VATICAN CITY (Catholic Online) - On Sunday, October 7, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI opened the 13th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization. This is the beginning of an extraordinary and historic week which will also see the opening of the Year of Faith and the fiftieth commemoration of the Second Vatican Council. Given its significance, we offer the entire homily below.

As he always does, the successor of the Apostle Peter, Benedict XVI,  teaches with such clarity, showing all of us the unity of our Catholic faith and its necessary and vital contribution to the world of this age. It is clear that this Pope views the Third Millennium as a new missionary age. It is also clear that he is calling everyone of us to take our place, no matter what our state in life or vocation, in this vital mission.  

For the Church to rise to this call to proclaim the Gospel in its fullness to the world of this age, her sons and daughters must believe - and understand - the faith which has been passed on to them. that requires an encounter with the One who is being conveyed, Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Risen One, who now lives His Life and continues his redemptive mission through His Body, the Church, of which we are all members. The Church needs a New Evangelization.

We will be reporting on the events throughout the week and invite our readers around the globe to pray for the Holy Father, the bishops and all of the delegates daily:

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Pope Benedict XVI

Dear Brother Bishops,
Dear brothers and sisters,

With this solemn concelebration we open the thirteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the theme The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith. This theme reflects a programmatic direction for the life of the Church, its members, families, its communities and institutions. And this outline is reinforced by the fact that it coincides with the beginning of the Year of Faith, starting on 11 October, on the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. I give a cordial and grateful welcome to you who have come to be part of the Synodal Assembly, in particular to the Secretary-General of the Synod of Bishops, and to his colleagues. I salute the fraternal delegates of the other churches and ecclesial communities as well as all present, inviting them to accompany in daily prayer the deliberations which will take place over the next three weeks.

The readings for this Sunday's Liturgy of the Word propose to us two principal points of reflection: the first on matrimony, which I will touch shortly; and the second on Jesus Christ, which I will discuss now. We do not have time to comment upon the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews but, at the beginning of this Synodal Assembly, we ought to welcome the invitation to fix our gaze upon the Lord Jesus, "crowned with glory and honour, because of the suffering of death (2:9). The word of God places us before the glorious One who was crucified, so that our whole lives, and in particular the commitment of this Synodal session, will take place in the sight of him and in the light of his mystery. In every time and place, evangelization always has as its starting and finishing points Jesus Christ, the Son of God (cf. Mk 1:1); and the Crucifix is the supremely distinctive sign of him who announces the Gospel: a sign of love and peace, a call to conversion and reconciliation. My dear Brother Bishops, starting with ourselves, let us fix our gaze upon him and let us be purified by his grace.

I would now like briefly to examine the new evangelization, and its relation to ordinary evangelization and the mission ad Gentes. The Church exists to evangelize. Faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ's command, his disciples went out to the whole world to announce the Good News, spreading Christian communities everywhere. With time, these became well-organized churches with many faithful. At various times in history, divine providence has given birth to a renewed dynamism in Church's evangelizing activity. We need only think of the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxon peoples or the Slavs, or the transmission of the faith on the continent of America, or the missionary undertakings among the peoples of Africa, Asia and Oceania. It is against this dynamic background that I like to look at the two radiant figures that I have just proclaimed Doctors of the Church, Saint John of Avila and Saint Hildegard of Bingen.

Even in our own times, the Holy Spirit has nurtured in the Church a new effort to announce the Good News, a pastoral and spiritual dynamism which found a more universal expression and its most authoritative impulse in the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. Such renewed evangelical dynamism produces a beneficent influence on the two specific "branches" developed by it, that ...