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John Paul the Beloved

by Susie Lloyd in Faith on Wednesday, May 04, 2011 6:00 AM

Even before Pope John Paul II’s death, the faithful began clamoring to name our recently departed Holy Father “John Paul the Great.”

The Great is a title only bequeathed to three popes thus far — Leo I, Gregory I, and Nicholas I. I don’t know what all goes into determining whether a pope is worthy of The Great. That is for the authorities to decide.

Yet the vox populi has spoken — shouted — Santo subito! (Saint now!) Their cry rose iup from St. Peter’s. We echoed it from our living room.

John Paul, saint. All of his accomplishments, even his greatness, pales before this — the presence of Christ in him. It is this that the people have recognized. It is this that has made him John Paul, the Beloved. This is how people have written his name indelibly in history.

“John Paul II, we love you!”

I chanted in Montreal in 1984, in Rome in 1987, and then many more times over the months I spent as a college student in the Eternal City.

I once waited hours for an aisle seat at a Wednesday audience. When he started coming my way, I was suddenly crushed by three girls — latecomers. They formed a tripod and used my shoulder for balance. But it didn’t matter. He was coming. Papa was coming.

I was too embarrassed to say it, but I mouthed, “I love you.” Like the woman in the crowd who reached out to Jesus, hoping to go unnoticed, I touched his hand. He looked at me as if to say, “Who touched me?”

Then in Cologne, I saw my Papa again. He was to beatify Edith Stein, the Carmelite, philosopher, and Jewish victim of the Nazis. As he rode by, I wondered: Did he know me?

He knew. He knew me because he knew the young. My generation was the first post-Christian generation — the first generation after the cultural revolution of the ‘60s. We were the children who walked in darkness, who had no memory of better times.

To us, he came out. He came out to the world, but especially to us who so badly needed a visible Christ. He came to redeem the captives. He ate with sinners. He fed us sinners. He picked up children; he embraced them. He reminded us that God made us good and calls us to holiness.

We chanted, “John Paul II, we love you!”

He answered back, “John Paul II, he loves you!”

My husband and I returned to Rome in 1998. We were no longer the youthful future of the Church. We were the Church present, and parents of then four girls. They were the future of the Church.

We cheered and also we wept to see our father grown old. He rode by; I again felt shy. What if he looks at me? Will he know me?

He knew. He knew us all, Catholics, of the Church’s future, present, and past. To those who were strangers — our separated brethren who proclaim Christ, Jews, pagans, even the man who tried to kill him — he tried to make friends.

In his last agony, he wrote this message for the faithful, and yes, for the unfaithful too. It was to be read on Mercy Sunday, the Sunday following his death:

“It is love which converts hearts and gives peace to all of humanity, which today seems so lost and dominated by the power of evil, selfishness, and fear: Our resurrected Lord gives us His love, which forgives, reconciles, and reopens the soul to hope.”

John Paul the Beloved, you brought us love; you brought us hope. You brought us Christ. We will neer forget you.

—Senior writer Susie Lloyd blogs at Susie Lloyd—Unedited. This column originally appeared in Faith & Family magazine.

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