Welcome to our Year of Faith blog

Hi, and welcome to our Year of Faith blog.  The title for our blog is taken from Pope Benedict XVI's Motu proprio Porta Fidei: "rediscover the journey of faith".  The Holy Father has invited all of us to a renewal of faith in two fundamental dimensions: our understanding of the content of the Catholic faith; and our personal adherence to Jesus Christ and the Gospel by the "yes" of faith.

The purpose of this blog is to bring to our attention in a visible and accessible way what the Holy Father is saying this year, that is, to answer the question: How is Pope Benedict leading us through the Year of Faith?  We are going to follow in his footsteps by reading and listening to what he has to say and incorporating it into our own experience of the Year of Faith.

  

The Year of Faith officially begins on October 11th, the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council.  Today, however, in Saint Peter's Square, the Holy Father celebrated the opening Mass for the Synod on the New Evangelization...and he proclaimed Saint John of Avila and Saint Hildegard of Bingen doctors of the universal Church. 

Since the new evangelization is intrinsically tied to the Year of Faith, we went to the Mass to be with the Holy Father and to be present for the declaration of the new doctors:


St. Hildegard of Bingen



St. John of Avila

It was a great opportunity to pray with the Holy Father and celebrate with the universal Church.  The Holy Father asked all of us to pray for the work that the Synod is about to undertake.  Here are a few quotes from his homily, which you can find here in its entirety: Homily from Opening of Synod Mass

• In every time and place, evangelization always has as its starting and finishing points Jesus Christ, the Son of God (cf. Mk 1:1); and the Crucifix is the supremely distinctive sign of him who announces the Gospel: a sign of love and peace, a call to conversion and reconciliation.  My dear Brother Bishops, starting with ourselves, let us fix our gaze upon him and let us be purified by his grace. 
• ...the New Evangelization [is] directed principally at those who, though baptized, have drifted away from the Church and live without reference to the Christian life.  The Synodal Assembly which opens today is dedicated to this new evangelization, to help these people encounter the Lord, who alone who fills our existence with deep meaning and peace; and to favour the rediscovery of the faith, that source of grace which brings joy and hope to personal, family and social life.
• The message of the word of God [in today's Gospel] may be summed up in the expression found in the Book of Genesis and taken up by Jesus himself: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24; Mk 10:7-8).  What does this word say to us today?  It seems to me that it invites us to be more aware of a reality, already well known but not fully appreciated: that matrimony is a Gospel in itself, a Good News for the world of today, especially the dechristianized world.  The union of a man and a woman, their becoming “one flesh” in charity, in fruitful and indissoluble love, is a sign that speaks of God with a force and an eloquence which in our days has become greater because unfortunately, for various reasons, marriage, in precisely the oldest regions evangelized, is going through a profound crisis.  And it is not by chance.  Marriage is linked to faith, but not in a general way.  Marriage, as a union of faithful and indissoluble love, is based upon the grace that comes from the triune God, who in Christ loved us with a faithful love, even to the Cross.  Today we ought to grasp the full truth of this statement, in contrast to the painful reality of many marriages which, unhappily, end badly.  There is a clear link between the crisis in faith and the crisis in marriage. 

Let us continue to pray with the Holy Father for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church and the world, and let us also pray to respond.  "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." - Porta Fidei 1