Vittorio Messori

"But you, who do you say that I am?" Since it was addressed to the disciples near Cesarea di Philippi, this question has not ceased to be re-proposed to every man and women. Because each on of us - as Pascal rightly saw - "must give an answer, even if negative, we must take the risk".

It has always been so. Faith has never been a sort of possession which is handed down from father to son.

Nevertheless, until recent times - at least in certain parts of a few countries - there was still a "Christianity", a "Catholic world" which allowed faith to develop spontaneously from infancy, to grow thanks to example and catechesis and to remain until the sacraments of "leave-taking" of this life. This is no longer true anywhere. Today faith has found again its original character: a risk, precisely, a personal choice, besieged on every side by discordant words and behaviour. To believe today is becoming, or has already become, an anti-conformist act, militancy of counter-current minorities.

Hence the necessity for an ecclesial pastoral that does not limit itself to commenting the contents of Christianity, but rather indicates its reasons. Many speeches, taking faith for granted, only draw consequences of a moral nature risking total inefficacy. In fact: why strive to live as a Christian if we are no longer sure that Jesus is truly the Christ and that his words are normative because they come from God himself?

This too, it would seem evident, is what the Holy Father means by "new evangelization": a new starting from the beginning, with the apostolate of proclamation, leaving for a later moment that of catechesis, which is only fruitful when the "risk" of the Gospel has been proposed and accepted.

And to this aspires also, it seems to me, that programme of preparation for the Great Jubilee whose stages have been prescribed by Pope John Paul II.

Those who have at heart the faith - and therefore the Church which, without her foundations cannot stand - must commit themselves so that this time which separates us from the bi-millennial "birthday" of Jesus may be marked by a search for the reasons which induce believers to see in Him, the Christ, the Son of the living God.

This is a time of kerygma, of new proclamation, loud and clear, without which dialogue itself (with the "world" or with other religions) is pointless. This is the time to rediscover that among the evangelical hierarchy of values, the greatest charity, the one which goes before all others, is that of the truth. To offer new Hope, to show its reasons, is the most praiseworthy and urgent solidarity, the most valuable of all "humanitarian work".

More than bread - the Gospel says - man lives of the word of God.

May the two thousand years since the birth of the Redeemer help us to re-discover this reality which we are in danger of forgetting in an ecclesial routine which too often becomes a habit, or a Christianity which is lived, but which, without explicit motivations for faith, can become to mere philanthropy. And this has little to do with true charity.

(Vittorio Mesori, is one of the most well known writers of the Italian Catholic world. Among his works, "Crossing the Threshold of Hope", a Book-interview with Pope John Paul II).