BISHOP'S COMMENTS

Eulogy for pope

BY BISHOP HOWARD J. HUBBARD

My dear Sisters and Brothers,

Today we join with Catholics and countless others throughout our Diocese and world in giving thanks for the extraordinary life and ministry of Pope John Paul II and in praying for the repose of his noble soul.

It is fitting, I think, that Our Holy Father was called to eternal life during the week when we celebrate the Easter Feast which puts the reality of death into perspective. For Jesus, by his own Passover from death unto life has revealed to us that death is not the end of life, not the end of human existence, but rather a transition between two stages of life: life here on earth where we first learn of our eternal destiny and through our love and service prepare to meet our Maker; and life in heaven when the sufferings and troubles of this life are banished forever and where we come to to experience that eternal joy, love and peace that Jesus has promised to those who hope and believe in him. For Jesus said "I am the resurrection and the Life and those who hope and believe in me will never die."

And Jesus was not merely content with proclaiming this mystery of death unto life but testified to its validity by the example of his own life. For Jesus is the one who brought eternal life into the world by dying on the Cross of Calvary, by being himself buried in the earth for 3 days and, then, by rising gloriously on Easter Sunday morn heralding the triumph of life over death.

Our faith as Christians, then, is founded on a paradox: the paradox of death leading to life; the paradox of suffering leading to glory; the paradox of defeat and failure leading to victory.

And Pope John Paul II witnessed to this central message of our Christian faith throughout his 59 years as a priest and bishop, the last 26 years of which serving as the Supreme shepherd in our Church. Indeed, it was in the past few years, as his body was plagued by debilitating Parkinson’s disease and showed so visibly the ravages of age and infirmity that he offered a most powerful witness to the role of pain, suffering the Cross and ultimately death in the Christian life. At a time when the world seeks to shun suffering by utilizing prescription drugs and the latest medical technologies and to deny death by wearing the cosmetic mask which the funeral director’s makeup and embalming fluid offer, Pope John Paul II embraced these harsh realities head on, and showed that they are an integral and unavoidable part of our pilgrimage here on earth, not to be feared but to be accepted willingly and even joyfully as the inevitable condition for entrance into eternal life.

And so it is with the hope and promise of the Resurrection that we gather today to remember and rejoice in the life and ministry of Pope John Paul II who unquestionably was one of the most extraordinary popes in the 2000 year history of the papacy. I would venture to say that over the past quarter of a century there is no public figure who was more well known, loved and revered than Pope John Paul II.

Reflecting on John Paul’s 26 years of apostolic service as the Supreme Pontiff in the Roman Catholic Church, the third longest in the history of papacy, there are many sterling images of this remarkable spiritual leader which come to mind.

The first is that of Evangelist - John Paul II was the most traveled Pope in history, logging in some 572 days on the road, which works out to 1 year and 7 months. He has visited 129 countries, celebrating the Eucharist and meeting with people in a myriad of settings: cathedrals, basilicas, shrines, parish churches, stadiums, parks, piazzas, racetracks, etc. His message was always focused on one central theme: Jesus Christ is the savior of the world, the light of the nations, the same "yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrew 13-8).

He had a particular rapport with young people, and my own favorite memories of Pope John Paul II are his bantering with the youth at Madison Square Garden in 1979 and drawing strength from them at World Youth Day in Denver in 1993 and Toronto in 2002. These were truly electric moments, and young people responded to him like a spiritual rock star.

Teacher

In addition to the thousands of homilies, allocutions to various clergy, religious, lay and ecumenical or interfaith groups, ad limina addresses, papal audiences and Angelus talks, Pope John Paul II authored 14 major encyclicals and several books which will be a permanent part of his legacy to the Catholic Church.

John Paul’s teaching role was also reflected in his oversight of the revised Code of Canon Law (1983), in the creation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) and in the development of formational guidelines for priests, deacons, religious and those exercising the ever expanding lay apostolate. But perhaps Pope John Paul’s teaching role was most evident and poignant in the simple yet extraordinary gesture of forgiveness he extended in a prison cell to his would be assassin Ali Aga.

He also taught by having the humility and courage to apologize for the Church’s failures – in condemning Galileo, through its excesses in the Crusades, in trampling upon the rights of Native Americans, in expelling the Jews from Spain, in creating the poisonous soil for the Holocaust and in responding too slowly to the sexual abuse crisis on the part of the Church’s clergy.

Diplomat and Advocate for Human Rights

Throughout his pontificate, John Paul II met constantly with world leaders and was an unrelenting apostle of peace. For the past quarter century, he was the foremost exponent of human rights in the world, insisting that these rights rest not on human laws but on the transcendental nature and destiny of every human being.

This firm commitment to foster human solidarity undoubtedly was influenced by his own personal experience as a young man under the tyranny of Nazi-occupied Poland. As President George Bush said during his 2003 visit to Poland, "Karol Wojtyla saw the swastika flag flying over the rampart of Wawel Castle. He shared the suffering of his people and was put into forced labor. From this priest’s perspective and faith came a vision: that every human person must be treated with dignity, because every person is known and loved by God."

This unswerving conviction led the Holy Father to advocate vigorously for peace with justice in the Mid-east, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Nicaragua, East Timor and other troubled spots that could be cited. John Paul continually emphasized, as evidenced by his Peace Gatherings with leaders of world religions at Assisi, that "humanity is called to mobilize its best energies so that love will prevail over hatred, peace over war, truth over lies and forgiveness over revenge."

But nowhere were the Pope’s efforts more successful that in Eastern Europe through his resistance to communism and his support of the solidarity movement in his native Poland. Commenting on the fall of the Soviet Empire with hardly a shot fired, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear who was the one responsible, "Nothing that happened in Eastern Europe," Gorbachev said, "would have happened without the Polish Pope."

Defender of Life

 Pope John Paul II spent his entire pontificate boldly proclaiming the inviolability of human life. In 1979 during his first pastoral visit to the United States, standing on the mall in Washington, DC, amidst the symbols of U.S. institutional power, the Pope called upon all Americans "to stand up for life." Throughout his reign he never hesitated to declare the right to life in the presence of heads of state, power brokers and the arbiters of national and international social policy.

The Pope’s 1995 Encyclical The Gospel of Life is filled with uncompromising language about the culture of death which poses "an immense threat to life; not only to the life of individuals, but also to that of civilization itself." Hence, John Paul II reminded us constantly that "human life is sacred at every stage and in every situation; it is an indivisible good." To stand with God is to stand for life, and, therefore, to stand against whatever destroys life be it poverty, abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia or all of those ills which undermine respect for life: racism, sexism, ageism, terrorism, xenophobia and homophobia.

Promoter of Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialog

 John Paul II labored tirelessly to remedy the scandal of Christian disunity. His high profile meetings with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and other spiritual heads of various Christian denominations are but the public face of the Holy Father’s commitment to bring to fulfillment that oneness among his followers for which Jesus prayed so fervently on the night before he suffered and died. Under the Pope’s leadership there were numerous ecumenical dialogs with our sister churches, perhaps the most notable being that with the Lutheran community which resulted in the resolution of the theological misunderstanding concerning justification that launched the Protestant Reformation. Less successful was the Pope’s repeated initiatives to bring about a greater rapport with the Eastern Orthodox Churches, but it was not for lack of desire and effort on his part.

In his remarkable encyclical "Ut Unum Sint", "That they all may be one". Pope John Paul II took the unprecedented step of inviting ecumenical dialog about the nature, scope and exercise of the Petrine ministry, considered by some to be the greatest obstacle to Christian unity.

Undoubtedly borne of the World War II experience of the Holocaust and his personal friendships in boyhood, no one did more to heal the animosity between Christians and Jews and, specifically, the Roman Catholic Church and Judaism than John Paul II. He was the first Pope to visit the Jewish synagogue in Rome, calling the Jewish people "Our elder brothers." In 1993 he gave formal Vatican recognition to the State of Israel and launched both a study of the church’s role in the Holocaust and the development of guidelines designed to incorporate into the church’s catechetical texts teaching about this shameful tragedy and the anti-Semitism which contributed to it.

The Pope’s commitment to improved relations between the church and Judaism is epitomized by two scenes during his pilgrimage to Israel in the year millennium 2000. The first is that of the frail pontiff bent in silent prayer at the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial. Obviously moved and pained by this vivid reminder of the unspeakable "Shoah" which this monument represents, the Pope would say later, "No one can ever forget or ignore what happened. No one can dismiss its scale." Rather the Pope noted the Nazi attempt to exterminate European Jews was a tragedy that "burned itself into our souls."

The second scene is that of the stooped pontiff standing before the Western Wall and placing his trembling hand upon that 2,000 year old structure, as Jews have done for centuries. In accord with Jewish practice, he left a prayer written on a piece of paper in a crevice between the stones…the prayer was one he had recited earlier that month in the Vatican, asking God’s forgiveness for Christians who have "caused these children of yours to suffer."

Rabbi Michael Melchior, a member of the Israeli Cabinet, who welcomed the Pope to the Wall stated that the Pope’s visit confirmed the commitment of the Catholic Church "to end an era of hatred, humiliation and persecution of the Jewish people."

It should be noted that Pope John Paul II was vigorous as well in his outreach to Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims. In particular he went to great lengths to assure the Islamic community of the church’s great respect for their religious history, traditions and spirituality and that the political problems in the Mid-east and other world hot spots where Muslims predominate in society are not rooted in the desire of Christians to proselytize or to destroy the Islamic faith. To underscore this point, John Paul became the first pope to visit a Muslim mosque.

Saint Maker

Pope John Paul II canonized almost 500 people, as many as all other popes combined. Cardinal Jose Saravia Martins, the emeritus Prefect of the Congregation for Saints, offered three reasons for John Paul’s saint-making proclivity: his desire to remind the faithful of the universal call to holiness; to present local churches with models of holiness from their own cultures and to promote the "ecumenism of holiness." The common experience of martyrdom in the twentieth century, for example, can be a powerful force in bringing Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers together.

Collaborating with Bishops

I can attest personally to the Pope’s fraternal solicitude toward his brother bishops. As bishops from throughout the world made their ad limina visits to the Holy See, every 5 years, John Paul II devoted great time and attention to every bishop, meeting with each personally for 20 to 30 minutes, concelebrating the Eucharist with us in his private chapel; inviting us in groups of 5 to 8 to dine with him, breaking the tradition that popes eat alone, and giving each group of bishops a fraternal address on some dimension of the church’s life. These personal encounters were a source of great inspiration and affirmation. What is amazing to me is that with over 3,000 bishops worldwide, our Holy Father was able to make each feel very unique, important and special, whether he be an auxiliary bishop in some small third world country or the cardinal archbishop of the largest archdiocese in the world.

This solidarity and collaboration between the Bishop of Rome and bishops throughout the world was reflected tangibly in the bi-annual world synods of bishops and various regional synods of bishops where the Pope took an active role in addressing the pastoral, cultural, administrative and spiritual concerns of the members of the Episcopal College.

Man of Holiness and Prayer

Hanging in my room at the Cathedral rectory, is a striking photograph of the newly elected Pope John Paul II kneeling in prayer. He looks young, strong and robust, in sharp contrast to the frail and infirm man of the past few years for whom the assassination attempt, the burdens of office and the ravages of age and illness had taken a severe toll. What remained the same, however, was the sense of inner peace and serenity John Paul II radiated. He was a man who devoted quality time each day to prayer. I’ve observed him at the predieux in his private chapel, in the Apostolic Palace engaged in deep meditation, undeterred by the concelebrants and others who gathered daily to offer the Eucharist with him.

So many of his homilies and addresses were sprinkled with references to the centrality of prayer in the Christian life and to the importance of meditating upon Christ’s life, especially the role the cross played in Jesus’ salvific journey among us.

Certainly Pope John Paul II knew the cross, from the horrors of World War II to the neurological disease that imprisoned his body over the past decade. But he kept forging on with an indomitable spirit, which was rooted in his own prayerful spirituality and his desire to teach by example how to bear the mystery of the cross in one’s life. Holding a special place in his spirituality was Mary, the Mother of Jesus, to whom he dedicated his pontificate and to whose intercession he attributed his miraculous recovery from his assassin’s bullet. It is fitting then, that we celebrate John Paul’s completion of His earthly journey on this Divine Mercy Sunday which the Pope himself established to recall the role of Mary in God’s plan of salvation and her continued importance in the Christian life.

So today as we commend this holy man, this man for the ages that God whom he loved and served so well, let us resolve to honor his memory by our fidelity to his teaching and witness and by our own commitment to a culture of life, to social justice, to human rights, to ecumenism and interfaith tolerance and to holiness of life.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.

(This is the full version of the Bishop's eulogy for Pope John Paul II. To view the edited version as it appeared in The Evangelist's 4/7/05 print edition, click here.)

(4/7/05)