Johannis Paulus Magnus
Novak, Michael
SPECIAL EDITORIAL MICHAEL NOVA K Johannis Paulus Magnus APRIL 8—THE RAIN IS FALLING NOW IN ROME, SiX hours after the funeral of John Paul the Great. The rain is cold, and it is...
...The throbs of love and loss beat on relentlessly...
...My sister stood in line 16 hours, all night long, and hundreds of thousands did that, and much more...
...they shouted...
...The church points to saints as a reliable way for us to live the Gospels in our own lives...
...Hundreds of millions loved this man...
...We are not ourselves alone...
...Saint right away...
...I wished I could cry...
...The rain is cold, and it is lashing the trees outside the window of my hotel, near the Villa Borghese...
...God lived in him, he lived in God...
...The crowds at his funeral told us why they love 4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2005him...
...John Paul the Great was in a humble and ordinary way a very great saint...
...The love I feel is by no means different from that of all those millions who journeyed from great distances these last few days and over enormous physical obstacles of bone-aching fatigue...
...When the pinewood coffin was lifted for the last time, many reluctant hands began to wave goodbye, and the 26-year-old cheer, "JOHN PAUL II...
...Funny, witty, loving, joshing, brave, outspoken, intelligent, profound, exceedingly full of love (as if drawing down on God's own love endlessly), and above all simply possessed by God—that is how he was holy...
...Christ struggles to live in us...
...Saint, saint, saint...
...John Paul II was one of the most powerful examples of what Christ looks like in daily life that we have seen in many generations—maybe many centuries—and his life as Pope was not the easiest...
...It would be easier...
...This is the mystical part of Catholicism...
...The only tragedy, the great novelist Leon Bloy wrote a century ago, is not to have become a saint...
...In this case, God's people pointed out this saint: "We want to live like him," they in effect cried out...
...Peter's and disappearing inside the great carved doors of the basilica...
...He could bend over motionless and rapt for long stretches of time, so still and so tangibly in God's presence...
...S P E C I A L E D I T O R I A L MICHAEL NOVA K Johannis Paulus Magnus APRIL 8—THE RAIN IS FALLING NOW IN ROME, SiX hours after the funeral of John Paul the Great...
...A cry which we may never hear again...
...To watch him pray was to be in awe of how he also lived in the other world, at the same time as he loved and enjoyed this world of ours...
...rose throatily from a million hearts...
...Responding to the chants of the young, he used to chant in mock mimicry: John Paul II He loves you...
...During Mass, millions shared poignant glances up at the third floor windows of his now empty apartment, at which he will not ever again appear, with blessing and smile and something to make children laugh—like doves that will not leave his room, fly back inside, want to stay with him...
...He sailed against every prevailing wind—in 1979 against Communism, and after 1989, against all the sources of division, trivial pursuit, and meaningless distraction in our allegedly secular world...
...It was his holiness...
...Santo, santo, santo...
...The week of his funeral we all tried through tears to love him back...
...That is why he was so approachable and so much in love with all of us...
...And "Santo subito...
...And tried to imitate, from afar, his longing for holiness...
...Technically, a saint is one the church singles out as having lived in Christ and Christ in her, or him...
...From our slumbers, he awakened us...
...But the dull sorrow in one's heart, the stabs of pain, do not wash away...
...Nearly all signs of the almost 4 million mourners—the empty bottles left behind, the cardboard on which some slept in the streets, the wrappers from ham and cheese sandwiches—are being cleansed away...
...I could not stop myself from blowing it a kiss goodbye...
...A saint is, as far as humans can be penetrated by Christ, becoming slowly "another Christ," a vessel of Christ's continuing action in history...
...Why did we love him so...
...At the end, I had a clear view of the coffin being borne across the inner porch of St...
Vol. 38 • May 2005 • No. 4
