Celebrating Blessed John Paul the Great

For most Catholics my age, Pope John Paul II is the only pope we’ve ever known.

Even Pope Benedict XVI nee Joseph Ratzinger has been a remarkable footnote to a remarkable papacy, one that saw liberation theology condemned in thought (even if it still survives in deed), pushed the Soviet Empire into collapse, restored the concept of ecumenism, affirmed the centrality of human life in social justice, and presented the heart of Catholicism as an worldview opposed to — and not merely a compliment of — the political -ism that have choked off humanity since the dawn of the Enlightenment.

God often times works through coincidence.  True, that’s a statement any agnostic would instantly throw their hands in the air with a wave of disgust.  Compounded over time, just as one thread in a tapestry is no more logical than a crystal formed, several threads woven “co-incidentally” indicate a fabric woven.

01 November 1946, All Saints Day — Karol Wojtyla was ordained a priest in then-Communist Poland after having survived and fought as a freedom fighter against the Nazis during the Second World War.

04 July 1958 — Pope Pius XII appoints Wojtyla auxiliary bishop of Krakow, the formerly Jewish haven the Nazi’s brutally stamped out in the waning days of the Second World War.  Wojtyla’s ascendancy to full bishop in 1964 and then cardinal in 1967 allowed him to have an impact on one of the defining encyclicals of the 20th century, that of Humanae Vitae

14 October 1978 — The papal conclave to elect a new pope to replace the short-lived Pope John Paul I begins.  Karol Wojtyla is elected on the ninth ballot as a liberalizing force and compromise candidate, taking the name of his predecessor.  He dedicates his papacy in “totus tuus” to the Mother of God, and accepts leadership of a Church ridden with scandal, rudderless, facing persecution in the Communist countries of the world, liberation theologians teaching violence as a means of social justice, and an American and Western European laity whose modernism distorted the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

13 May 1981, Feast of Our Lady of Fatima — Pope John Paul II is shot in the chest by a Turkish assassin, the pope narrowly escaping death.  This miracle he attributes to the intervention of Our Lady of Fatima.  Almost one year earlier, a member of the traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X had attempted to kill Pope John Paul II with a bayonet, claiming the Pope was an agent of Moscow.

In March 2006 an Italian inquiry determines that the Soviet Union was indeed behind the assassination attempt.

04 March 1983, Nicaragua — It was the sort of public relations nightmare every coordinator has, and the Sandinistas were not proving to be gracious hosts.  Behind the Pope were socialist banners praising the likes of Sandino and Fonseca.  Pope John Paul II spoke over both voices and “technical difficulties” with the sound system as the Marxist-Leninists surrounded the stage, pushed on by those who preached the theology of liberation, screaming “Power to the People!”

It did not take long for Pope John Paul II’s eyes to narrow, his face coming up from the pages of his text.  “SILENCIO!!!

Three times, the Pope shouted down the Marxists.  They did not stop agitating; Pope John Paul II did not yield.  When the Pope left, the Nicaraguan Bishops brought together the clergy and emphatically told them they spoke with one voice joined with that of the Holy Father: there can be no liberation through violence and class struggle.  Thus ended, theologically, the idea of Jesus at the barrel of a gun.

03 February, Calcutta, India — Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s first act when she started her ministry was to simply lift up the first person she found dying in the filth-infested sewer.

Her ministry grew out of that first act with a second act of mercy, followed by a third and a fourth.  Since then, the Missionaries of Charity grew, providing the care for the poorest of the poor that others — through neglect or indifference — would not.

It would be Pope John Paul II who stood over the beds of 86 sick or dying, blessing each one individually as a modern St. Vincent de Paul moved over each bed with a wrinkled, heavy hand.  The suffering confused even the Pope, but he reaffirmed that God loved them all and asked the religious leaders there to do more to help the suffering of the poor and dying.  He would go on later to serve soup and potatoes to the hungry with his own hand.

One of the best stories about Mother Teresa was when asked about her favorite task, where she would proclaim “cleaning toilets!” and produce an invisible toothbrush, wave it in front of the person asking, narrow one eye with a half smile and say “I am the best toilet cleaner in all of Calcutta!”  Even the smallest jobs can be done with great love.

02 April 1987, Santiago, Chile — Pope John Paul II stands before a stadium of 80,000 Chilean Catholics, whose bishops have been scolded by General Augusto Pinochet to remain a voice outside of politics.  Pope John Paul II — in a stadium known as a detention camp where torture, death, and violence was a norm after the 1973 coup — Pope John Paul II reminds the crowd of young people in one of the most forceful speeches of his pontificate: “Do not let yourself be seduced by violence and the thousand reasons which appear to justify it.”

10-15 August 1993, Denver, Colorado — Pope John Paul II prepares his visit to Colorado with the following exhortation:

Our daily experience tells us that life is marked by sin and threatened by death, despite the desire for good which beats in our hearts and the desire for life which courses through our veins. However little heed we pay to ourselves and to the frustrations which life brings us, we discover that everything within us impels us to transcend ourselves, urges us to overcome the temptation of superficiality or despair. It is then that human beings are called to become disciples of that other One who infinitely transcends them, in order to enter at last into true life.

There are also false prophets and false teachers of how to live. First of all there are those who teach people to leave the body, time and space in order to be able to enter into what they call “true life”. They condemn creation, and in the name of deceptive spirituality they lead thousands of young people along the paths of an impossible liberation which eventually leaves them even more isolated, victims of their own illusions and of the evil in their own lives.

Seemingly at the opposite extreme, there are the teachers of the “fleeting moment”, who invite people to give free rein to every instinctive urge or longing, with the result that individuals fall prey to a sense of anguish and anxiety leading them to seek refuge in false, artificial paradises, such as that of drugs.

There are also those who teach that the meaning of life lies solely in the quest for success, the accumulation of wealth, the development of personal abilities, without regard for the needs of others or respect for values, at times not even for the fundamental value of life itself.

These and other kinds of false teachers of life, also numerous in the modern world, propose goals which not only fail to bring satisfaction but often intensify and exacerbate the thirst that burns in the human heart.

Who then can understand and satisfy our expectations?

Who but the One who is the Author of Life can satisfy the expectations that he himself has placed in our hearts? He draws close to each and every one of us in order to announce a hope that will never disappoint; he who is both the way and the life: the pathway into life.

Left to ourselves, we could never achieve the ends for which we have been created. Within us there is a promise which we find we are incapable of attaining. But the Son of God who came among us has given his personal assurance: “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” (Jn 14:6). As Saint Augustine so strikingly phrased it, Christ “wishes to create a place in which it is possible for all people to find true life”. This “place” is his Body and his Spirit, in which the whole of human life, redeemed and forgiven, is renewed and made divine.

Over half a million Catholics come to Denver to visit with the Pope and renew their faith, one of the largest (to borrow the Protestant term) revivals ever held on American soil.

25 May 1995, Vatican City — Ecumenism is a difficult word for a Church founded by Jesus Christ, one that considers itself alone to be the Deposit of Truth and Faith.  In the past, such a definition made engagement with other faiths an effort in apologetics rather than dialogue.  Pope John Paul II sought to change this in Ut Unum Sint, the encyclical which would distinguish between the false, lowest common denominator variety of ecumenism and a truer, more pure sort:

At the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church committed herself irrevocably to following the path of the ecumenical venture, thus heeding the Spirit of the Lord, who teaches people to interpret carefully the “signs of the times” . The experiences of these years have made the Church even more profoundly aware of her identity and her mission in history. The Catholic Church acknowledges and confesses the weaknesses of her members, conscious that their sins are so many betrayals of and obstacles to the accomplishment of the Saviour’s plan. Because she feels herself constantly called to be renewed in the spirit of the Gospel, she does not cease to do penance. At the same time, she acknowledges and exalts still more the power of the Lord, who fills her with the gift of holiness, leads her forward, and conforms her to his Passion and Resurrection.

Taught by the events of her history, the Church is committed to freeing herself from every purely human support, in order to live in depth the Gospel law of the Beatitudes. Conscious that the truth does not impose itself except “by virtue of its own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly and with power”,2 she seeks nothing for herself but the freedom to proclaim the Gospel. Indeed, her authority is exercised in the service of truth and charity.

I myself intend to promote every suitable initiative (emphasis original) aimed at making the witness of the entire Catholic community understood in its full purity and consistency, especially considering the engagement which awaits the Church at the threshold of the new Millennium. That will be an exceptional occasion, in view of which she asks the Lord to increase the unity of all Christians until they reach full communion.   The present Encyclical Letter is meant as a contribution to this most noble goal. Essentially pastoral in character, it seeks to encourage the efforts of all who work for the cause of unity.

Pope John Paul II challenges Catholics to engage in ecumenical dialogue.  What do we have to fear?  If the Catholic Church is the Deposit of Truth and Faith, and we roll the dice on ecumenical dialogue, are the dice not loaded if the ends are in truth?

23 March 2000, Jerusalem, Israel — Pope John Paul II, once known for his amazing vitality and athleticism as a young man now hobbled and weak, and walking with the assistance of a cane, speaks with Holocaust survivors there:

02 April 2005, St. Peter’s Square –President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II would meet for the first time on 07 June 1982.  From that meeting would stem both a friendship and an alliance between the only two powers on earth with worldwide reach — one of arms, the other of faith.

On this day, it would be a different Republican president saying goodbye, even though strong disagreements between the Pope and Bush over the invasion of Iraq and the threat to the Catholic communities there:

Over the years, Pope John Paul II would give identity to millions of young Catholics and others who sought a different path than the political religions of today offered.

Today, on 01 May — a day when Sandinistas and Communists and others who find salvation as the ends of violence and class struggle, the Catholic Church has beatified Pope John Paul the Great.  Few popes were as long-lived, as intellectually prolific, as personable, or as easy to relate to than this one.  He fought communism, liberation theology, violence, the culture of death, modernism, indifference, corruption, and the “dictatorship of relativism” all during one pontificate.

Certainly, Pope John Paul the Great had critics — great men always do.  I am sure that the Christopher Hitchens of the world will link arms with the Call To Actions, who will link arms with the SSPX traditionalists and those who would alloy their own ideas to the popular idea of JP II.  There is also the sea of indifferentism that still surrounds the Church — and a sitting Pope who views the current struggle as one of believers vs. unbelievers.  Yet Catholics around the world have seen fit to reject the lures of political utopia, and reject the identity politics of the gross numbers of -ism and identification with sin.   Pope John Paul the Great led the way for millions who had lost it, and this will be the enduring strength and memory of his pontificate.

Yet in all of this, and for all the great things Pope John Paul the Great accomplished, he would be the first to exclaim that none of it was done of his own power.  “Totus tuus!” he would remind us — and by honoring the Mother of God he would point to Christ and his words as the inspiration and faith that carried him.  Every word of Scripture was sacred; every word of Scripture was lived.

Pope John Paul the Great reminded the World Youth Day 2000 in Sydney, Australia: “Do not be afraid to live the Gospel directly.”  As Catholics, as Christians, as those who believe in the sanctity of human life in all its stages, and as those who believe in the true principles of humanism, we should constantly remind ourselves as Pope John Paul the Great does in his encyclical on the human family:

The family finds in the plan of God the Creator and Redeemer not only its identity, what it is, but also its mission, what it can and should do. The role that God calls the family to perform in history derives from what the family is; its role represents the dynamic and existential development of what it is. Each family finds within itself a summons that cannot be ignored, and that specifies both its dignity and its responsibility: family, become what you are.

“Become what you are.”  A powerful message for uncertain times.  May Blessed John Paul II continue to pray for us, with all the saints, for our salvation and for the Kingdom of God to come.

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