A GREAT EVENT WHICH CALLS TO A NEW SOCIAL COMMITMENT

Diarmuid Martin

The Fever of the year 2000

The fever of the year 2000 has entered the consumerist world. The campaign "1000 years to the year 2000" has already begun. It is already too late to book in some of the famous hotels for the night of 31 December 1999. The "no vacancies" sign is envisaged also for the places in which the new year is traditionally celebrated. And there are other more exotic ones, for the year 2000, such as the Tonga and Chatham Islands, where, they say, the first sun of the year 2000 will rise, although in London they say that the new century cannot be considered officially arrived until the sun has not risen over the Greenwich meridian!

In addition to the fever of the consumerist millennium, there is also that of the "millennium of the different world", of the thousands of good causes, of the fairs and the huge exhibitions. The "world of reason", usually so sensitive, nearly allergic, to the irrational, the transcendental and the religious, appears to have been infected by a series of ephemeral millenary proposals, and unfortunately, as some recent events demonstrate, by sad and dramatic deviations which come from sects. After all, a world with increasingly less anchored and fixed principles must create its own "historic" moments. A world which rejects the transcendental must find its own "spirituality", to propose different visions, to change, to take stock of a century characterised by huge progresses and by some of the darkest moments in the history of humanity.

The Mystery of the Jubilee

The celebration, by Christians, of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, focused on the celebration of the Mystery of Incarnation, must detach itself from any even slight appearance of a link with these mundane celebrations. And that because the Mystery of Incarnation radically overturns the mundane judgement of history. The celebration of the Great Jubilee will have to serve for a new theological reading of the reality of creation, and also to discern and refuse all the idols of modern society.

It is in this way that one is to understand the catechesis of the year of faith, 1997, on the social commitment of Christians to daily life, work, family, culture, public opinion. If the Mystery of Incarnation radically overturns the categories of mundane judgement of the social realities, the celebration of the anniversary of this Mystery must offer Christians ideas to discern today's social realities in a different light from the "world" and give concrete testimony to the logic of these new values.

Jubilee-Faith-Commitment

Let us look at some principles which should inspire the social commitment of Christians in light of the Jubilee:

• Faith requires social commitment: there is no celebration of the Jubilee without a renewed social commitment, in the Spirit of the Jubilee of the Old Testament. This is one of the innovative dimensions of Pope John Paul II's vision for the celebration of the Jubilee of the year 2000. The year of grace of the Lord, is also the year of liberation from the effects of sin, the year in which efforts are made to reconstruct within the whole of creation, and among all peoples, those relations of equity and harmony desired by the Creator.

• The Tertio Millennio Adveniente, in n. 12-13, outlines the guidelines of the Jubilee's social commitment: the "protection of the weak", the principle according to which «the riches of creation are to be considered as a common good of the whole of humanity», the task of «restoring equality among all the children of Israel», the year of the «emancipation of all dwellers on the land in need of being freed».

• The premises of this action, however, according to the Pope, are "strictly theological", linked first of all to the theology of creation and to that of divine Providence. And this is at the basis of the importance of the year 1997, the year of "reinvigorating the faith". It will have to offer the occasion to reach in a pastoral way the many Christians of today who have increasingly placed their social commitment on the fringes of their life of faith, and to help them rediscover the fundamental dimension which they can obtain from their commitment in favour of men, only through faith in Jesus Christ, only Saviour of the world.

Free from Slavery

A particular aspect of the overturning of the categories of mundane judgement, typical of the Jubilee, is that of freeing from the great slavery existing in the world, the "emancipation" of all dwellers in need of being freed (TMA, 12).

• It is necessary to identify the different forms of social slavery which still exist in today's world: the "children - slaves", the forms of slavery and exploitation of women, slavery in the world of work, repression of consciences and opinions. The scourge of drugs represents a dramatic form of slavery for many young people.

• There is also the slavery of ideologies and that of individualism which do not allow people to recognise that personal fulfilment is reached only through taking on one's own responsibilities with others, and which do not allow people to act in a spirit of solidarity.

• There is then the great slavery of consumerism. Penance, fasting, renunciation an austere style of life should be rediscovered as elements of a live catechesis to re-establish the just relations between people and creation.

They should become concrete jubilee gestures which make refusal visible, in the celebration of the Jubilee, to compromise with the consumerist models for the celebration of the year 2000.