The acclaimed American author and journalist Hal Borland said: “Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instil in us.” Thus, the New Year is a splendid occasion not merely for a serious assessment of the past year but also for providing concrete proposals in order that one’s future year is lived productively.

This is surely the case with the way the Catholic Church is faring, especially in Europe. When addressing the cardinals and members of the Roman Curia and the Governance of Vatican City State for the traditional exchange of Christmas and New Year’s greetings on December 22 of last year, Pope Benedict XVI frankly admitted that the Church in Europe is deeply immersed in a faith crisis. The Holy Father rightly noted that, “regular churchgoers are growing older all the time, that their number is constantly dwindling; that recruitment of priests is stagnating; that scepticism and unbelief are growing”.

This difficult situation urgently calls for a new evangelisation. The Christian faith needs to be rejuvenated once more. The World Youth Days experience has inspired the Holy Father to propose a five-attitude solution in order to overcome the current spiritual inertia that is dominating European Christianity.

For the latter to be appealing it is essential to foster and propagate the Church’s catholicity. God’s people are universal. “We come from every continent, but although we have never met one another, we know one another. We speak different languages, we have different ways of life and different cultural backgrounds, yet we are immediately united as one great family…”

Universality is best appreciated when Christ’s self-giving love is truly lived. The Pope recalls with great admiration the heroic sacrifices made by the 20,000 young people volunteers so that the World Youth Day event could be a complete success. “The encounter with Jesus Christ inflame[s] us with love for God and for others, and free[s] us from seeking our own ego. In the words of a prayer attributed to Saint Francis Xavier: I do good, not that I may come to Heaven and not because otherwise you could cast me into Hell. I do it because of you, my King and my Lord”.

Service of the brethren leads to adoration. “Adoration is primarily an act of faith – the act of faith as such. God… is present. And if he is present, then I bow down before him. Then my intellect and will and heart open up to him and from him. In the risen Christ, the incarnate God is present, who suffered for us because he loves us. We enter this certainty of God’s tangible love for us with love in our own hearts. This is adoration, and this then determines my life.”

God’s goodness propels one to confess his/her own sins. In “the sacrament of Confession … we recognise that we need forgiveness over and over again, and that forgiveness brings responsibility”.

Furthermore, the sacrament of reconciliation reminds us that “we need the humility that constantly asks God for forgiveness, that seeks purification and awakens in us the counterforce [of evil], the positive force of the Creator, to draw us upwards”.

Finally, confession inculcates inner joy! “Only if God accepts me, and I become convinced of this, do I know definitively: it is good that I exist… It is good to be a human being, even in hard times. Faith makes one happy from deep within”.

Can we, as Christians, responsibly endorse these pivotal attitudes in 2012?

Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap

SAN GWANN