Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Catholic Register
January 6, 2026
Today the Church marks the 25th anniversary of the pastoral plan St. John Paul II boldly gave to the Church for the third Christian millennium.
Entitled Novo Millennio Ineunte, “On entering the New Millennium,” it brought to conclusion the Great Jubilee of the year 2000 celebrating the incarnation of the Son of God and answered the question where the Church ought to proceed moving ahead.
Insofar as the Church concludes the Jubilee of Hope today as well, St. John Paul’s reflections likewise provide fitting categories for its evaluation as well as orientations to ensure its long-term impact.
To formulate a pastoral plan for 1,000 years was a mature manifestation of the spirituality of someone whose papacy began with the forceful echo of Jesus’ words “Be not afraid!” Conscious of how quickly things change, we live at a time of three- and five-year plans not just in industry but also parishes and dioceses. How was John Paul II able to give us something that he was confident wouldn’t expire in its relevance for centuries? Because he was convinced that his ideas on what the Church is and must do in every age would never go out of date, because they were firmly rooted in Gospel ecclesiology and fully consistent with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, which he called “the great grace bestowed on the Church in the 20th century” and a “sure compass by which to take our bearings” in the millennium then and still beginning.
John Paul II’s clarity is super helpful today because some of the post-conciliar confusions that he personally strived to remedy have rearisen.
The last 60 years have featured a battle between the authentic teaching of the Second Vatican Council found in its documents and the so-called “spirit of Vatican II” by which some have sought to justify many things the fathers of the Council would never have imagined and certainly never approved.
The “spirit of Vatican II,” understood as a general desire to “update” the faith for the modern world, has been cited to try to change whatever teachings and practices of the Church — moral, sacramental, ecclesial and liturgical — that some today don’t like or want to believe. This “spirit” has received new life in a corrupted understanding of synodality — certainly but not exclusively in Germany — whereby synods are understood as compass-less processes to determine what the Church “should” hold, rather than as means by which the Church seeks literally to “walk together” (syn-odos) in faithful following of Christ.
What are the main ideas by which St. John Paul II sought to guide the Church for centuries to come? There are five.
The first is that everything the Church does begins with the contemplation of Jesus, with taking the reality of the incarnation, words, works, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus seriously. “Christ is the foundation and center of history, he is its meaning and ultimate goal,” John Paul II wrote.
2,000 years have passed since the Son of God has taken on our humanity, but Jesus must still be encountered with the “freshness” of Christmas morning or his post-Resurrection appearances, he emphasized. Jesus is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, and everything the Church is and does must begin from and be directed toward him. The Church constitutes the branches of Christ the Vine through whom he bears fruit in the world. We are mystically united to him as his Body and his Bride and without him, we can do nothing.
Second, when determining a pastoral plan for the Church, we should therefore avoid the temptation to invent a “new program” because, he accentuated, “the program already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition, it is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its center in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfilment in the heavenly Jerusalem. … This program for all times is our program for the Third Millennium.”
Third, because Jesus is holy and came to introduce us into the very life of the triune God who is “holy, holy, holy,” everything the Church is and does — the Church’s whole pastoral plan, in every “institution” of the Church — should be ordered to holiness. St. John Paul II wrote, “I have no hesitation in saying that all pastoral initiatives must be set in relation to holiness.” Everything the Church is and does must be part of its mission as a vocational-technical school of sanctity.
He stressed that the Church can’t settle for a life of “mediocrity, marked by a minimalist ethic and a shallow religiosity,” but rather must remind all the faithful that the universal call to holiness “remains more than ever an urgent pastoral task.” The vocation to be a saint, flowing from baptism, is, he said, an “intrinsic and essential aspect” of Vatican II’s teaching on the Church, and demands a “genuine training in holiness” so that “all the Christian faithful, of whatever state or rank” might attain the “fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity.” The time has come, he stated, “to re-propose wholeheartedly to everyone this high standard of ordinary Christian living: the whole life of the Christian community and of Christian families must lead in this direction.”
He gave six pillars of the Church’s training in holiness: prayer, Sunday Mass, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the life of grace, meditatively listening to the Word of God, and living and proclaiming that Word. These are six basic practices that every believer — and everyone who works for the Church — must be trained in, prioritize, and live. These are six things that leaders of dioceses, parishes, and Catholic educational institutions must expertly teach and exemplify.
The fourth emphasis of John Paul II’s pastoral plan is the witness of love, which means far more than isolated acts of charity, but must begin with and flow from true spirituality of loving communion in the Church. God, who is love, is a communion of persons and, like with the early Church, the Church’s communion flows from God and must pervade all the Church is and does.
St. John Paul II stated that we need to get beyond “masks” of communion to form sincere, mutually loving relationships in all aspects of Church life: among bishops, priests and deacons; in families, parishes, and religious communities; in the solidarity of the Church across dioceses, countries and continents; in ecumenical and interreligious relations; and in the Church’s outreach to everyone, especially the poor and those in need. Everyone must be helped to see that his or her vocation, like that of St. Therese of Lisieux, is to be “love in the heart of the Church.”
The fifth and last emphasis is mission. He stated that the motto of the Church for the third millennium should be “Duc in Altum” (Lk 5:4), Jesus’ words to St. Peter to “put out into the deep” as a fisher of men, at Jesus’ words lowering his nets for the catch.
The more we focus on Christ, the incarnate mission of God the Father’s love, the more we will take the call to holiness and communion seriously, and the more we will be impelled to bring others into a holy communion with Christ and each other.
“We must rekindle in ourselves,” he said, “the impetus of the beginnings and allow ourselves to be filled with the ardor of the apostolic preaching that followed Pentecost.” Christ, he said, “must be presented to all people with confidence” as he “bids us to set out once more on the journey: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.’” This missionary mandate, John Paul II stated, “accompanies us into the Third Millennium and urges us to share the enthusiasm of the very first Christians” in the “great adventure of proclaiming the Gospel.”
As we mark the silver Jubilee of one of John Paul II’s clearest, most practical and most inspiring documents, and conclude with Pope Leo the Jubilee of Hope, John Paul’s pastoral plan continues to chart the course by which each and all of us, and the Church, will effectively “always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for [our] hope” (1 Pet 3:15).