Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “In what sense can Christ be still today lumen gentium, a light for the nations? Who were the Wise Men? How can we interpret these mysterious Gospel figures considering the world today?” These were the questions Pope Benedict XVI posed in his homily during Mass in St Peter’s on Saturday 6 January the Feast of the Epiphany. To find the answers the Pope returned to Vatican II and the Populorum progression encyclical by Pope Paul VI written forty years ago.
“The whole Second Vatican Council was inspired by a desire to announce to humanity Christ the light of the world” Pope Benedict XVI explained, recalling major changes in the world at the time. “There emerged a need to establish a new world order, political and economic but at the same time and above all, spiritual and cultural, in other words a new humanism. It had become increasingly clear that: “a new economic and political world order would only work if there was spiritual renewal, if man could draw close again to God and find God in his midst”. Still today “at the beginning of the third millennium we live this same stage of human history” this era of ‘globalisation’. On the other hand we see how easy it is to lose sight of the terms of this challenge, precisely because we are involved in it: the increasing danger of the immense expansion of the mass-media, which on the one hand multiply information indefinitely, on the other weaken our ability to make a critical synthesis”. The Feast of the Epiphany can help humanity understand “that alone we can never promote justice and peace, unless we see the light of a God who shows his face to us, who appears to us in the manger at Bethlehem, who appears on the Cross”.
To respond to the question “who are the Wise Men today”, Pope Benedict recalled the “messages” addressed by the Council Fathers at the end of Vatican II: the first "To Rulers" the second to "Men of Thought and Science". “These are two categories of persons in whom we can see the gospel figures of the Wise Men - the Pope explained -. I would add a third… I refer to the spiritual leaders of the great Christian religious. Two thousand years later we can recognise in the figure of the Wise Men a sort of pre-figuration of the three constitutive dimensions of modern humanism: political, scientific and religious”. The Epiphany shows us a humanism on a pilgrimage, which searches, which has its point of arrival in Christ. At the same time God is also on pilgrimage towards humanity. “Who is Jesus, if not God who has, so to say, come out of Himself to encounter humanity? Out of love He became history in our history; out of love He came to bring us the seed of new life and to sow it on earth that it may take root, flower and bear fruit”.
The Pope said the Council Messages “have lost nothing of their timeliness”. “To the leaders of peoples, to thinkers and scientists, more than ever today, it is necessary, to add representatives of the great non Christian religious traditions, urging them to consider the light of Christ who came not to destroy must to complete that which was written by the hand of God in the religious history of civilisations, especially in the "great souls", who helped to build up humanity with their wisdom and their example of virtue. Christ is light, and light cannot darken it can only illuminate, brighten, reveal. No one therefore need be afraid of Christ and his message! And if in the course of history Christians, being limited and sinful men, have at time betrayed Christ with their actions, this makes it even clearer that the light is Christ and the Church reflects this light only by remaining united with Him.” (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 8/1/2007 - righe 45, parole 666)
