An Exclusively Spiritual Event - Card. Roger Etchegaray

The Calendar for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 was presented to the international press in the Holy See's Press Office on Tuesday 26^th May 1998. The press conference was attended by Card. Roger Etchegaray, President of the Central Committee for the Great Jubilee, Archbishop Crescenzio Sepe, Secretary of the same Committee, and Mgr. Piero Marini, Master of Pontifical Liturgical Ceremonies.

On the long journey towards the Jubilee, since December 1994, we have had the Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente in which Pope John Paul II outlines – at times with the precision of a General Staff map – our route towards the Year 2000. Now that the horizon of this new millennium is so close, the Pope gives us the Calendar for the Great Jubilee. If anyone, in the buzz of the caravan, no longer thought that it means living a particularly holy year in the minimum details, this Calendar comes to wrest him from distractions or material temptations in order to show him the exclusively spiritual nature of the event that is being prepared. To tell the truth, it is precisely in this spirit that the local Churches have already set out with great alacrity and fervour.

The presentation of this Calendar is preceded by a series of notes that allow us to define its essential features. It is necessary to read them very carefully in order to understand clearly the nature of the Jubilee... and attune to it fully. A Jubilee based on a liturgical calendar may seem a routine unimaginative procedure; but there could be no other for a Church that nourishes itself, day by day, with the only manna of the history of salvation lived more as pressing commitments than as simple anniversaries. In this sense, the ecumenical witness, desired by the Pope as one of the Jubilee necessities, is emphasised in an original way in the Calendar, both on the occasion of the traditional Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (it is on 18^th January that the Holy Door of St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls will be opened) and on 7^th May, at the Colosseum, for the ecumenical service for the "New Martyrs". The Pentecostal procession at the beginning of Lent (8^th March), the penitential procession from the basilica of St. Sabina to the "Circus Maximus" with "a clear awareness of what has happened to her [the Church] during the last ten centuries" (TMA, n. 33), will also be particularly significant. Moreover, shortly before the opening of the Jubilee, an interreligious assembly will he held in Rome, from 24^th to 28^th October 1999. Each ecclesiastical calendar is universal. However the Roman character of this jubilee calendar has an exemplary, or at least inspiring, value for local Churches and episcopal Conferences, which will have to establish their own calendar. As the Pope asks expressly, the celebration of the Jubilee should take place "simultaneously in the Holy Land, in Rome and in the local Churches" (TMA, n. 55). Considering the socio-political context, the programme for the Holy Land is still uncertain on many points, but we hope it can proceed: we will let you know in good time. As for the pole of the local Churches, this seems to be the most promising one with all kinds of initiatives undertaken, according to the spirit and the letter TMA, and it is all the more important since the number of faithful, above all from the Third World, who will be able to come as pilgrims to Rome or the Holy Land, will be necessarily modest, despite the great movement of solidarity that is emerging. Therefore the spiritual success of the jubilee event is to a great extent in the hands of the National Committees for the Jubilee, actively linked to the diocesan Churches. Through the preparation and distribution of various "pastoral aids" the Central Committee for the Jubilee solicits and incessantly encourages this mutual help.

The calendar indicates the most significant jubilee celebrations that have already been decided upon and which will be included in the liturgical calendar. Later, regularly revised billboards will indicate the dates of the pilgrimages and cultural events that Rome will have the weighty honour to host.

Let us remember, as from now, the objective assigned by John Paul II for the celebration of the Great Jubilee: "to give glory to the Trinity, from whom everything in the world and in history comes and to whom everything returns" (TMA, n. 55).