The Holy Father calls on us to read "the signs of the times" to see what the Holy Spirit has to say to the Church. What the Holy Spirit is saying is "Jesus!. More specifically, the Holy Spirit is saying prepare for anniversary of the birth of Jesus, the Great Jubilee.

"Preparing for the 2000th Anniversary of the birth of the Savior has become, as it were, the key to interpreting what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church and to the Churches at this time." (31st World Communications Day)

"Since the publication of the very first document of my Pontificate, I have spoken explicitly of the Great Jubilee, suggesting that the time leading up to it be lived as 'a new Advent'. This theme has since reappeared many times, and was dwelt upon at length in the Encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem. In fact, preparing for the Year 2000 has become as it were a hermeneutical key of my Pontificate."

Imagine, all along, all the pilgrimages, the pastoral visits, the encyclicals and exhortations… all the Holy Fathers efforts are focused on preparation for the Great Jubilee.

What will the year 2000, the Great Jubilee be? It will be the year when grace is made manifest if only we are open to the Holy Spirit. It will be the year of forgiveness of debt, the year of reconciliation between disputing churches, and, God willing, it will be the time of reunion of the Church. In this, it will be the greatest of all Jubilees.

Now, in the advent before the Great Jubilee, is the time for prayer.

"The Church cannot prepare for the new millennium in any other way than in the Holy Spirit. What was accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit 'in the fullness of time' can only through the Spirit's power now emerge from the memory of the Church". (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 44)

"We hear within us, as a resounding echo, the words that he spoke: 'Apart from me you can do nothing'. We feel not only the need but even a categorical imperative for great, intense and growing prayer by all the Church.  Only prayer can prevent all these great succeeding tasks and difficulties from becoming a source of crisis and make them instead the occasion and, as it were, the foundation for ever more mature achievements on the People of God's march towards the Promised Land in this stage of history approaching the end of the second millennium.  Accordingly, as I end this meditation with a warm and humble call to prayer, I wish the Church to devote herself to this prayer, together with Mary the Mother of Jesus, as the Apostles and disciples of the Lord did in the Upper Room in Jerusalem after his Ascension. Above all, I implore Mary, the heavenly Mother of the Church, to be so good as to devote herself to this prayer of humanity's new Advent, together with us who make up the Church, that is to say the Mystical Body of her Only Son.  I hope that through this prayer we shall be able to receive the Holy Spirit coming upon us and thus become Christ's witnesses 'to the end of the earth', like those who went forth from the Upper Room in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost." (Redemptoris Hominis, 22)

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