This past Mercy Sunday, Pope Francis canonized two of my favorite popes---Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II. These saints, like Pope Francis, are examples to me of bishops who beautifully exemplified the joy of evangelization among God’s people. They were courageous in their ministry and always allowed the limitations of their humanity to display the limitlessness of God’s presence and love.
I am posting a reflection on Saint John Paul II on the occasion of his canonization. It is based on a homily I gave on the Thursday of the Second Week of Easter in 2005---the week following his death on Mercy Sunday.
God bless,
+ Bishop Michael F. Olson
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| Saint John Paul II |
First Reading from the Mass for the Thursday of the Second Week of Easter.
Acts 5:27-33
When the court officers had brought the Apostles in
and made them stand before the Sanhedrin,
the high priest questioned them,
"We gave you strict orders did we not,
to stop teaching in that name.
Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching
and want to bring this man's blood upon us."
But Peter and the Apostles said in reply,
"We must obey God rather than men.
The God of our ancestors raised Jesus,
though you had him killed by hanging him on a tree.
God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior
to grant Israel repentance and forgiveness of sins.
We are witnesses of these things,
as is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him."
When they heard this,
they became infuriated and wanted to put them to death.
We see a different image of Saint Peter in today's reading than we did in the Gospel as read during Holy Week. Saint Peter, who denied Christ three times in fear, now professes Him with courage in the face of danger. The Grace of Faith has transformed Saint Peter's weakness into profound courage.
In 1815, after the destruction of war brought on by Napoleon in Europe, the Congress of Vienna divided the Duchy of Warsaw (modern day Poland) into three parts: one to be ruled by the Emperor of Austria, the second to be ruled by the King of Prussia, and the third to be ruled by the Tsar of Russia. Between 1830 and 1832, there occurred a series of Nationalist uprisings in Poland against these monarchs. The native Polish hierarchy supported these uprisings and the nationalist sentiment of Catholic Poland especially in the face of the Lutheran King of Prussia and the Russian Orthodox Tsar.
The Emperor of Austria pressured Pope Gregory XVI, then the successor of Peter, to reprimand the Polish hierarchy. The Successor of Peter sent the encyclical, Cum Primum to the Polish hierarchy admonishing them to instruct their faithful that it was their responsibility to be obedient to the sovereignty of the Austrian Emperor, the Prussian King, and the Russian Tsar. Pope Gregory XVI had himself put down revolts in the Papal States with the help of Austrian troops so he feared the loss of Papal Sovereignty as temporal ruler of Rome. The Pope cited in that encyclical letter Sacred Scripture to reinforce the Christian virtue of civil obedience as directed to the Austrian Emperor, the Prussian King, and the Russian Tsar. This became known colloquially in Poland as the "Thrice Denial of Peter".
These events prompted the Polish nationalist and poet, Julius Slowacki, to write in 1833 these prophetic words from his exile in Paris:
"God has made ready the throne for a Slav Pope, He will sweep out the churches and make them clean within, God shall be revealed, clear as day, in the creative world.
This Pope will not take flight at cannon's roar and saber thrust
But--brave as God Himself-- stand and give fight counting the world as dust."
The Slav Pope, that Successor of Peter was elected 145 years later in 1978. He was Karol Wojtyla, now known to us as Saint John Paul II.
This poem, and the national experience that it expresses, helped to shape the man who became Saint John Paul II. He was very aware of the weakness of Peter having experienced that previously in his national identity as a Pole as captured by the words of Slowacki. He was also aware, in his vocation as the Successor of Peter, of his need to be obedient to Christ alone in order to perfect that weakness. Saint John Paul II often spoke of his responsibility to be obedient to the Gospel of Christ-that the Pope was not an earthly sovereign but the Vicar of Christ, and the Servant of the Servants of God. Saint John Paul II was obedient to the Gospel and could not change what is essential to the Gospel despite the criticism and attacks that were leveled at him because of his fidelity. It is this same obedience that prompted him to be able to ask forgiveness for sins committed in the name of the Church, just as Saint Peter asked forgiveness of Jesus for his denial made in fear early on that first Good Friday. It is this understanding of obedience that prompted Saint John Paul II to preach that obedience should never be used as an excuse to commit evil in the name of any religion thereby perverting faith into an ideology. This obedience is very much like the humble obedience exemplified by Saint Peter after the death and Resurrection of Christ: the courageous obedience displayed in today's first reading.
The fruit of this obedience in faith of Saint John Paul II was his unwavering courage. Saint John Paul II's first decision as Pope was to be called by the name John Paul in order to continue the mission of his immediate predecessors Saint John XXIII and Pope Paul VI (and implicitly Pope John Paul I) towards the renewal of the Church initiated by Vatican II. As Saint John XXIII opened the windows of the Church for the winds to blow through, and Pope Paul VI suffered to keep the windows open against the gusts and to keep clear the Church's authentic vision in the midst of the ensuing obscurity caused by the cloud of dust kicked up by the wind, Saint John Paul II continued this mission as he swept out the cloud of dust and its obscurity to make clean the Church from within so that its Gospel of Jesus might be proclaimed anew to all people inside and outside of the Church. This mission is entrusted to us. It is the mission of Christ Risen that conquers all fear and vanquishes sin through mercy.
