Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

“Go, make disciples of all nations. …. And lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" [Mt 28:19]

On January 1st we celebrate the closing of the Holy Year, the Jubilee proclaimed to celebrate the new Christian Millennium. On New Year’s Day each year, we gather to pray for peace as we celebrate our Catholic World Day of Peace. We proclaim Christ to be our peace [Eph 2:14] and our hope [cf. Col 1:27], and we are convinced by our faith and our love that it is only when all things are gathered to Christ as the one head of all humanity [Eph 1:10] that we can achieve the peace we pray for each year.

Guided by practical concerns, we have chosen to close our Jubilee Year celebrations in this Diocese on this first day of January. Yet, the day itself is significant, for New Year’s Day is always a moment of special hope, the hope that the coming year will see significant changes in our humanity and in all human societies throughout Asia and the whole world. We hope that all of us will carry the Jubilee spirit of Reconciliation and Communion into the year that is coming.

The spirit of the Jubilee demands that we reflect upon our own responsibilities for ensuring the reconciliation and communion of all those who share with us the dignity of the children of God, redeemed in Christ Jesus and led to consecration in the truth through the gift of the Holy Spirit [Jn 16:13, 17:17]. The Jubilee year comes to an end, but that joyful hope which is the heart of the Jubilee must continue to animate all our work of evangelization. While the Jubilee celebrated the birth of Jesus two thousands years ago, the mandate of Christ is that we look forward rather than back, that we "Go forth", go forward, approaching others with a new sense of mission to share with them the good news of our salvation in Christ.

In reflecting on the call of the Jubilee to reconciliation and communion, we have seen the intimate link between reconciliation with God and reconciliation with each other. We have realized that this reconciliation is the fountain and source of communion. As the fruit of reconciliation, communion will be achieved in love and joy, in peace and justice, in aspirations and hope.

The history of Christianity through the first two millennia has taught us much about the true spirit of evangelization, so that now we must speak of a new evangelization. The Jubilee Year has provided us with an opportunity to renew our commitment to the enterprise of Christ, the work of establishing the conditions for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Our work of evangelization in the new millennium is set within a number of parameters. First of all, the mistakes of history should teach us a new wisdom. Secondly, there is the Pope’s call to engage in the work of establishing a "new civilization of love". Finally, there is the perennial value of the mandate of Christ our Lord to make disciples of all nations. All this demands that our work of evangelization be renewed, that we engage in a new evangelization, responding with new hope and strength, new wisdom and greater sensitivity. Our new evangelization will bring the eternal truth of the Gospel to the new situations of humanity, and so bring about a renewal of humanity

In this connection, I recall the words of Pope Paul VI, words that have still to bear lasting fruit in the minds and hearts of all humanity: "Justice is the new name for peace". This justice is God’s gift, given through the Christ event and continually offered to the world through our work of evangelization. With the new Millennium, we are called upon to exercise the mission which Christ has given us through a new evangelization. We are called upon to make new and greater efforts to establish the peace of Christ in the world. It is the peace of Christ that will make the justice of God the source and criterion of all social, economic and political justice to which human beings aspire. Sent to proclaim the good news to all creation [Mk 16:15], we work so that the Kingdom of God will appear on earth. For we believe that it is in the Kingdom of God that reconciliation and communion can become the foundations of a just human society.

While we continue to live in a world divided by borders and thus broken into fragments, we must realize that there is only one world, only one humanity. This unity is for the moment, and for the immediate future, only an ideal which we may contemplate, an ideal that demands a just world and a just humanity. We will approach that ideal the more earnestly we engage in the urgent task given us: to make disciples of all nations by bringing the love, joy, peace and hope of the Gospel to this divided and broken world.

Jesus said to the disciples: "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you”. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" [Jn 20:20-23]. "Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" [Mt 28:19-20].

May this peace of Christ animate all our service of the Gospel!

Christmas 2000