It's time to plan how to spend Holy Year

With this week's release by the Vatican of "Incarnationis Mysterium" ("The Mystery of the Incarnation"), Catholics have been challenged to approach the coming of 2000 as something much deeper, richer and more spiritual than Y2K problems or the oddity of writing that date on our checks.

Amid all the secular hype about a new millennium, we have to remember what it is the world is celebrating: not some random line-up of zeroes on a calendar, but the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Christ.

If we really believe that's what we're marking, then our celebration must include something more substantive than toasts and fireworks on New Year's Eve. In his document proclaiming a Holy Year to run from Christmas Eve 1999 through the feast of the Epiphany in 2001, Pope John Paul II invites us to deepen our prayer life, enlarge our solidarity with the poor of the world, forgive others and ask their forgiveness, and undertake actions that fulfill the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

In other words, the Holy Year of 2000 is not a time for idleness; it is a time for Catholics to reform their lives, renew their commitment to their faith and recall where they have failed -- with a promise to change for the better.

The Holy Year does not officially start for 12 months, but it's not too early to begin thinking about what we will do as a birthday gift for Jesus: visit people in need, such as the sick, imprisoned or the elderly...fast and abstain in order to feel the plight of the hungry...donate a sacrificial amount of money to the needy...volunteer with an agency that serves the poor...attend daily Mass.

The options are many -- and there's no law against beginning them right now as we head into the final year of both the century and the millennium.

(12-03-98)

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