Marking the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council and the start of a special Year of Faith, Pope Benedict XVI called on Catholics to revive the “authentic spirit” of Vatican II by re-proposing the church’s ancient teachings to an increasingly Godless modern world. Vatican II, Pope Benedict said, had been “animated by a desire...to immerse itself anew in the Christian mystery so as to re-propose it fruitfully to contemporary man.” He noted that Blessed John XXIII, in his speech at the opening of the council, called for both the safeguarding and the effective teaching of the “sacred deposit of Christian doctrine...this certain and immutable doctrine, which is to be faithfully respected, [and] needs to be explored and presented in a way which responds to the needs our time.” Calling for a revival in the church of the “yearning to announce Christ again to contemporary man,” the pope stressed that any new evangelization “needs to be built on a concrete and precise basis, and this basis is the documents of the Second Vatican Council.”
He reaffirmed past statements rejecting expansive notions of a “spirit of Vatican II” that might be used to justify innovations diverging from traditional doctrine. “I have often insisted on the need to return, as it were, to the ‘letter’ of the council—that is to its texts—also to draw from them its authentic spirit,” the pope said. “The true legacy of the council is to be found in them. But I am convinced that the insight Blessed John XXIII epitomized with this word was and still is accurate,” he said. “Christianity must never be seen as something from the past, nor lived with one’s gaze always looking back because Jesus is yesterday, today and for all eternity,” Pope Benedict said. “This ‘renewal’ does not mean a break with tradition; rather it expresses a lasting vitality.”
The spiritual climax of the Gospel of John, as Father John Waiss points out, occurs at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus utters his parting words: “Woman, behold, your son!” and “Behold your mother!” (John 19:26-27). While these words were addressed to the Apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the Church has long understood this moment as a universal adoption. To truly image Christ, we must share in His parentage; if we embrace God as our spiritual Father but reject Mary as our mother, we treat Christ as a half-brother rather than our "firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). As Origen noted as early as the third century, the profound depths of the Gospel are only accessible to those who, like John, rest their heads on Jesus’ breast and receive Mary into their own homes. This maternal role is deeply rooted in biblical typology, positioning Mary as the fulfillment of the great mothers of the Old Covenant. She is the New Eve , the mother of all the living according ...