142. My invitation to God's People in Africa to prepare themselves for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 is also meant to be a clarion call to Christian joy. "The great joy announced by the angel on Christmas night is truly for all the people (cf. Lk 2:10) ... The Blessed Virgin Mary was the first to have received its announcement, from the Angel Gabriel, and her Magnificat was already the exultant hymn of all the humble. Whenever we say the Rosary, the joyful mysteries thus place us once more before the inexpressible event which is the centre and summit of history: the coming on earth of Emmanuel, God with us".269

It is the two thousandth Anniversary of that event of great joy which we are preparing to celebrate with the coming Great Jubilee. And so Africa, which "is also in a sense the ?second homeland' of Jesus, since as a small child, it was there that he sought refuge from Herod's cruelty",270 is called to joy. At the same time, "everything ought to focus on the primary objective of the Jubilee: the strengthening of faith and of the witness of Christians".271