All over the world a people travelling on the paths of the Jubilee

+ Crescenzio Sepe

The opening of the Holy Door of Saint Peter’s marked the great beginning of the Jubilee of the Year 2000. And it marked it, we should say, in the deepest sense, because every other step, of these very first but essential ones of the Holy Year, have had the same imprint. Every word appears inadequate to express the feelings of emotion and joy brought by the events that we experienced so intensely between the Holy Eve of Christmas 1999 and the first days of the third millennium. When the Holy Father knelt and then crossed the threshold of the Holy Door, beside the image – at the same time so tender and intense – we saw delineating, nearly materialising, a sense of marvel, of stupor. In front of the Holy Door we all have been not only preceded but accompanied, nearly held by the hand, by a father and pastor who, along the journey, thinking of this goal, taught us to find, from the corners of the earth, the road that takes to Christ. “Aperite mihi portas justitiae”, an already known invocation, next to gestures already imagined; and yet those words and those gestures mark the passage, the passing of an era. A gesture and words that summarise the expectations of a surprised humanity, enraptured by the stupor of the Holy Night. A humanity, as the Pope then suggested in the solemn Te Deum of thanksgiving for the year end, which at the passage of the millennium takes stock of the lights and shadows, including the exalting conquests and the dramatic changes; and finds, in faith, the prospect of being “son of the Son, heir with Him of the same destiny of glory”. The Holy Door to which the Pope has introduced us became immediately the endless goal for a large crowd of faithful and pilgrims; and the same happened in Saint John Lateran, in Saint Mary Major, in the Holy Land and in all the dioceses of the world, where an entire humanity began its journey, towards the Door of salvation, following the indications of its Pastor, who desired that the Door of this Great Jubilee of the millennium become not only symbolically greater than the others. The Holy Year thus began, and immediately revealed its essence, which is that of a great spiritual event. Someone has already spoken of the numbers. I would prefer to underline the style and ecclesial composure of this people in prayer, animated by a fervour that has been a common constant in every corner of the world. Indeed, the evening prayer meeting in Saint Peter’s Square already started on Christmas eve and is intended to be a moment of community for all the pilgrims, the conclusive act of each single day. On that first appointment, I can say that I saw, in a certain sense, the start of the ordinary Jubilee, of what it represents day by day, in its daily occurrence. Seeing dozens of thousands of faithful gathered in prayer, next to the Holy Door and under the window of the Holy Father, was an truly strong and intense emotion: the confirmation that the Jubilee that we are celebrating is the only one to be celebrated.