John Paul II, We Love You

Sto lat! Sto lat! they chanted. May you live a hundred years!
It's easier to sing than to do, he said...

They call us the John Paul II generation. Teenagers and twenty-somethings, we are too young to have known or remembered any man but this man in the chair of Peter. And what a man. Our elders are at a loss to understand the incredible appeal that John Paul II held for us. That an aged, celibate old man in Rome should command such respect and devotion among the inheritors of the sexual revolution, among other things, is baffling and indeed disturbing to those who expected our generation to follow in their own footsteps. They cite his charismatic presence, his vibrant personality, his energetic spirit. But to conclude that we loved him for his character and merely tolerated or smiled indulgently at his quaint orthodoxy would be a mistake. We loved him for his orthodoxy, for his passionate witness to the Gospel. We loved him because he spoke to us, and his words rang true in our hearts. Dear young people! he said. Be not afraid! Open wide the doors to Christ! In a world where love and sexuality and human dignity were being cheapened all around us, he told us that these things were greater than we imagined. He told us not to fear the culture of death or our own weakness, but to take courage in the victory of Christ over the world: This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel! It is the time to preach it from the rooftops!

The world did not understand this man because he was a contradiction to them. They praise him for his humanitarianism, his instrumental role in the downfall of Communism, his steadfast opposition to war and capital punishment. At the same time, he is criticized for his unflinching fidelity to tradition, for refusing to capitulate to abortion, contraception, or euthansia. The world forgets that Christ was also a contradiction. They are fond of the Sermon on the Mount, but conveniently pass over the Crucifixion. In fact, it is not John Paul II or Christ or the Catholic Church which is contradictory, but the world. It is the world which has strayed from the truth and no longer recognizes it for what it is. Especially in America, we live in a world of cafeteria Catholicism, a world that sees nothing absurd in picking and choosing those elements of the truth that please us and ignoring the rest. Is it any wonder that the Church contradicts their own contradictions?

John Paul II knew what is was to surrender oneself to the Gospel. His life was not his own; or rather, he found the truth that one must give up his life in order to find it. His motto, totus tuus, bespoke his total dedication to Jesus through Mary, a dedication that was evident throughout his life, but never more than in the final years when physical infirmity began to take its toll. He accepted the cross of the papacy with joy in spite of the immense suffering he bore as a result, and was under no illusions that his life was anything but a Via Crucis in union with the suffering Christ. Nor, at the end, did he cling vainly to life when the Lord called His faithful servant home. Those around him were choked up with emotion when, on Friday morning, he asked that the biblical narrative of the Passion be read to him, and as the body of Christ was being taken down for burial, he made the sign of the Cross. Do not weep, he said. Let us pray together with joy.

Ora pro nobis.