Perhaps in the predawn of the 6:30 weekly Mass, I am more susceptible to emotion. Something was at work this week, when on Tuesday we observed the Memorial of Pope Saint John Paul II. Unlike all the other Saints whom we commemorate liturgically, I had personal contact with JPII – quite a lot of it. I met him when I was still discerning my vocation, and again when he welcomed my seminary class to Rome. I deaconed a Mass for him in Saint Peter’s Basilica. As Secretary to Cardinal Baum, I was with him so many times I stopped getting the photos they make of every papal encounter. Almost every Sunday for four years I stepped onto our balcony at noon to listen to his Angelus address from his window above the square.
So it was more than nostalgia that came over me as I offered prayers with his name, and quoted him in my homily. It was the awareness of genuine intimacy of a different sort than other saints, and different than other church figures, too.
It brought to mind some letters I had written from Rome during the days after his death, through his funeral, and up to the Conclave. I share excerpts with you here.
(From the period of mourning and visitation of John Paul’s body in the Basilica): The rooftop of every building within blocks of mine radiates the unnatural white of television lights, as chattering, calm faces try to fill time with stories that explain what is going on … But people know. They have seen a real life. They have seen John Paul and have seen Christ in him. He showed them who they really are – the oppressed people of Poland and Eastern Europe, and of Cuba; the disillusioned and disinterested youth of the consumerist West, of France and Germany, of the United States; the people who know they are capable of love and of joy despite their poverty, in Mexico, in Africa, in the Philippines. They saw the truth about themselves, and they saw it because of him. And it changed the world.
I also marveled at what a privilege and blessing it is to have known John Paul. What a priest! What a father! Up to his last breath he kept nothing for himself, nothing, but offered it all for the salvation of souls. And even now, even in his death, he is still drawing people to Christ and His Church. Lives are being changed.
He has shown us what one single human life can be, when lived in fidelity to its creator: rich and strong, true and irresistible. To see him there, just one body, vulnerable as any of us, and to realize what he did with what he was given, makes it difficult not to think about that an amazing thing Man is. As Saint Anselm said, “The glory of God is the living man!”
The people out there, waiting in line in the streets for twenty hours to see a dead man, cannot be categorized in any way, not in age, not in culture, not in education or credulity. They are just people. And they, like most people, want to DO something about what they have seen and known. So they come.
That's the way everyone seems to be. All the cops, paramedics, military personnel, volunteers; even the trash men and street sweepers want this to go WELL for the people who come. Because they deserve it. Pope John Paul TOLD us they deserve it.
(From the funeral): … this was no ordinary crowd; it was a JPII crowd. They were not spectators, they were PARTICIPANTS. They were THERE, and they made their presence, and their participation, felt. For twenty-six and a half years, John Paul II had been telling them how precious they were, how important their very presence, how important their participation in the great mysteries of life and of God. They believed him.
…from what I gather, the crowd was even bigger than the millions they say … But these vast dimensions … made it very tempting to overlook something: what happened today, though vast in scale, unprecedented in its participants, unheard of in its impact, was totally ordinary. It happens all the time. It is what families do. It is what Christians do. It is simply what we do.
This is what we do when we lose a loved one. We take him to the altar. We welcome our Lord and God who comes in the Eucharist, right into our midst. Then we all stand up and in one voice present the one we have loved and lost to that same Lord. Take him home! And then we bid him goodbye. All this is ordinary, in the sense that it is a part of life; necessary, and even good. But by no means easy. We lost a father. Today, it just took a while to say goodbye …
Monsignor Smith
