THE “YEAR OF FAITH”!

FOR THE INDICTION OF THE YEAR OF FAITH

1. The “door of faith” (Acts 14:27) is always open for us, ush­er­ing us into the life of com­mu­nion with God and offer­ing entry into his Church. It is pos­si­ble to cross that thresh­old when the word of God is pro­claimed and the heart allows itself to be shaped by trans­form­ing grace. To enter through that door is to set out on a jour­ney that lasts a life­time. It begins with bap­tism (cf. Rom 6:4), through which we can address God as Father, and it ends with the pas­sage through death to eter­nal life, fruit of the res­ur­rec­tion of the Lord Jesus, whose will it was, by the gift of the Holy Spir­it, to draw those who believe in him into his own glo­ry (cf. Jn 17:22). To pro­fess faith in the Trin­i­ty – Father, Son and Holy Spir­it – is to believe in one God who is Love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8): the Father, who in the full­ness of time sent his Son for our sal­va­tion; Jesus Christ, who in the mys­tery of his death and res­ur­rec­tion redeemed the world; the Holy Spir­it, who leads the Church across the cen­turies as we await the Lord’s glo­ri­ous return.

2. 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. Dur­ing the homi­ly at the Mass mark­ing the inau­gu­ra­tion of my pon­tif­i­cate I said: “The Church as a whole and all her Pas­tors, like Christ, must set out to lead peo­ple out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friend­ship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abun­dance.”[1] 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.[2] Where­as in the past it was pos­si­ble to rec­og­nize a uni­tary cul­tur­al matrix, broad­ly accept­ed in its appeal to the con­tent of the faith and the val­ues inspired by it, today this no longer seems to be the case in large swathes of soci­ety, because of a pro­found cri­sis of faith that has affect­ed many people.

3. 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.

4. In the light of all this, I have decid­ed to announce a Year of Faith. 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,[3] with a view to illus­trat­ing for all the faith­ful the pow­er and beau­ty of the faith. This doc­u­ment, an authen­tic fruit of the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil, was request­ed by the Extra­or­di­nary Syn­od of Bish­ops in 1985 as an instru­ment at the ser­vice of cat­e­ch­esis[4] and it was pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with all the bish­ops of the Catholic Church. More­over, the theme of the Gen­er­al Assem­bly of the Syn­od of Bish­ops that I have con­voked for Octo­ber 2012 is “The New Evan­ge­liza­tion for the Trans­mis­sion of the Chris­t­ian Faith”. This will be a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to ush­er the whole Church into a time of par­tic­u­lar reflec­tion and redis­cov­ery of the 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 19^th cen­te­nary of their supreme act of wit­ness. He thought of it as a solemn moment for the whole Church to make “an authen­tic and sin­cere pro­fes­sion of the same faith”; more­over, he want­ed this to be con­firmed in a way that was “indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive, free and con­scious, inward and out­ward, hum­ble and frank”.[5] He thought that in this way the whole Church could reap­pro­pri­ate “exact knowl­edge of the faith, so as to rein­vig­o­rate it, puri­fy it, con­firm it, and con­fess it”.[6] 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,[7] 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.

5. In some respects, my ven­er­a­ble pre­de­ces­sor saw this Year as a “con­se­quence and a neces­si­ty of the post­c­on­cil­iar peri­od”,[8] ful­ly con­scious of the grave dif­fi­cul­ties of the time, espe­cial­ly with regard to the pro­fes­sion of the true faith and its cor­rect inter­pre­ta­tion. It seemed to me that tim­ing the launch of the Year of Faith to coin­cide with the fifti­eth anniver­sary of the open­ing of the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil would pro­vide a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to help peo­ple under­stand that the texts bequeathed by the Coun­cil Fathers, in the words of Blessed John Paul II, “have lost noth­ing of their val­ue or bril­liance. They need to be read cor­rect­ly, to be wide­ly known and tak­en to heart as impor­tant and nor­ma­tive texts of the Mag­is­teri­um, with­in the Church’s Tra­di­tion … I feel more than ever in duty bound to point to the Coun­cil as the great grace bestowed on the Church in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry: there we find a sure com­pass by which to take our bear­ings in the cen­tu­ry now begin­ning.”[9] I would also like to empha­size strong­ly what I had occa­sion to say con­cern­ing the Coun­cil a few months after my elec­tion as Suc­ces­sor of Peter: “if we inter­pret and imple­ment it guid­ed by a right hermeneu­tic, it can be and can become increas­ing­ly pow­er­ful for the ever nec­es­sary renew­al of the Church.”[10]

6. The renew­al of the Church is also achieved through the wit­ness offered by the lives of believ­ers: by their very exis­tence in the world, Chris­tians are called to radi­ate the word of truth that the Lord Jesus has left us. The Coun­cil itself, in the Dog­mat­ic Con­sti­tu­tion Lumen Gen­tium, said this: While “Christ, ‘holy, inno­cent and unde­filed’ (Heb 7:26) knew noth­ing of sin (cf. 2 Cor 5:21), but came only to expi­ate the sins of the peo­ple (cf. Heb 2:17)… the Church … clasp­ing sin­ners to its bosom, at once holy and always in need of purifi­ca­tion, fol­lows con­stant­ly the path of penance and renew­al. The Church, ‘like a stranger in a for­eign land, press­es for­ward amid the per­se­cu­tions of the world and the con­so­la­tions of God’, announc­ing the cross and death of the Lord until he comes (cf. 1 Cor 11:26). But by the pow­er of the risen Lord it is giv­en strength to over­come, in patience and in love, its sor­row and its dif­fi­cul­ties, both those that are from with­in and those that are from with­out, so that it may reveal in the world, faith­ful­ly, although with shad­ows, the mys­tery of its Lord until, in the end, it shall be man­i­fest­ed in full light.”[11]

The Year of Faith, from this per­spec­tive, is a sum­mons to an authen­tic and renewed con­ver­sion to the Lord, the one Sav­iour of the world. In the mys­tery of his death and res­ur­rec­tion, God has revealed in its full­ness the Love that saves and calls us to con­ver­sion of life through the for­give­ness of sins (cf. Acts 5:31). For Saint Paul, this Love ush­ers us into a new life: “We were buried … with him by bap­tism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glo­ry of the Father, we too might walk in new­ness of life” (Rom 6:4). Through faith, this new life shapes the whole of human exis­tence accord­ing to the rad­i­cal new real­i­ty of the res­ur­rec­tion. To the extent that he freely coop­er­ates, man’s thoughts and affec­tions, men­tal­i­ty and con­duct are slow­ly puri­fied and trans­formed, on a jour­ney that is nev­er com­plete­ly fin­ished in this life. “Faith work­ing through love” (Gal 5:6) becomes a new cri­te­ri­on of under­stand­ing and action that changes the whole of man’s life (cf. Rom 12:2; Col 3:9–10; Eph 4:20–29; 2 Cor 5:17).

7. “Car­i­tas Christi urget nos” (2 Cor 5:14): it is the love of Christ that fills our hearts and impels us to evan­ge­lize. Today as in the past, he sends us through the high­ways of the world to pro­claim his Gospel to all the peo­ples of the earth (cf. Mt 28:19). 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. Believ­ers, so Saint Augus­tine tells us, “strength­en them­selves by believ­ing”.[12] The saint­ly Bish­op of Hip­po had good rea­son to express him­self in this way. As we know, his life was a con­tin­u­al search for the beau­ty of the faith until such time as his heart would find rest in God.[13] His exten­sive writ­ings, in which he explains the impor­tance of believ­ing and the truth of the faith, con­tin­ue even now to form a her­itage of incom­pa­ra­ble rich­es, and they still help many peo­ple in search of God to find the right path towards the “door of faith”.

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.

8. On this hap­py occa­sion, I wish to invite my broth­er bish­ops from all over the world to join the Suc­ces­sor of Peter, dur­ing this time of spir­i­tu­al grace that the Lord offers us, in recall­ing the pre­cious gift 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.

9. 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, which is “the sum­mit towards which the activ­i­ty of the Church is direct­ed; … and also the source from which all its pow­er flows.”[14] 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,[15] 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.

Not with­out rea­son, Chris­tians in the ear­ly cen­turies were required to learn the creed from mem­o­ry. It served them as a dai­ly prayer not to for­get the com­mit­ment they had under­tak­en in bap­tism. With words rich in mean­ing, Saint Augus­tine speaks of this in a homi­ly on the red­di­tio sym­boli, the hand­ing over of the creed: “the sym­bol of the holy mys­tery that you have all received togeth­er and that today you have recit­ed one by one, are the words on which the faith of Moth­er Church is firm­ly built above the sta­ble foun­da­tion that is Christ the Lord. You have received it and recit­ed it, but in your minds and hearts you must keep it ever present, you must repeat it in your beds, recall it in the pub­lic squares and not for­get it dur­ing meals: even when your body is asleep, you must watch over it with your hearts.”[16]

10. At this point I would like to sketch a path intend­ed to help us under­stand more pro­found­ly not only the con­tent of the faith, but also the act by which we choose to entrust our­selves ful­ly to God, in com­plete free­dom. In fact, there exists a pro­found uni­ty between the act by which we believe and the con­tent to which we give our assent. Saint Paul helps us to enter into this real­i­ty when he writes: “Man believes with his heart and so is jus­ti­fied, and he con­fess­es with his lips and so is saved” (Rom 10:10). The heart indi­cates that the first act by which one comes to faith is God’s gift and the action of grace which acts and trans­forms the per­son deep within.

The exam­ple of Lydia is par­tic­u­lar­ly elo­quent in this regard. Saint Luke recounts that, while he was at Philip­pi, Paul went on the Sab­bath to pro­claim the Gospel to some women; among them was Lydia and “the Lord opened her heart to give heed to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14). There is an impor­tant mean­ing con­tained with­in this expres­sion. Saint Luke teach­es that know­ing the con­tent to be believed is not suf­fi­cient unless the heart, the authen­tic sacred space with­in the per­son, is opened by grace that allows the eyes to see below the sur­face and to under­stand that what has been pro­claimed is the word of God.

Con­fess­ing with the lips indi­cates in turn that faith implies pub­lic tes­ti­mo­ny and com­mit­ment. 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. This “stand­ing with him” points towards an under­stand­ing of the rea­sons for believ­ing. 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.

Pro­fes­sion of faith is an act both per­son­al and com­mu­ni­tar­i­an. It is the Church that is the pri­ma­ry sub­ject of faith. In the faith of the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty, each indi­vid­ual receives bap­tism, an effec­tive sign of entry into the peo­ple of believ­ers in order to obtain sal­va­tion. As we read in the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church: “ ‘I believe’ is the faith of the Church pro­fessed per­son­al­ly by each believ­er, prin­ci­pal­ly dur­ing bap­tism. ‘We believe’ is the faith of the Church con­fessed by the bish­ops assem­bled in coun­cil or more gen­er­al­ly by the litur­gi­cal assem­bly of believ­ers. ‘I believe’ is also the Church, our moth­er, respond­ing to God by faith as she teach­es us to say both ‘I believe’ and ‘we believe’.”[17]

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. Knowl­edge of faith opens a door into the full­ness of the sav­ing mys­tery revealed by God. The giv­ing of assent implies that, when we believe, we freely accept the whole mys­tery of faith, because the guar­an­tor of its truth is God who reveals him­self and allows us to know his mys­tery of love.[18]

On the oth­er hand, we must not for­get that in our cul­tur­al con­text, very many peo­ple, while not claim­ing to have the gift of faith, are nev­er­the­less sin­cere­ly search­ing for the ulti­mate mean­ing and defin­i­tive truth of their lives and of the world. This search is an authen­tic “pre­am­ble” to the faith, because it guides peo­ple onto the path that leads to the mys­tery of God. Human rea­son, in fact, bears with­in itself a demand for “what is peren­ni­al­ly valid and last­ing”.[19] This demand con­sti­tutes a per­ma­nent sum­mons, indeli­bly writ­ten into the human heart, to set out to find the One whom we would not be seek­ing had he not already set out to meet us.[20] To this encounter, faith invites us and it opens us in fullness.

11. 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. In the Apos­tolic Con­sti­tu­tion Fidei Deposi­tum, signed, not by acci­dent, on the thir­ti­eth anniver­sary of the open­ing of the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil, Blessed John Paul II wrote: “this cat­e­chism will make a very impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to that work of renew­ing the whole life of the Church … I declare it to be a valid and legit­i­mate instru­ment for eccle­sial com­mu­nion and a sure norm for teach­ing the faith.”[21]

It is in this sense that that 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. Here, in fact, we see the wealth of teach­ing that the Church has received, safe­guard­ed and pro­posed in her two thou­sand years of his­to­ry. From Sacred Scrip­ture to the Fathers of the Church, from the­o­log­i­cal mas­ters to the saints across the cen­turies, the Cat­e­chism pro­vides a per­ma­nent record of the many ways in which the Church has med­i­tat­ed on the faith and made progress in doc­trine so as to offer cer­ti­tude to believ­ers in their lives of faith.

In its very struc­ture, the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church fol­lows the devel­op­ment of the faith right up to the great themes of dai­ly life. On page after page, we find that what is pre­sent­ed here is no the­o­ry, but an encounter with a Per­son who lives with­in the Church. The pro­fes­sion of faith is fol­lowed by an account of sacra­men­tal life, in which Christ is present, oper­a­tive and con­tin­ues to build his Church. With­out the litur­gy and the sacra­ments, the pro­fes­sion of faith would lack effi­ca­cy, because it would lack the grace which sup­ports Chris­t­ian wit­ness. By the same cri­te­ri­on, the teach­ing of the Cat­e­chism on the moral life acquires its full mean­ing if placed in rela­tion­ship with faith, litur­gy and prayer.

12. In this Year, then, the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church will serve as a tool pro­vid­ing real sup­port for the faith, espe­cial­ly for those con­cerned with the for­ma­tion of Chris­tians, so cru­cial in our cul­tur­al con­text. To this end, I have invit­ed the Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith, by agree­ment with the com­pe­tent Dicas­t­er­ies of the Holy See, to draw up a Note, pro­vid­ing the Church and indi­vid­ual believ­ers with some guide­lines on how to live this Year of Faith in the most effec­tive and appro­pri­ate ways, at the ser­vice of belief and evangelization.

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.[22]

13. 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. In him who died and rose again for our sal­va­tion, the exam­ples of faith that have marked these two thou­sand years of our sal­va­tion his­to­ry are brought into the full­ness of light.

By faith, Mary accept­ed the Angel’s word and believed the mes­sage that she was to become the Moth­er of God in the obe­di­ence of her devo­tion (cf. Lk 1:38). Vis­it­ing Eliz­a­beth, she raised her hymn of praise to the Most High for the mar­vels he worked in those who trust him (cf. Lk 1:46–55). With joy and trep­i­da­tion she gave birth to her only son, keep­ing her vir­gin­i­ty intact (cf. Lk 2:6–7). Trust­ing in Joseph, her hus­band, she took Jesus to Egypt to save him from Herod’s per­se­cu­tion (cf. Mt 2:13–15). With the same faith, she fol­lowed the Lord in his preach­ing and remained with him all the way to Gol­go­tha (cf. Jn 19:25–27). By faith, Mary tast­ed the fruits of Jesus’ res­ur­rec­tion, and trea­sur­ing every mem­o­ry in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19, 51), she passed them on to the Twelve assem­bled with her in the Upper Room to receive the Holy Spir­it (cf. Acts 1:14; 2:1–4).

By faith, the Apos­tles left every­thing to fol­low their Mas­ter (cf. Mk 10:28). They believed the words with which he pro­claimed the King­dom of God present and ful­filled in his per­son (cf. Lk 11:20). They lived in com­mu­nion of life with Jesus who instruct­ed them with his teach­ing, leav­ing them a new rule of life, by which they would be rec­og­nized as his dis­ci­ples after his death (cf. Jn 13:34–35). By faith, they went out to the whole world, fol­low­ing the com­mand to bring the Gospel to all cre­ation (cf. Mk 16:15) and they fear­less­ly pro­claimed to all the joy of the res­ur­rec­tion, of which they were faith­ful witnesses.

By faith, the dis­ci­ples formed the first com­mu­ni­ty, gath­ered around the teach­ing of the Apos­tles, in prayer, in cel­e­bra­tion of the Eucharist, hold­ing their pos­ses­sions in com­mon so as to meet the needs of the brethren (cf. Acts 2:42–47).

By faith, the mar­tyrs gave their lives, bear­ing wit­ness to the truth of the Gospel that had trans­formed them and made them capa­ble of attain­ing to the great­est gift of love: the for­give­ness of their persecutors.

By faith, men and women have con­se­crat­ed their lives to Christ, leav­ing all things behind so as to live obe­di­ence, pover­ty and chasti­ty with Gospel sim­plic­i­ty, con­crete signs of wait­ing for the Lord who comes with­out delay. By faith, count­less Chris­tians have pro­mot­ed action for jus­tice so as to put into prac­tice the word of the Lord, who came to pro­claim deliv­er­ance from oppres­sion and a year of favour for all (cf. Lk 4:18–19).

By faith, across the cen­turies, men and women of all ages, whose names are writ­ten in the Book of Life (cf. Rev 7:9, 13:8), have con­fessed the beau­ty of fol­low­ing the Lord Jesus wher­ev­er they were called to bear wit­ness to the fact that they were Chris­t­ian: in the fam­i­ly, in the work­place, in pub­lic life, in the exer­cise of the charisms and min­istries to which they were called.

By faith, we too live: by the liv­ing recog­ni­tion of the Lord Jesus, present in our lives and in our history.

14. The Year of Faith will also be a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to inten­si­fy the wit­ness of char­i­ty. As Saint Paul reminds us: “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the great­est of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13). With even stronger words – which have always placed Chris­tians under oblig­a­tion – Saint James said: “What does it prof­it, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a broth­er or sis­ter is ill-clad and in lack of dai­ly food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled’, with­out giv­ing them the things need­ed for the body, what does it prof­it? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But some one will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith” (Jas 2:14–18).

Faith with­out char­i­ty bears no fruit, while char­i­ty with­out faith would be a sen­ti­ment con­stant­ly at the mer­cy of doubt. Faith and char­i­ty each require the oth­er, in such a way that each allows the oth­er to set out along its respec­tive path. Indeed, many Chris­tians ded­i­cate their lives with love to those who are lone­ly, mar­gin­al­ized or exclud­ed, as to those who are the first with a claim on our atten­tion and the most impor­tant for us to sup­port, because it is in them that the reflec­tion of Christ’s own face is seen. Through faith, we can rec­og­nize the face of the risen Lord in those who ask for our love. “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40). These words are a warn­ing that must not be for­got­ten and a peren­ni­al invi­ta­tion to return the love by which he takes care of us. It is faith that enables us to rec­og­nize Christ and it is his love that impels us to assist him when­ev­er he becomes our neigh­bour along the jour­ney of life. Sup­port­ed by faith, let us look with hope at our com­mit­ment in the world, as we await “new heav­ens and a new earth in which right­eous­ness dwells” (2 Pet 3:13; cf. Rev 21:1).

15. 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. It is the life­long com­pan­ion that makes it pos­si­ble to per­ceive, ever anew, the mar­vels that God works for us. Intent on gath­er­ing the signs of the times in the present of his­to­ry, faith com­mits every one of us to become a liv­ing sign of the pres­ence of the Risen Lord in the world. 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.

“That the word of the Lord may speed on and tri­umph” (2 Th 3:1): 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. The words of Saint Peter shed one final ray of light on faith: “In this you rejoice, though now for a lit­tle while you may have to suf­fer var­i­ous tri­als, so that the gen­uine­ness of your faith, more pre­cious than gold which though per­ish­able is test­ed by fire, may redound to praise and glo­ry and hon­our at the rev­e­la­tion of Jesus Christ. With­out hav­ing seen him you love him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unut­ter­able and exalt­ed joy. As the out­come of your faith you obtain the sal­va­tion of your souls” (1 Pet 1:6–9). 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.

Let us entrust this time of grace to the Moth­er of God, pro­claimed “blessed because she believed” (Lk 1:45).

Giv­en in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, on 11 Octo­ber in the year 2011, the sev­enth of my Pontificate.

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

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