Remembering Pope John Paul II

Pope Spoke to the Masses by Speaking to Each One of Us

By Father Shane Tharp

I met Pope John Paul in 1995. While in the seminary, our New York classmates invited the rest of us to join them in welcoming the Holy Father during his most recent U.S. tour.  We gathered at Dunwoody, the archdiocesan seminary for New York.  We prayed Evening Prayer with the Holy Father leading us, not only as Shepherd of the Universal Church, but as a liturgical father as well. The seating was assigned randomly.  As it turned out, I was seated on the aisle.

Throughout that time of prayer, I turned to look at this man.  Only four years previously, I had been received into the Catholic Church.  To sit and pray with the visible head of the Church on earth - it was not something built into my life plans.  From time to time, I could see the Pope’s hands tremble.  I thought he must be exhausted.  Only later did the world discover the real source of that tremble, the onset of Parkinson’s disease.  “Why did the Holy Father come to Dunwoody?,” he asked us ironically.  He came to strengthen us, to encourage us, to remind us  “do not be afraid,” words that come to mind regularly in my priestly ministry.

At the conclusion of Vespers, the Holy Father shook hands with each of the seminarians that could reach him. I expected his hands to be thin, the hands of a scholar, the hands of a man who had never done any physical labor. The hand that met mine was the hand of every farmer I had ever known: thick and strong. He looked into my eyes and smiled a half-smile. I would like to believe he saw something of the future of the Church in the young men who were working to give away their lives for Christ. One of my classmates said, “It was amazing to see you kiss the Holy Father’s ring. You were transfigured.” It was true. An exultant, sweaty urgency glowed from my pores.  I touched St. Peter’s hands when I touched the Holy Father.

If you didn’t know anything of the Holy Father’s personal history, the behind-the-scenes man, you might have missed the depth and global scope of his vision and his work.  History perhaps will credit him for helping to sweep atheistic communism from the map.  The Church, through the next successor of Saint Peter, may even raise this man to the glories of the Altar. For these things, men will praise him meanwhile missing the foundation which made John Paul great.

The great events of history cannot happen unless great individuals make them happen.  Great individuals do not happen unless they discover the meaning for the whole of existence.  In short, praising the Holy Father for grandiose achievements hides the fact that those achievements are actually the fruits of individuals transformed by his faithfulness.  Because the Holy Father knew and proclaimed only one Gospel - that Christ became man, died and rose for us - each man knew he could stand up against every degrading ideology the world could serve up.  This is what we should praise him for: knowing the value of each individual, unrepeatable human person.  This is what changed me in my encounter with John Paul.

In hearing the story of his life, how John Paul was an actor, how death disintegrated his family at an early age, how totalitarian regimes were no political abstraction, how he was subjected to poverty, I heard the outlines of my own life. The unhappiness I saw in my life was paralleled.  John Paul, through the theological virtues, rose above it.  By cooperating with grace, he fell victim neither to the Scylla of despair nor the Charybdis of naive idealism.  I knew I could rise, too.  I could rise because despite the uncleared tangle of my personal history, I could see the paths rise from the underbrush, converge as they rose, and serve, mysteriously, to direct me to the One who made me.  John Paul is and was a witness to hope, a witness to never submitting to the terror of the Fall.

Only two other popes have received the honorific “the Great” attached to their names.  May he be the third.  John Paul, we love you and we’ll miss you.