Cardinal Bergoglio's Year of Faith Letter to Priests, etc.

To the Priests, Consecrated Men and Women and Lay Faithful of the Archdiocese

Dear brethren:

Among the hardest realities of recent decades is to find closed doors. The growing insecurity gradually led to lock doors, to put in alarm systems, security cameras, to distrust the stranger who knocks at our door. However, in some communities there are still open doors. The closed door is symbolic of our age. It's more than just a sociological fact, it is an  existential reality which marks a lifestyle, a way to face reality, regarding the other, regarding the future. The closed door of my house, which is the place of my privacy, my dreams, my hopes and my sufferings and joys, is closed to the other. And it's not just my material house, is also the site of my life, my heart.   Always fewer and fewer can cross that threshold. The security of armed doors watches over the insecurity of a life which is ever becoming more fragile and less permeable to the riches of life and love of others.

The image of an open door has always been the symbol of light, friendship, joy, freedom, confidence. How we need them back! The closed door hurts us, paralyzes us, separates us.

We begin the Year of Faith the image the Pope proposes is paradoxically, the door, a door that must be crossed in order to find what we need so much. The Church, through the voice and heart of her Pastor Benedict invites us to cross the threshold, to make an internal and free decisive step: to encourage us to enter a new life.

The door of faith leads us to the Acts of the Apostles: "Upon arrival they gathered the church, they told them what God had done through them and how he had opened to the Gentiles the door of faith" (Acts 14 , 27). God always takes the initiative and does not want anyone left out. God knocks at the door of our hearts: Behold, I stand at the door and knock, if anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in and eat with him, and he with Me (Rev. 3: 20). Faith is a grace, a gift of God. "Faith grows and is fortified  only by believing; it is a continual abandonment into the hands of a love that is always experienced as bigger because it has its origin in God "

To pass through that door implies undertaking a path that lasts a lifetime as we move forward before so many doors that open to us nowadays, many of them false doors, doors that invite very attractively but deceitfully to begin the way, that promise an empty happiness , narcissistic, with an expiration date; doors that lead to crossroads where, whatever the option we follow, cause short-or long-term distress and embarrassment, self-referential doors which exhaust themselves and with no guarantee for the future. While the doors of the homes are closed, the malls doors are always open. One passes through the door of faith, that threshold is crossed, when the Word of God is proclaimed and the heart let's itself be formed by transforming grace. A grace that has a specific name, and that name is Jesus. Jesus is the door.  (John 10:9)   "He, and He alone, is, and always will be, the door. No one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6) " If there is no Christ, there is no way to God. As door He opens the way to God, and as Good Shepherd He is the One who cares for us at the cost of his own life.

Jesus is the door and knocks on our door to let him cross the threshold of our lives. ... Do not be afraid to open wide the doors to Christ Blessed John Paul II told us at the beginning of his pontificate . Open the doors of the heart the disciples of Emmaus did, asking him to stay with us so we can pass through the doors of faith and the Lord himself might lead us to understand the reasons why we believe, in order to then head out to announce it. Faith implies deciding to be with the Lord to live with Him and share Him with the brothers.

We thank God for this opportunity to evaluate our lives as children of God, by this faith journey that began in our life with the waters of baptism, the inexhaustible and fruitful dew that makes us children of God and brother members of the Church. The goal, destination or end it the encounter with God with Whom we have already entered into communion and Who wants to restore us, purify us, elevate us, sanctify us, and give us the happiness for which our heart longs.

We want to thank God because He has planted in the heart of our Archdiocesan Church the desire to spread and give open-handed this gift of Baptism. This is the fruit of a long journey that began with the question: How to be the Church in Buenos Aires? which passed through the State of Assembly to take root in the State of Mission as a permanent pastoral an option.

To begin this Year of Faith is a new  call to deepen in our life the faith received. To profess the faith with the mouth requires the living it in the heart and showing it with works: a testimony and a public commitment. The disciple of Christ, son of the Church, can not never that to believe is a private matter. It is an important and strong challenge for every day, convinced that he who began the good work in you will perfect it until the day of  Jesus Christ. (Phi.1: 6) Looking at our reality, as missionary disciples, we wonder: to what does crossing threshold of faith challenge us?

Crossing the threshold of faith challenges us to discover that although today it seems that death reigns in its various forms and that history is governed by the law of the strongest or cunning; and that if hatred and ambition function as engines of many human struggles, we are absolutely convinced that this sad reality can change and must change, definitely because " if God is with us who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31,37)

Crossing the threshold of faith means to being ashamed to have a child's heart, because it still believes in the impossible, can live in hope: the only thing that can give meaning and transform history. It is to constantly ask, to pray and not lose heart and adore to change our looks.

Crossing the threshold of faith leads us to beg for each one "the mind of Christ Jesus" (Phil 2: 5) and thus experiencing a new way of thinking, communicating, of looking, of showing respect, of being in family, of approaching the future, to live love and the vocation.

Crossing the threshold of faith is to act, to rely on the strength of the Holy Spirit present in the Church and that is Who also manifests Himself in the signs of the times; it is to accompany the constant movement of life and history without falling into that paralyzing defeatism that the past was better; it is the urgency to think anew, to bring anew, create anew, amassing life with "the new leaven of righteousness and holiness. " (1 Cor 5:8)

Crossing the threshold of faith means having wondering eyes and a heart not lazily accustomed, able to recognize that every time a woman gives birth one is still waging for life and for future, that when we take care of the innocence of children we guarantee truth of a tomorrow and when we nurse the rendered life of an elderly person we do an act of justice and caress our roots.

Crossing the threshold of faith is work lived with dignity and the vocation of service, with the self-denial of returning again and again to life, to begin, without slackening, as if everything that has been done and were only one step on the road to the kingdom,   fullness of life. It is the silent wait after the daily planting, to contemplate the gathered fruit thanking the Lord for He is good and asking Him not to abandon the work of His hands. (Psalm 137)

Crossing the threshold of faith demands the fight for freedom and coexistence even if the surrounding environment fails, in the certainty that the Lord asks us to practice right, to love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. (  Micah 6:8)

Crossing the threshold of faith involves the permanent conversion of our attitudes, styles and manner with which we live; to redo the thing and not just patch it up or polish it up, to give the new form which Jesus gives to that which is touched by his hand and his gospel of life, encouraging us to do something unprecedented for society and for the Church, for "Whoever is in Christ is a new creation." ( 2 Cor 5.17 to 21)

Crossing the threshold of faith leads us to forgive and know how to pull out a smile, to get close to all who live on the boarders of existence and call it by its name, it is to take care of the frailties of the weak and support their wavering knees with the certainty that what we do for the least of our brothers we are doing to Jesus Himself. ( Mt 25: 40)

Crossing the threshold of faith is to celebrate life, to let us be transformed because we have become one with Jesus at the table of the Eucharist celebrated in community, and to be there with our hands and heart busy working on the big project of the Kingdom: all things shall be added unto you besides. (Mt 6.33)

Crossing the threshold of faith is to live in the spirit of the Council and of Aparecida, Church of open doors not only to but mainly to go out and fill the street and the men of our time with the gospel and life.
Crossing the threshold of faith for our Archdiocesan Church, means to feel confirmed in the Mission of being a Church, living, praying and working in the missionary mode.
Crossing the threshold of faith is ultimately to accept the novelty of the life of the Risen Lord in our poor flesh to make it the sign of new life.
Pondering all these things let us look at Mary, that She, the Virgin Mother, accompany us on this crossing the threshold of faith and bring the Holy Spirit upon our Church in Buenos Aires, as in Nazareth, so that like her we adore the Lord and go out to proclaim the wonders he has done for us.

October 1, 2012
Feast of St. Therese of the Child Jesus
Card. Jorge Mario Bergoglio sj