by Bishop Raymond A. Lucker
Diocese of New Ulm

This is a special season of anticipation. We anticipated the coming of Jesus at Christmas time. All through the coming year we will anticipate our celebration of the Jubilee Year 2000.

A few days ago I talked to my mother, Josephine Mayer, who is now just a couple months short of one hundred years old. She told me about how she celebrated Christmas when she was a little girl. Her mother died when she was only nine and these memories go back to before her mother's death. Her father owned a little country store which was just across the orchard from the farm house. On Christmas Eve my mother and her sister, Rose, were sent over to the store where they waited with anticipation as Santa came to the house, decorated the tree, and brought gifts. When the time came, someone would put a kerosene lamp in the bay window of the farm house, a signal that Santa had come.

"We ran back to the house," my mother said, "and opened our presents." The family was poor, so they didn’t receive very much. I asked her what would be typical gifts. "A doll maybe and some clothes," she said. The image I have in my mind is two little girls running down the road past the orchard with eagerness and wonder in their eyes as they opened the door to the parlor to see the tree decorated with popcorn strings, candles, and a few ornaments. All of us have similar stories about our anticipation of the celebration of Christ’s birth.

We are also getting ready to celebrate the Jubilee Year 2000. I want to repeat again that RENEW 2000 is our official diocesan celebration for the Jubilee. Unfortunately there is a small number of people in the diocese who are critical of RENEW 2000 and are creating doubts about its orthodoxy and about the possibility of its leading people astray.

RENEW 2000 follows the topics and goals set out by Pope John Paul II in his letter to the world called "The Coming of the Third Millennium." RENEW 2000 will officially begin in the fall of 1999 with a mission celebrated in each parish. Small faith sharing groups will start meeting on October 3 and continue for six weeks. The small groups will meet for five seasons continuing during Lent and in the fall of 2000 and 2001.

Each of the five seasons pick up themes from the official program of the encyclical of the Holy Father. Season I deals with God, the Holy Trinity, revealed to us as a community of love. Season II takes place during Lent of 2000. Pope John Paul II proclaimed that the Year of Jubilee is to celebrate the "joy of conversion," and as we journey to the cross and resurrection of Jesus we focus on our need for ongoing conversion. The six meetings of Season III deal with our call to share with others the good news of God’s love in our daily lives. Season IV invites us to reconciliation, especially with other Christians and to work for the unity of the church. Season V is about renewing the 21st century and encourages the members of the small groups to apply Catholic social teaching to life issues, to the poor, to the earth, and to the world community. In addition to all of that, RENEW will make special efforts to integrate the themes of the millennium with the liturgy during the five seasons.

RENEW 2000 is faithful to the teaching of the church. All of the materials have the imprimatur of the Archbishop of Newark. It is too bad that those who differ with RENEW 2000 have tried to attack the orthodoxy of the materials or the writers. They have also expressed their concerns about the process of people meeting in small groups and sharing their faith, which to critics is an open invitation to heresy.

I have worked with small groups for almost fifty years of my priesthood, beginning with discussion groups organized by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in the early 1950s. I have never known of any such groups that have been led into heresy by the sharing of the faith of committed people.

I urge you not to pay any attention to this small group who are raising doubts in the minds of some of our good people. I ask the people of the diocese to continue to pray for the success of RENEW as a call for inner renewal and conversion, and a call for reconciliation and the renewal of our society according to the mind and heart of Jesus.

January, 1999