Remembering John Paul II
five years after his death
Libretto cover: Christ Pantocrator, from a 15th cent. Missal. Antun, France.
John Paul II: 'Totus tuus' -
A witness for Christ
who gave himself totally
Translated from
the Italian service of
March 29, 2010
A witness for Christ who gave himself totally, without reservation, without measure, without calculation. Thus did Benedict XVI describe his predecessor, the Venerable Servant of God John Paul II, at Mass this evening in St. Pete's Basilica to mark the fifth anniversary of his death on April 2, 2005.
What motivated John Paul II "was his love for Christ, to whom he had consecrated his life, a love that was super-abundant and uncoditional", the Pope said.
The annual commemorative Mass was offered today because April 2 falls on Good Friday.
Speaking to a congregation that included consdierable Polish representation, led by the Archbishop of Cracow, Cardinal Stanislas Dsiwisz, Benedict XVi asked Christians to loon on John Paul II and his works as an exanple of 'Taith, hope and love".
Massimiliano Manichetti reports further:
The emotion of those who love turns to joy in the knowledge that death on earth copincides with birth into the true life. Such sentiments were clearly visible on the facesd of those who were at the Mass tonight, some still shedding tears.
Noting how appropriate the Holy Week is as a context for prayer and meditation on his predecessor, Benedict XVI opened his homily by underscoring how the late Pope gave himself totally to Christ.
"During his long Pontificate, he gave all he could in proclaiming what is right, with firmness, without any weakness or hesitations, and especially when he had to face resistance, hostility and rejection.
"He knew that the Lord held him by the hand, and this allowed him to exercise a mnistry that was very fruitful, for which, once again, we must render fervent thanks to God"
The Holy Father also dwelt on the act of faith and great love by Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus, who "in humble service" poured perfume on the feet of Jesus, then wiped them with her hair, saying that every gesture of love and authentic devotion for Christ does not remain just a personal act but involves the entire body of the Church, instilling 'love, joy and light".
He contrasted this attitude to that of Judas who, in the Pope;s words, "hid the selfishness and the falsity of a man closed in on himself, chained by greed of possession, who does not allow himself to be enveloped by the perfume of divine love".
He noted that Love found its supreme expression on the wooden Cross where "the Son of God gives himself so that man may have life, then descends to the abysss of death in order to bring man to the heights of God".
Citing St. Augustine, Benedict said that every soul who wants to be faithful to Christ joins Mary of Bethany in anointing and wiping the feet of the Lord.
"The entire life of the Venerable John Paul II took place under the emblem of chairty, the capacity to give oneself generously, without reservation, without measure, without calculation. What motivated him was love of Christ, to whom he had consecrated his life, a love that was super-abundant and unconditional. And because he came ever closer to God in love, he could make himself a fellow pilgrim for contemporary man, spreading the perfume of God's love".
"Those who had the joy" of meeting or becoming familiar with John Paul II, said his successor, "could touch with the hand how much the faith was alive in him".
"In fact, his progressive physical weakness in later years, never affected his rock-strong faith, his luminous hope, his fervent charity. He allowed himself to be consumed - for Christ, for the Church, for the whole world. His was a suffering lived to the very end for love and with love".
In conclusion, he addressed himself to the Poles present, and called on all to "look on the life and work of John Paul II, a great man and reason for pride" as an "example of faithful testimony, hope and love of Christ".
Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's homily:
Venerated brothers in the episcopate and priesthood,
Dear brothers and sisters:
We are gathered at the altar over the tomb of the Apostle Peter to offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice in memory of the elected soul of the Venerable John Paul II on the fifth anniversary of his departure. We are doing this a few days ahead, because this year, April 2 is Good Friday.
We are nonetheless in Holy Week, a context that could not be more appropriate for meditation and prayer, during which the liturgy allows us to relive more intensely the last days of the earthly life of Jesus.
I wish to express my gratitude to all of you are taking part in this Holy Mass. I cordially greet the cardinals - especially Archbishop Stanislas Dsiwisz - the bishops, priests, and religious men and women, as well as the pilgrims who came especially from Poland, all the many young people and the numerous faithful who did not want to miss this celebration.
In the first Biblical reading that was proclaimed, the prophet Isaiah present the figure of a 'Servant of God', who is also his chosen one, in whom he is well pleased. The Servant will act with indestructible faith, with an energy that will not wane until he has realized the task which he has been assigned.
And yet, he will not always have at his disposition those human means that seem indispensable for the realization of a task so great. He presents himself with the strength of his conviction, and it will be the Spirit God placed in him which will give him the ability to act with gentleness and with power, assuring him of final success.
What the inspired prophet said of the Servant, we can apply to our beloved John Paul II: the Lord called him to his service and in entrusting him with tasks of increasing responsibility, he also accompanied him with his grace and his continuous assistance.
During his long Pontificate, he did all he could to proclaim what is right with firmness, without weakness or hesitations, especially when he had to face resistances, hostility and rejection. He knew that the Lord took him by the hand, and this allowed him to exercise a very fruitful ministry, for which once again, let us give fervent thanks to God.
The Gospel just now took us to Bethany where, as the evangelist notes, Lazarus, Martha and Mary offered a dinner for the Master (Jn 12,1). This banquest at the house of the three friends of Jesus is characterized by presentiments of imminent death: it is six days before Passsover; the suggestion from the traitor Judas; the response of Jesus which recalls a pious act of burial that is anticipated by Mary; the hint that they will not always have him with them; the proposal [by the Jews] to eliminate Lazarus, reflecting their desire to kill Jsus.
In this Gospel story, I wish to call attention to one gesture: Mary of Bethany took "costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair" (12,3).
Mary's gesture is the expression of great faith and love for the Lord: For her, it was not enough to wash the feet of the Master with water, but she anointed them with a great quantity of precious perfume which - as Judas would protest - could have been sold for 300 denarii.
She does not anoint the head, as was the custom, but the feet: Mary offers to Jesus the most costly thing she had with a gesture of profound devotion. Love does not calculate, it does not measure, it is not concerned with cost, it has no barriers - but it gives with joy, it only seeks the good of the other, it triumphs over pettiness, meanness, resentment and the closures that man sometimes carries in his heart.
Mary puts herself at the feet of Jesus in a humble attitude of service, as the Master himself would do at the Last Supper when - the fourth Gospel tells us - "he rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet" (Jn 13,4-5), so that, he said, "as I have done for you, you should also do" (v 15).
The rule of Jesus's community was that of love which knows how to serve up to the gift of one's life. And the perfume spread: "the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil" (Jn 12,3), the Evangelist tells us.
The meaning of Mary's gesture, which is a response to God's infinite love, was not lost to any of the guests. Every gesture of charity and authentic devotion to Christ does not remain a personal fact, it does not concern only the relationship between the individual and God, but it concerns the entire body of the Church. It is contagious - it spreads love, joy and light.
"He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him" (Jn 1,11). In contrast to Mary's action were the attitude and words of Judas, who, under the pretext of giving aid to the poor, hides the selfishness and falsity of the man who is closed up in himself, imprisoned by the greed of possession, who will not let himself be wrapped by the perfume of divine love.
Judas calculates what cannot be calculated; with his mean spirit, he intrudes into the space of love, of giving, of total dedication.
And Jesus, who until that moment, had remained silent, intervenes in favor of Mary's act: "Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial" (Jn 12,7).
Jesus understood that Mary had intuited the love of God, and indicates that now his 'hour' had come, the 'hour' when Love would find its supreme expression on the wood of the Cross. The Son of God would give himself so that man would have life, would descend to the abyss of death in order to bring man to the heights of God, and will not fear to humble himself "becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2,8).
St. Augustine, in the sermon where he comments on this Gospel passage, addresses urgently to each of us an invitation to enter this circle of love, imitating the gesture of Mary and concretely following him.
Augustine writes: "Every soul that wishes to be faithful should join Mary in anointing the feet of the Lord with precious perfume. Anoint the feet of Jesus: follow the footsteps of the Lord leading to a worthy life. Wipe his feet with your hair: If you have any surplus, give them to the poor, and you will have wiped his feet". (In Ioh. evang., 50, 6).
Dear brothers and sisters! The whole life of the Venerable John Paul II took place under the emblem of such charity, of the capacity to give himself generously, without reservations, without neasure, without calculation.
What motivated him was his love of Christ, to whom he had consecrated his life, a love that was super-abundant and unconditional. And precisely because he was increasingly close to God in love, he could make himself a fellow pilgrim to the man of today, diffusing through the world the perfume of God's love.
Whoever had the joy of meeting him and of becoming familiar with him could touch with the hand how alive in him was the certainty of "contemplating the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living", as we heard in the Responsorial Psalm (26.27,13) - a certainty that accompanied him throughout his existence and which was particularly manifested during the last stage of his pilgrimage on this earth.
Indeed, his progressive physical weakness never affected his rock-firm faith, his luminous hope and his fervent charity. He allowed himself to be consumed for Christ, for the Church, for the entire world. His was a suffering lived to the very end for love and with love.
In the homily on the 25th anniversary of his Pontificate, he confided that he heard loudly in his heart, at the moment he was elected Pope, Jesus's query to Peter: "Do you love me? Do you love me more than the others do...?" (Jn 21,15-16).
And he added: "Every day, that dialog between Jesus and Peter takes place in muy heart; in the spirit, which feels the benevolent look of the Risen Christ. He, though he knows mty human weakness, encourages me to reply trustingly as Peter did: 'Lord, you know everything: you know I love you' (Jn 21,17). And then, he asks me to take on the responsibility that he himself had entrusted to me" (Oct. 16, 2003).
These are words full of faith and love, the love of God that triumphs over everything.
In Polish, he said:
Finally, I wish to greet all the Poles who are present. You have gathered in large numbers at the tomb of the Venerable Servant of God with a special sentiment - as sons and daughters of the same land, who grew up in the same culture and spiritual tradition.
The life and the work of John Paul II, a great Pole, can ba reason of pride for you. But you must remember that this is also a great call to be faithful witnesses to faith, hope and love, which he taught us uninterruptedly.
Through the intercession of John Paul II, may the blessing of the Lord sustain you always.
He ended in Italian:
As we proceed with the Eucharistic celebration, preparing ourselves to live the glorious days of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord, let us entrust ourselves confidently - with the example of the Venerable John Paul II - to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, so that she may sustain us in the commitment to be, in every circumstance, tireless apostles of her divine Son and his merciful love. Amen!
Benedict honors John Paul
five years after his death
By FRANCES D'EMILIO
VATICAN CITY, March 28 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI hailed the legacy of John Paul II Monday five years after his death, while questions swirl over the late pontiff's record in combatting pedophile priests and whether a miracle needed for his sainthood really happened.
During an evening Mass in St. Peter's Basilica to pay tribute to the late pope, Benedict told pilgrims from John Paul's Polish homeland that his predecessor had "without interruption taught us to be faithful witnesses to faith, hope and love."
Krakow Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who for decades was John Paul's personal secretary, was among the prelates at the commemoration. Also attending was Cardinal Bernard Law, who after resigning as Boston archbishop in the sex abuse scandal which rocked his diocese, was put in charge of a prestigious Rome basilica by the late Pope.
The 84-year-old John Paul died April 2, 2005, after battling Parkinson's disease. The commemoration was early because April 2 this year falls on Good Friday, when Benedict will preside over Lenten services at the Vatican and at the Colosseum in Rome.
Immediately after John Paul's death, faithful began clamoring for his sainthood, and Benedict in December signed a decree proclaiming his predecessor "venerable" for his holy virtues.
At first, the inexplicable healing of a young French nun from Parkinson's disease had initially seemed like the miracle required for remarkably swift approval for beatification, the last formal step before canonization. The nun, who had prayed to John Paul for years, woke up one morning two months after his death, seemingly inexplicably cured of the progressively degenerative neurological disorder.
But a Polish newspaper recently reported that doubts had been cast about whether the nun might not have had Parkinson's at all. Without citing sources, Rzeczpospolita, one of Poland's most respected and dailies, said the Vatican had summoned new experts to scrutinize the case.
The Vatican's former head of its saint-making office, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, indicated two medical consultants might have had doubts.
According to the National Parkinson Foundation, an estimated 20 percent of patients thought to have the disease were found at autopsy not to have had it.
"Most movement disorders experts would agree that miracle cures of Parkinson or other movement disorders usually have a psychogenic component to the illness," the foundation's Dr. Michael S. Okun said when asked by e-mail by The AP about Parkinson patients.
While another possible miracle might be found from the many allegedly inexplicable healing experienced by those devoted to the late pope, a potentially more serious shadow has been cast on the beatification process. Intense scrutiny is being thrown on how the Vatican handled sex abuse cases from dioceses around the world, particularly an explosion of complaints from U.S. faithful, during John Paul's 26 year papacy.
The harsher look at the Vatican's policy on sex abuse has come as Benedict's own record on dealing with the problem is being scrutinized in his native Germany, when he was Munich archbishop, as well as his long tenure at the Vatican as John Paul's watchdog for purity in the Catholic church.
[Yeah right! After six weeks now, is it?, of huffing and puffing - and very likely, reward money we don't know of - all they have come up with so far are two cases, both tenuous at best and what in contact sport might be considered 'forcing', to pin some blame somehow on Joseph Ratzinger, or at the very least, cast doubt on his consistency.]
John Paul's transfer of Cardinal Law to St. Mary Major's, one of Rome's most storied basilicas, was seen by many abuse victims as rewarding, not punishing, the Boston cleric for a policy by which many molester priests were shuttled from parish to parish, instead of removed from contact with children.
And John Paul held up as a model, the rigorously conservative founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who was later revealed to have fathered a child and had molested seminarians.
The Vatican began investigating allegations against the Rev. Marcial Maciel of Mexico in the 1950s, but it wasn't until 2006, a year into Benedict's pontificate, that the Vatican instructed Maciel to lead a "reserved life of prayer and penance" in response to the abuse allegations — effectively removing him from power.
A Pole who was honoring John Paul in Monday evening's St. Peter's Basilica commemoration said she had no doubt that her late compatriot was "already a saint.
"I hope that he becomes a saint soon, because you feel that the years are going by," Magdalena Wolinska said. "As far as I'm concerned, they are holding back on the beatification, but not because of the sex scandal, but because of other reasons," she said, in a reference to the doubts about a miracle.
Fine time to bring up these things about John Paul II! Why didn't they do it last week, for instance, since after all, the Cardinal Law and Father Maciel cases always stood out like ulcerated thumbs! You don't bring up nasty things on the anniversary of his death, in a story about a solemn commemorative Mass. It's indecent.
And I am surprised they're actually taking on someone who is widely considered a saint already except for the formalities. Are they so desperate to 'damage' the Church that they would turn against JP2? And lose their favorite foil for that archvillain Joseph 'Luthor' Ratzinger?
Of course, this is one area where no one can possibly claim Benedict XVI is less meritorious than his predecessor. The Law and Maciel cases are certainly blots on a saint's copy book, but they're minor deductions in the broad sweep of his unique life and achievements. So he was not perfect, but who is?
As for the questioned miracle, perhaps the AP should also have looked up the French bishops' reply to the Polish newspaper's claim.
In any case, MSM really is really scraping the barrel for testimonials against Benedict XVI! The 'best' they have come with so far are the publicity-crazed and otherwise mad-as-a-rabid dog lowlife assassin-for-hire Ali Agca and that bitter hate-full has-been Sinead what's her name! I'm not including the lefties and atheists, the Dawkinses, Hitchenses and Andrew Sullivans who have joined Hans Kueng in the quagmire of unreason and whose lifeblood is pure cyanide, because all they do is slaver and froth in the mouth as if the cyanide is working on them rather than their targets!
MSM did not report at all on the Pope's encounter with at least 70,000 young people Thursday night in St. Peter's Square, but earlier in the day, they lavished reams of copy on the five or so demonstrators that the New York Times gifted with an all-expenses trip to Rome for the photo-op to match their contemptible but also pitiable Milwaukee malarkey. In the same way that they gave no numbers for the Palm Sunday crowd at St. Peter's because it was huge, compared to the what? 50 people? who demonstrated in London demanding the Pope's resignation! More mad dogs, mad Pavlov dogs conditioned by centuries of British anti-Popery and flaunting their abysmal ignorance to anyone who will listen - perhaps only the MSM who are so eager to be their pandering publicists!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/03/2010 23:11]