A GUIDE BEYOND THE YEAR 2000 - Card. Roger Etchegaray

At the Angelus on 29 May 1994, from the Gemelli Polyclinic where he was recovering from surgery, the Pope revealed what Cardinal Wyszynski had said to him at the beginning of his Pontificate: "You must lead the Church into the third millennium"... So we can understand why the Holy Father is today, with all his remaining energies, reaching out towards this now close horizon. From the very first page of his first Encyclical, John Paul II turns his gaze resolutely towards the Year 2000, and this perspective is the central theme of all his thought and apostolic action, for which the most complete interpretative key is found in Tertio Millennio Adveniente.

Guiding Christians and the whole human race towards what he himself has called the "Great Jubilee", John Paul II bears witness to a certainty rooted in his faith and in his mystic and pastoral experience: the future of the men and women of the next millennium passes wholly through Christ, and the Church offers humanity the only way to salvation through the action of the Holy Spirit.

I remember what John Paul II said at Le Bourget airport on 1 June 1980: "The problem of the absence of Christ does not exist... There is only one problem, always and everywhere: the problem of our presence with Christ. Of our permanence in Christ...". With this programme the Pope has led the Church also in the years of more immediate preparation for the Jubilee, and is now preparing, almost in coincidence with the twentieth anniversary of his Pontificate, to inaugurate the year dedicated to God the Father, in which we are all called to undertake "a journey of authentic conversion" (TMA 50). But his gaze goes beyond the confines of the Church. Indeed as the new millennium approaches the Holy Father has increased his fervour, his determination to open the doors to Christ far beyond the confines of our community, almost becoming the spokesman for the conscience of humanity in its pure state, and thus becoming one of the main points of reference for a planet that is floundering dangerously.

And when he challenges man in the totality and unity of his dimensions, the crowd is not disappointed and each person, no matter how difficult a decidedly spiritual and morally challenging discourse may be, feels understood, recognised and loved even in the depths of his poverty and failures.

This number of Tertium Millennium, which comes out in coincidence with the twentieth anniversary of John Paul II's election to the Papacy, is meant to be a tribute to the Holy Father's apostolic anxiety as he guides the Church tirelessly towards the Holy Door of the Year 2000, and also a documentation on the Pope's teaching about the Jubilee. Therefore the main part of this issue is dedicated to John Paul II's Christological catechesis: complete texts of fifteen meditations the Pope dedicated to the Year of Christ between November 1997 and May 1998. This is followed by a large selection of the Pope's public interventions on Jubilee themes, delivered at meetings with the Central Committee, in Audiences with Bishops and at Episcopal Conferences, during apostolic pilgrimages, at the Angelus and in meetings with the faithful of every nationality. Finally, we are publishing the texts of John Paul II's prayers for the first three years of preparation for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000.