The press office received the text as usual an hour before the Midnight Mass. When I ask what has changed in the text, Monsignor Ptasznik replies that the meaning has remained the same, but there were changes referencing the Jubilee Year. The Pope referred to the Latin antiphon “Hodie natus est nobil Salvator mundi”. He paid particular attention to this “hodie” – “today”. He wanted to convey that after two thousand years we are reliving this mystery as a unique and unrepeatable event that changed the course of human history. Indeed, John Paul II said: “This is the truth which on this night the Church wants to pass on to the third millennium. And, may all you who will come after us accept this truth, which has totally changed history. Ever since the night of Bethlehem, humanity knows that God became Man: he became Man in order to give man a share in his divine nature. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God! On the threshold of the third millennium, the Church greets You, the Son of God, who have come into the world to triumph over death. You have come to illuminate human life through the Gospel. The Church greets You and with You she wishes to enter the third millennium. You are our hope. You alone have words of eternal life. (…) You who are the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, guide us! You who came from the Father, lead us to him in the Holy Spirit, along the path which you alone know and which you have revealed to us, that we might have life and have it in abundance. You O Christ, the Son of the living God, be for us the Door! Be for us the true Door, symbolized by the door which on this Night we have solemnly opened! Be for us the Door which leads us into the mystery of the Father. Grant that no one may remain outside his embrace of mercy and peace! “Hodie natus est nobis Salvator mundi”: it is Christ who is our only Saviour! This is the message of Christmas 1999: the “today” of this Holy Night begins the Great Jubilee.”
With the consent of Archbishop Mieczysław Mokrzycki – “Place for everyone”
Znak Publishing House, Kraków 2013.
