Is the world coming to an end?

BY ARCHBISHOP CHARLES CHAPUT

This week, I had lunch with a couple of high school students, and one of them asked if it was true that the Holy Father had been talking about the end of the world in the Year 2000.

Actually, quite the opposite is true.

The Holy Father, in Tertio Millennio Adveniente, talks about the Year 2000 as being the springtime of the Church. That is the Catholic view of the celebration of the Great Jubilee. We are not caught up in some kind of millennialist view of the end times. Jesus tells us that we don't know the time or the hour: only the Father knows that. So we should always be ready.

We shouldn't be looking at the Year 2000 as the preparation for the end of the world, but a preparation for a new beginning. The three years of preparation that the Holy Father declares in Tertio Millennio Adveniente are a call to repentance and conversion, so that we might begin again.

I think that the opening of the pastoral center here at the John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization can be tied into this concept. This is a new beginning.

Even though we have only been here a couple of days, my perception is that the people who work for the Church here are excited about this move. They see it as a fresh start, not only in terms of new paint on the walls, but spiritually and psychologically.

Moving into a place that has been associated with theological and spiritual development is a wonderful thing, in part, because that is what we are about here.

It is important for the diocese to reflect on how we might use this property in the future. This is not only a place where the chancery, the bishop's office, is located, but a center of renewal.

We've begun initial discussions about the possibility of re-opening a seminary here. We are talking about a theological school not only for the formation of priests, but for lay ministry and diaconal formation.

I've been considering moving here myself. Living here would be a sign of the diocesan commitment to make this place a center of archdiocesan life.

The naming of this place as a center for evangelization is not accidental. Our world is different than it was when we entered the 20th century. As we approach the Year 2000, we have quite a different experience of the world and the Church. The world that's around us requires a new kind of evangelization.

We should seek to be like the wise steward in the Gospel who combines the old and the new in such a way that Jesus Christ is proclaimed clearly -- without compromise -- in a way that attracts the modern mind to say, "Yes! There is the answer to my longing and my questioning."

As we prepare for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, I hope the people of the archdiocese, using all the God-given talents present among us, can work together to respond to the grace of the Holy Spirit, who is making all things new.