1999 is the year of God the Father, the last year of preparation for the millennium, the Grand Jubilee of the year 2000. In the encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem, Pope John Paul II calls us to prepare our minds and hearts for this great celebration.

In the time leading up to the third millennium after Christ, while “the Spirit and the Bride say to the Lord Jesus: Come!” this prayer of theirs is filled, as always, with an eschatological significance, which is also destined to give fullness of meaning to the celebration of the great Jubilee. It is a prayer concerned with the salvific destinies toward which the Holy Spirit by his action opens hearts throughout the history of man on earth. But at the same time this prayer is directed toward a precise moment in history which highlights the “fullness of time” marked by the year 2000. The Church wishes to prepare for this Jubilee in the Holy Spirit, just as the Virgin of Nazareth in whom the Word was made flesh was prepared by the Holy Spirit.