respond to his invitation to let go of the things that impede us from following him.
The second task the Pope puts before us is deepening our knowledge and understanding of the faith. We can do this by studying some of the documents of the Second Vatican Council and by studying the Cathechism of the Catholic Church which summarized the Council’s teaching. There will be opportunities to do that in small groups both here in the parish and at diocesan level in the months ahead.
The final challenge that the Holy Fathers sets before us is to witness to our faith. We witness to our faith by living it in our daily lives. The Pope speaks a few times in his letter about joy and enthusiasm in the faith. We give a powerful witness to faith by living is joyfully and with enthusiasm. The joy and enthusiasm that were so much in evidence at the Eucharistic Congress a few months ago must not be lost. It is providential that this Year of Faith comes just now, so that we can build on fruits of the Congress and maintain the enthusiasm generated there.
This Year of Faith will be a fitting way to mark the Golden Jubilee of the Second Vatican Council if it can build on the foundations laid by the Council and help to realize the Council’s vision that I spoke about at the beginning: to rediscover the message of Jesus in all its richness and vitality and communicate that message to a new generation, to a new culture and a new world.
