St. John Paul, gone 10 years
Pope John Paul II died 10 years ago today (and today marks Canada’s first Pope John Paul II Day, in recognition of this sad event). This year the anniversary falls on Holy Thursday — the day we liturgically commemorate the Last Supper and the arrest of Jesus ahead of the trial and crucifixion of Good Friday.
The late Holy Father is never far from my writing and preaching, but on Holy Thursday my thoughts turn to him more than usual, for it was this day that he dedicated in a special way to priests. It was at the Last Supper that Catholics understand Jesus to have instituted the priesthood, so Holy Thursday has always been marked as the “birthday” of the priesthood.
John Paul had a special way of marking that birthday. For 27 years, he would write a lengthy Holy Thursday letter to priests; letters of great theological depth, but also expressing his love for the priesthood and for priests. So committed was he to this annual practice that his last letter in 2005 was written from his hospital bed at the Gemelli Polyclinic. He wrote that year not only as pope, but as a “patient among patients,” as he put it.
Given that I would not be a priest were it not for the witness and teaching of now Saint John Paul, the birthday of the priesthood and the origins of my own priestly vocation coincide providentially on Holy Thursday.
“From this Upper Room I would like to address this letter to you, as I have done for more than twenty years, on Holy Thursday, the day of the Eucharist and ‘ our’ day par excel
lence,” St. John Paul wrote from the room of the Last Supper during his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the Great Jubilee of 2000. “We must never cease meditating anew on the mystery of that night. We should often return in spirit to this Upper Room, where we priests especially can feel in a sense ‘at home.’ With regard to the Upper Room, it could be said of us what the Psalmist says of the peoples with regard to Jerusalem: In the register of peoples, the Lord will write: These were born here” (Psalm 86:6).”
All Christian disciples are born from the Upper Room — the place of the Passover Jesus ate with his apostles, the place of the Eucharist, the place of the new commandment to “love one another as I have loved you,” the place where Jesus appeared on Easter Sunday evening to breathe out the Holy Spirit upon his new priests, and the place of Pentecost where the Holy Spirit came to animate the nascent Church.
It was St. John Paul’s pastoral genius to take priests back there in a particular way every Holy Thursday, to remind us that our vocation and mission were born from those dramatic days in Jerusalem. My great mentor Father Richard John Neuhaus once preached on Holy Thursday that these days were the axis mundi, the days on which the world and its history turned.
Two weeks ago I hosted in Kingston the biographer of John Paul, George Weigel. In addressing our annual chaplaincy dinner, he related what he considered the most powerful line written about the Polish pope, by French writer André Frossard, who was in Rome to cover the inaugural Mass in 1978: “This Pope does not come from Poland. He comes from Galilee.”
The purpose of the Holy Thursday letters, the purpose of St. John Paul’s entire pontificate, was to propose that indeed the centre of history was not to be found in the great capitals of Athens or Rome, or even latterly London or New York, but rather in Galilee and Jerusalem. It was his conviction that it was not economics and politics that were the great drivers of history, but culture. He would write in his analysis of why communism was defeated:
“Man is understood in a more complete way when he is situated within the sphere of culture through his language, history, and the position he takes toward the fundamental events of life, such as birth, love, work and death. At the heart of every culture lies the attitude man takes to the greatest mystery: the mystery of God. Different cultures are basically different ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence.”
St. John Paul’s life changed history because he gave to millions, including me, a compelling answer to the question of the meaning of human existence.
As he lay dying 10 years ago, John Paul was told that young people in immense numbers were accompanying him in St. Peter’s Square. “I have looked for you. Now you have come to me. And I thank you,” he said.
He looked for us, and guided us to find the answers we were looking for. And now we thank him.
I would not be a priest were it not for the witness and teaching of the Polish pope