Living and Proclaiming Our Faith

Last Saturday, November 3, a packed Mass was celebrated at the Church of La Chiquinquirá to open the Year of Faith and promulgate the Pastoral Plan of the Archdiocese of Caracas. More than 1,500 people overflowed the church with the joy typical of being a Christian, of knowing oneself a child of God. Some 60 priests, a great many religious sisters and hundreds of lay people showed immense devotion in a solemn Eucharist marked by exemplary recollection. A wonderful choir sang the popular Eucharistic hymns with great feeling, and everyone at Mass joined in. It was without doubt an unforgettable day.

The ceremony was celebrated by our Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, who began his homily by placing us under the protection of our beloved Virgin Mary. He said, in substance, that we warmly welcome Pope Benedict XVI’s call and join him in beginning this Year of Faith, which he convoked so that Catholics all over the world can savor, deepen, profess, celebrate and proclaim with greater strength the immense gift and grace of the Faith received in Baptism, a wonderful treasure that is for us a source of joy, a commitment for life and a path to happiness. He added that, on this feast of Faith, he would promulgate the joint Pastoral Plan of the Church of Caracas, a wonderful tool to strengthen our work of evangelization.

As I listened to this homily, I realized that the Cardinal had used the perfect words to describe what a Catholic who lives and spreads his faith does: to savor, deepen, profess, celebrate and proclaim the immense grace of Faith. Many of us Catholics know that we “savor” the Faith to the full when we begin to live by the path Our Lord Jesus Christ taught us, which his Holy Church guards and passes on. Many of us know that as we “deepen” our knowledge of it through study (all the more if, like me, we were converted as adults), the more we seek the Truth, the more we find it, and we become insatiable readers of thousands upon thousands of wonderful books (starting with Sacred Scripture and the Catechism of the Church). These quickly lead us to live the Faith and to want to “profess” or proclaim the great treasure we have discovered, which makes us completely happy even in this “valley of tears.” That Faith leads us to “celebrate” the wonders of the sacraments Our Lord Jesus Christ left us to fill us with God’s indescribable Grace, so that we can become apostles of Jesus Christ and go out to “proclaim” the Gospel, just as he asked us. The whole life of a Catholic who lives by Faith can be summed up in those words the Cardinal used. That is where Saint Augustine’s famous words (he was a great sinner and a rebel against Catholicism) fit perfectly: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Continuing his homily, the Cardinal explained that the Year of Faith began on October 11, 2012, the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, and would end on the solemnity of Christ the King, November 24, 2013. Its aim, he said, is to strengthen the faith of the whole Church and encourage us to proclaim it with greater ardor through the New Evangelization. Drawing on the Pope’s own words, he explained that the Year of Faith is an invitation to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the only Savior of the world, who in the mystery of his death and resurrection has fully revealed the Love that saves and calls people to conversion through the forgiveness of sins (cf. Acts 5:31). He also recalled that in his homily at the opening Mass on October 11 the Pope explained why this Year is necessary: in recent decades a spiritual “desertification” has spread; if at the time of the Council some tragic pages of history had already shown what a life and a world without God could mean, today, sadly, we see it all around us every day, a spreading emptiness. That advance of the desert of irreligion over the fields of humanity, the Cardinal said, is a reality in a modern world that wants to rebel against God or set him aside with harmful indifference.

For lack of space I cannot go on commenting on the Cardinal’s excellent homily; it can be read in full at www.arquidiocesisdecaracas.com. We will keep returning to the Year of Faith, because Faith is truly a fascinating treasure (the only one that fully satisfies) that we cannot hide from anyone. It is a treasure so great, so great!, that the more we share it, the more it grows in our hearts.