A MEASURE OF GREATNESS On John Paul II's twenty-five-year papacy
Wilken, Robert Louis
A MEASURE OF GREATNESS The papacy of John Paul II: two assessments Robert Louis Wilken On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the election of John Paul II as pope, I am reminded of the words of...
...So much of the office of the papacy is taken up with words, with preaching and teaching, with greetings to pilgrims and delegations, statements on events happening around the globe, addresses to bishops or religious, that it is tempting to view the pope primarily as a teacher and administrator...
...Greatness is as mysterious as it is elusive, and we are too close to John Paul II to imagine how he will be remembered...
...Because our lives have intersected with the life of John Paul II, we are among those few...
...at Mass in his private chapel in the papal apartments...
...He has taught us that when we come together to pray, we are gathered in the presence of God...
...I always think of him foremost as a man of prayer...
...Yet the fire that I have seen break from his lips has been the flame of prayer...
...At one point earlier in his papacy, when encyclicals seemed to follow one another with mounting regularity, some wag quipped that it was perhaps time to start an "encyclical of the month" club...
...The office of the papacy is not simply sacramental and administrative and judicial and political, it is also an office of prayer...
...Suddenly I spied him in his white cassock, walking slowly and unaccompanied down the south aisle of the church...
...Though fully present at every action in the liturgy, in those moments where there is time for reflection, he appears visibly engaged in intense prayer...
...Yet amid the torrent of words there has always been the stillness and silence of prayer...
...They gush forth each day like a swollen mountain stream in spring...
...In it Spender speaks of those "Whose lovely ambition / Was that their lips, still touched with fire, / Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song...
...Indeed, this pope has been a man of words...
...Again and again, on television during his trip to the Holy Land when he asked for his breviary in the crypt of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem...
...Thomas, the deeper and more enduring thinker, is not...
...In the long history of the papacy there have been only two popes who earned the title "great," Leo in the fifth century and Gregory at the end of the sixth century...
...The first time I saw him up close was in the spring of 1996.1 was living in the Benedictine monastery of Sant'Anselmo in Rome, and on Ash Wednesday it is the custom of the monks to join with the Dominicans at Santa Sabina, some five hundred meters distant, for the Ash Wednesday liturgy...
...They were two quite different persons, and it is not at all clear why they rather than, say, Nicholas I in the ninth century or Gregory VII in the eleventh, came to be designated great...
...I do not know and I do not know whether John Paul II will be called John Paul the Great, whether he should be, or even what criteria one would use...
...Why is Basil, the older brother of Gregory of Nyssa, called great, when Gregory, a more accomplished theologian, is simply St...
...In the choir of the Church of Sant'Anselmo we awaited the pope's arrival with high excitement, and, shortly after 4 p.m., I heard rustling sounds at the rear of the church...
...He belongs in the company of "those who in their lives fought for life, / Who wore at their hearts the fire's center...
...At once I realized he was going to the side altar to pray before the Blessed Sacrament...
...It was a characteristic gesture, and it made an indelible impression on me...
...That will be the work of time and memory...
...As anyone living in Rome and reading L'Osservatore Romano knows, the sheer volume of words is overwhelming...
...If the heart does not pray, the tongue works in vain...
...A MEASURE OF GREATNESS The papacy of John Paul II: two assessments Robert Louis Wilken On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the election of John Paul II as pope, I am reminded of the words of Stephen Spender's poem, "I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great...
...By his example, John Paul II has directed our gaze towards the living God...
...Greatness, like holiness, is a rare and precious thing...
...and, most recently, in Slovakia, the pope has turned within himself and to God, seemingly oblivious of those around him...
...It begins with brief prayers at Sant'Anselmo and, after a procession through the streets of the Aventine Hill, continues at Santa Sabina...
...When I think of John Paul II's papacy, I always remember the saying over the north entrance of the Church of Sant'Anselmo: Si cor non oral, in vanum lingua laborat...
...As he prayed silently, he invited us to make our prayer more interior, and he directed the assembly away from the pomp and ceremony of a papal liturgy toward the object of our worship, the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...
...Yet on this occasion the pope had stepped outside the public ritual and, as the faithful watched and waited, he prayed to God as he would, it seemed, in the solitude of his private chapel...
...I also know that his lips have been "touched with fire...
...Peter in Rome...
...Gregory...
...For many, it is the lips that have taught, spoken words of comfort, and raised hopes ("Be Not Afraid") that will be remembered...
...He was not praying alone, though, and his prayer deepened our sense of community and helped us to focus our own prayer...
...John Paul II has never let us forget that, and his prayer has intensified our devotion...
...What I do know is that he has lit the darkening sky of the late twentieth century and the start of the new millennium with an unforgettable witness...
...Like others, I sometimes wonder why the pope has to speak, seemingly, on everything...
...In public liturgies, especially when there are huge crowds, the bishop is so much part of a communal rite that one is hardly aware of his internal prayer...
...Born of the sun, they traveled a short while toward the sun, / And left the vivid air signed with their honor...
...Greatness is never measured by a single standard...
...I peered into the nave expecting to see the Holy Father processing down the center aisle to the main altar, but he was not there...
...In the course of most human lifetimes there will have lived a great man or woman, or several, but few can say they lived when someone "truly great" sojourned among us...
...And why is Albert, the teacher of Thomas Aquinas, designated great when St...
...in liturgies in the piazza before the great basilica of St...
...it is unique, tailored to the singularity of each person...
...For more than ten minutes he prayed there alone and only afterward did he enter the apse of the church for brief public prayers before beginning the procession to Santa Sabina...
Vol. 130 • October 2003 • No. 17
