OSV STORY FOR MARCH 2

2000

Why the coming millennium is the Pope's touchstone

By Mike Aquilina

Spin doctors in fields from marketing to government apply the millennial number to everything from computer brand names to educational goals.

In the Church, "2000" has become for the 1990s what aggiornamento ("renewal") was for the 1960s.

But, beyond the hype, what does it mean? For Pope John Paul II, 2000 is a word and a year freighted with theological significance -- a time that calls for renewed intensity, and even urgency, in the response of Christians to their baptismal vocation.

The year 2000 is an anniversary. It is when the Church marks the 2,000th year since the definitive turning point in human history, the Incarnation of God himself in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth.

In his 1994 apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente ("As the Third Millennium Draws Near"), the Pope wrote: "The Jubilee of the Year 2000 is meant to be a great prayer of praise and thanksgiving, especially for the gift of the Incarnation of the Son of God and of the Redemption which He accomplished."

Though the precise date of Jesus' birth is uncertain, the Church and the world have, for many centuries, marked time from the year calculated by a monk of the early Church.

The Pope noted that people naturally mark special times in life -- birthdays, wedding anniversaries and so forth -- with celebrations. The bimillennial celebration of Jesus' birthday should be the mother of them all.

There have been other jubilees, the Pope pointed out in his apostolic letter, but "the year 2000 will be celebrated as the Great Jubilee . . . . This Great Jubilee will be, in a certain sense, like any other. But at the same time it will be different, greater than any other. For the Church respects the measurements of time."

The excitement is something very personal to Pope John Paul. It is an urgent sense that has been with him for many years and has only grown more urgent. He wrote that "the year 2000 has become, as it were, a hermeneutical key of my pontificate." He believes that no one can understand his work as pope without a clear understanding of the year 2000.

What's more, he seems to believe that the coming anniversary is the key to understanding this mysterious generation we live in.

"All of us now living on earth are the generation that is aware of the approach of the third millennium and that profoundly feels the change that is occurring in history," he wrote in his 1980 encyclical Dives in Misericordia ("Rich in Mercy").

The sense that something is impending has pervaded the Pope's work since the beginning of his pontificate. His first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis ("The Redeemer of Man"), begins with a section titled "At the close of the second millennium."

And there is much evidence that the turn of the millennium preoccupied Archbishop Karol Wojtyla even before his elevation to the papacy. He has written that "it was with the Second Vatican Council that, in the broadest sense of the term, the immediate preparations for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 were really begun."

But what does he see coming?

While the media have given space to the wackier breed of millennial speculations -- chastisements of fire and blood -- the Pope has been careful to distance himself from such end-of-the-world hysteria.

His spiritual program "is certainly not a matter of indulging in a new millenarianism, as occurred in some quarters at the end of the first millennium," he wrote in Tertio Millennio Adveniente.

Still, the end is nearer than we think, according to the same apostolic letter: "With the coming of Christ there begin 'the last days' (cf. Heb 1:2), 'the last hour' (cf. 1 Jn 2:18) and the time of the Church, which will last until the Parousia" -- that is, the Second Coming of Christ at the end of the world.

Though the end-times "hysterians" have always been with us, the Church has constantly emphasized a "realized eschatology." Cardinal Wojtyla, in his 1972 plan for the implementation of Vatican II, defined "eschatology" as "that branch of the science of faith . . . which treats of the 'last things.' "

Central to that 1972 document is Cardinal Wojtyla's "Christocentric eschatology" -- his belief that in the Incarnation the world reached the "fullness of time" described by St. Paul (Gal 4:4).

In his 1986 encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem (on the Holy Spirit), the Pope wrote, "For us Christians this event [the Incarnation] indicates . . . 'the fullness of time,' because in it human history has been wholly permeated by the 'measurement' of God himself: a transcendent presence of the 'eternal now.' "

In a sense, he is calling the Church's attention to the end that was with us from the beginning, or at least from the year A.D. 1. "What was accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit 'in the fullness of time' can only through the Spirit's power now emerge from the memory of the Church," he wrote in Dominum et Vivificantem.

The exercise of memory entails more than nostalgia for time gone by. The new millennium, the Pope explained, is an "event which should recall to everyone, and as it were make present anew, the coming of the Word in the fullness of time."

And that means personal conversion for each and every Christian.

Essential to that conversion is penance. When humans recall the past, they must remember sin, because humans are sinful, and history is marred by many sins, both individual and institutional. In Tertio Millennio Adveniente, the Pope calls the Church to a profound examination of conscience in preparation for the third millennium.

Pope John Paul's vision for the third millennium encompasses a just world for all people. Catholic eschatology implies "a kind of social doctrine," he wrote in his letter on the jubilee. "The jubilee year was meant to restore equality among all the children of Israel, offering new possibilities to families which had lost their property and even their personal freedom.

"The jubilee year was a reminder to the rich that a time would come when their Israelite slaves would once again become their equals and would be able to reclaim their rights. . . . The jubilee year was meant to restore this social justice."

Another fruit of conversion will be evangelization. The Pope seems to believe that God will grant a special grace with the jubilee, making the Church's outreach especially effective.

"The Church feels herself called to this mission of proclaiming the Spirit, while together with the human family she approaches the end of the second millennium after Christ," he wrote in Dominum et Vivificantem. "Against the background of a heaven and earth which will 'pass away,' she knows well that the 'words which will not pass away' acquire a particular eloquence."

The implications of this vision -- of personal conversion, evangelization and social justice -- are profound.

In Tertio Millennio Adveniente, he suggested that these are the means by which the Kingdom will come: "Christians are called to prepare for the Great Jubilee by renewing their hope in the definitive coming of the Kingdom of God, preparing for it daily in their hearts, in the Christian community to which they belong, in their particular social context, and in world history itself."

The Pope's great wish at the turn of the millennium is for the reunion of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches -- an event that would probably require a miracle.

"Among the most fervent petitions as the eve of the new millennium approaches is that unity among all Christians of the various confessions will increase until they reach full communion," he wrote in Tertio Millennio Adveniente. And this goal finds echoes in many of his addresses.

The Pope has urged the Church to "look to the future at a time when we can already glimpse the third millennium." He has described the present time as an age filled "with uncertainties but also with promises."

And beyond uncertainties, he has described the anti-Christian forces of this present age in the darkest, almost apocalyptic terms.

Yet the victory, in a sense, is already won, and that is what Christians will celebrate with the new millennium. Pope John Paul sets forth, at once, a time of great crisis and a time of great grace. The future -- the correspondence to that grace -- he leaves to each of us.

Aquilina is editor of Our Sunday Visitor's New Covenant, a monthly magazine of Catholic spirituality

copyright Our Sunday Visitor, 1997; from the 2-2-97 edition

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