My dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

We will soon complete the Year of Faith on 24 November. While we celebrate the Year of Faith as one who have received the precious gift of faith, making choices to "stand with the Lord so as to live with him," we are invited to be witnesses of faith through our words and deeds. In my pastoral letter for Niigata and Sapporo on the New Year's day, I asked three key questions on our faith. First of all, what do we profess? Then, why do we believe in? Finally, how do we live according to our beliefs. Throughout this Year of Faith, we are to re-examine our faith and re-examine our attitude of living. That means we are to face one basic question of our faith. Are we sincerely living as Christians?

Pope Benedict XVI in his apostolic letter, "Porta Fidei" to announce the Year of Faith wrote that "Faith grows when it is lived as an experience of love received and when it is communicated as an experience of grace and joy."

Our faith has to be lived as "an experience of love received" and our faith has to be communicated as "an experience of grace and joy." So what we can say is that in order to reach maturity of our faith, we have to re-examine how we live and share our faith in our daily lives.　There is no part-time Christians as Pope Francis told youth gathered in Rio for WYD. We have to be full-time Christians.

Before we started the Year of Faith, I was wondering what we should do in our diocese throughout the Year. I could come out with several activities such as learning catechism or re-visit Vatican II documents which is quite academic or ideological activities. However, in most cases, what we learn through studies do not remain in our hearts. After all what we remember from our school days are not the contents of these classes but our real experiences with friends and teachers outside class periods. So what we need is real experience to imprint something deep in our hearts.

In this context, it is my greatest joy to be united with our brothers and sisters in the universal church through this event today to spend time with Holy Mother in prayer as one of the core events of the Year of Faith. This is real experience. This is not written in a book to study but we feel the holiness of precious time deep in our hearts and we will never forget the Year of Faith. This is one of the greatest gifts for our diocese in the Year of Faith to be given wonderful opportunity to deepen our faith in Jesus Christ through Blessed Mother Mary.

In this Year of Faith, through our words and deeds, we are to be witnesses of our joy of Faith which we really experience in our daily lives. That is exactly what Holy Mother did in her life. She showed to many with confidence and conviction how she believed in the will of God. We would like to imitate her decision with courage that the will of God be done. We would like to imitate her determination to follow the word of God not bothered by concerns of this world. We would like to imitate her humility to bend her knees in front of the great power of God not to be proud of and trust in human wisdom and abilities as we easily do. And we would like to imitate her courage to say Fiat. We would like to show our own confidence in faith to this world and that is our evangelization.