Catholic Transcript Online

The poet T.S. Eliot once wrote, "April is the cruelest month." Let it not be so this year. I am not sure that any one month is the cruelest, but we understand something of what he means. New life, we pray, is aborning, with all the struggles and growing that accompany it.

Easter is coming, on April 24, but in the interim, we have weeks of Lenten development in God’s grace to prepare us for the fullness of renewal on the feast of the Resurrection. Our catechumens and candidates preparing to become Catholics at Easter Vigils across the Archdiocese inspire us along the wonderful journeys of our souls.

Our Easter season this year will bring an additional celebration of welcome joy. On May 1, before we read the next issue of The Catholic Transcript, we will mark the Beatification of Pope John Paul II. He will then be called "Blessed," as we rejoice in the last step before his canonization as a saint.

We remember the day he died, April 2, 2005. Immediately the signs were up in the streets of Rome, "Santo Subito." People wished him to be declared a "Saint Immediately," and to bypass the process leading to canonization. The process has, nevertheless, been moving forward.

Pope John Paul II died at 2:43 that afternoon, the Saturday after Easter. At 4 p.m., I celebrated Mass in the Cathedral for him. It was a special opportunity to recall with gratitude some of the multiple highlights of his papacy.

When he was elected Pope on Oct. 16, 1978, reporters immediately went scurrying to find out who Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was. They found out quickly. The Soviet news agency, Tass, knew to some extent who he was, yet they took two days to make a story. They then made an announcement that was the understatement of the last 50 years. This election, they said, would bring a measure of instability to Central and Eastern Europe.

That did happen, in the best sense, but also so much more. The totalitarian regime in Poland came down in 1989, and then, as if by a series of chain reactions, other similar regimes fell in Central and Eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall came down, and the Soviet Union broke up.

Throughout his pontificate, he brought the message of God and God’s love all over the world. No one in history has spoken to more people – in their own language, in their own country, in their own cultural setting – than Pope John Paul II. He was the most recognizable person in the world.

Critical to his theology and philosophy was his pervasive conviction on the worth of the individual human being. His first encyclical, "Redemptor Hominis" ("On Redemption"), given in March 1979, stressed that God’s salvation was for all. No one is ordinary; no one is an alien before God. When he spoke at the United Nations in October 1979, he emphasized that every system – legal, political, economic, social – will be judged on how it treats the individual human person. In his speech a day later at New York City Harbor with the Statue of Liberty in the background, he made an historic address for the world on human rights.

His production was phenomenal: Encyclicals, Apostolic Exhortations, Apostolic Letters, Pastoral Letters, books, plays, poetry, CD’s, videotapes, audio tapes, etc. He had the heart of a pastor and the intellectual greatness of a doctor of the Church. He was the Vicar of Christ, and as Christ did, he embraced the young, the weak, the vulnerable of everyday.

With all his achievements, Pope John Paul II nonetheless had a powerful sense of his own person. Toward the end of his life, he wrote the book Memory and Identity. Part of the secret to his life lies in the fact that he was, I would say, a mystic. Anyone who saw him prepare in prayer and celebrate Mass in his private chapel, as I have been privileged to do a few times, would have no question of this.

He wrote at different times of the celebration of his first Mass in St. Leonard’s Chapel in Wawel Cathedral, Kraków, in 1946. When he raised the host and the chalice at the Consecration, he could visualize the suffering of Jesus Christ on Golgatha being experienced in the current world.

When he was 19 years old, he learned Spanish so that he could read Saint John of the Cross, the great mystic, in the original language. He would eventually write his doctoral thesis in theology on Saint John of the Cross. He quotes him prominently in his autobiography, Crossing the Threshold of Hope: "In the twilight of life we will be judged on love." (Sayings of Light and Love). "En la tarde de la vida seramos examinados en el amor." (Dichosos de la Luz y Amor).

So many recall the closing days of his life on earth. The media had encamped at the Vatican for days. On his last day, he recited Psalm 119, prayed the Divine Office, celebrated Mass, made the Stations of the Cross, and recited the Rosary.

It is rare that a Moses is succeeded by a Joshua, but we have been graced with a strong line of Popes in the 20th and now in the early 21st century. We are especially blessed that Pope Benedict XVI oversees the Beatification of Pope John Paul II. They were friends and soul mates who had extraordinary respect for each other for many years.

John Paul II was accustomed to saying that culture moves history. At the heart of culture is cult, religion. May our exercises of Lent and our joy at Easter bring us in God’s grace to stronger awakenings in our souls, to more accurate awareness of the blessed in our lives. Happy Easter!