At the end of the Jubilee Year 2000, which marked the second millennium of the coming of Christ, the Holy Father wants to help us go forward on the path marked out by the jubilee experience. In his letter Novo Millennio Ineunte he offers guidance for the journey before us.
There are challenges, difficulties and opportunities for the church in Ireland. But we can deal with the problems and make the most of the opportunities only by finding our centre and setting out from there. For the Christian, the centre is the person of Christ. Christianity is the faith that discovers Christ, true God and true man, and lives in companionship with him.
The Pope's theme is taken from the words of Jesus to Peter: "Put out into the deep" (Luke 5:4). We long for the fullness of life, so often distorted in television commercials that offer shallow and passing contentment. It is Jesus Christ who offers the authentic fullness of life for which we are longing. That fullness of life we shall find through breaking out of narrow preoccupation with self in a gift of love that puts Christ at the centre and opens our eyes to the needs of our brothers and sisters.
At the heart of Christian faith there is a mystical call addressed to us all and not just to the saints. It has to do with "the knowledge of Christ". This is not knowledge about Christ such as scholars may acquire through research, whether or not they have faith. It resembles much more the personal knowledge that grows out of our human experience of friendship. As St Augustine says, "One comes to know a person only through friendship"(De Div Quaest.LXXI:5).
But how can this be? Did not Christ live and die two millennia ago; much like other wise men who lived and died, leaving nothing behind but a memory? After all, one cannot make friends with the dead: there is no way of coming to know them. Yes, but Christ rose again from death, and since Pentecost he lives in the church by the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The uniqueness of Christ is clear from this, that he alone of all the figures of history is loved; loved through the centuries by succeeding generations in the church. He can be known in the love of friendship precisely because he is alive.
Knowledge of Christ is the life of the church and it is shared by all who live the life of the church. It is the gift of God, who alone can open hearts to the faith that recognises his Son under the Holy Spirit's prompting.
The mysticism of which I am speaking is an authentic human experience. For the Son of God became man in order to establish relations of friendship with us during our life on Earth. The hauntingly beautiful Gospel accounts of Christ's friendship with those who found faith - disciples and sinners alike - are the church's memories of the "yesterday" of his life on Earth, which endures in the "today" of his life in the church and draws us towards the "forever" of his eternal life with the Father.
For, as the text chosen from the Letter to the Hebrews for the jubilee says: "Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). In our human contact with Christ through faith our hearts are opened by the gift of the Holy Spirit to an intimacy that is truly sublime. Through that sharing of life we come more and more to know him in his divine identity as the only Son of the Father.
This is the true interiority of the church: communion with God and with one another in the knowledge of Christ. For, as the opening words of the Second Vatican Council's document on the church declare, the church has the nature of a sacrament. That is to say, it is an external sign proclaiming and effecting interior grace. The church has an outward appearance, a recognisable public profile, familiar to the world as a form of human community.
Through that profile it exists as a sign given to the world by Christ to proclaim and effect the hidden reality of communion with God through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. There is something here that transcends all merely human institutions. But when its sacramental nature is unrecognised the church is inevitably reduced to a merely human institution.
As an institution, the church is exposed to current anti-institutional resentments. Yet essential to the church is the institutional structure that enables it to endure the passage of time and to serve the unity of its membership.
The word of Christ, preserved from corruption through centuries of contentious disputes; the sacraments by which succeeding generations are brought to new life and nourished; the pastoral care that guides the faithful along the path of the Gospel; all pertain to the institutional structure of the church.
Some are scandalised by the presence of sin in the faithful and especially in ministers of the church. The very sign of communion with God, namely the church community, seems composed of a sinful membership at odds with the holiness of God.
This, of course, is to concentrate attention exclusively on the presence of sin, to ignore the witness of goodness in the lives of faithful and priests, and the victories gained through the power of repentance, forgiveness and grace.
It is to confuse the church on Earth with a heavenly church that would be a transparent sign of divine life already completely prevailing over human frailty and malice. But the church is a sign of the mercy of Christ, who came "to call not the righteous but sinners" (Mt 9:13). The church is a sign of communion with God to which even the greatest of sinners are called.
The Second Vatican Council's principal aim was to promote renewal of the life of the church. This was to enable the people of our time to see it more clearly in the light of Christ as a sign of communion with God and of the unity to which he calls us in our communion with him.
The special Synod on Europe (1999) took for its theme "Jesus Christ, Alive in the Church, Source of Hope for Europe". The preparatory working document emphasised the presence of Christ in the church: "The faith which the church has always professed, and continues to profess, is that Jesus, ascended into heaven and glorified, continues to be present in his church" (Instrumentum laboris, 21). The text already quoted from the Letter to the Hebrews stresses this presence of Christ. It is the gift the church never ceases to offer to the world.
