HOMILY OF POPE BENEDICT XVI
BEATIFICATION OF POPE JOHN PAUL II
ST PETER'S SQUARE
BEATIFICATION OF POPE JOHN PAUL II
ST PETER'S SQUARE
1 MAY 2011
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Six
years ago we gathered in this Square to celebrate the funeral of Pope
John Paul II. Our grief at his loss was deep, but even greater was our
sense of an immense grace which embraced Rome and the whole world: a
grace which was in some way the fruit of my beloved predecessor’s
entire life, and especially of his witness in suffering. Even then we
perceived the fragrance of his sanctity, and in any number of ways
God’s People showed their veneration for him. For this reason, with all
due respect for the Church’s canonical norms, I wanted his cause of
beatification to move forward with reasonable haste. And now the
longed-for day has come; it came quickly because this is what was
pleasing to the Lord: John Paul II is blessed!
I would like to
offer a cordial greeting to all of you who on this happy occasion have
come in such great numbers to Rome from all over the world – cardinals,
patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches, brother bishops and
priests, official delegations, ambassadors and civil authorities,
consecrated men and women and lay faithful, and I extend that greeting
to all those who join us by radio and television.
Today
is the Second Sunday of Easter, which Blessed John Paul II entitled
Divine Mercy Sunday. The date was chosen for today’s celebration
because, in God’s providence, my predecessor died on the vigil of this
feast. Today is also the first day of May, Mary’s month, and the
liturgical memorial of Saint Joseph the Worker. All these elements
serve to enrich our prayer, they help us in our pilgrimage through time
and space; but in heaven a very different celebration is taking place
among the angels and saints! Even so, God is but one, and one too is
Christ the Lord, who like a bridge joins earth to heaven. At this
moment we feel closer than ever, sharing as it were in the liturgy of
heaven.
"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (Jn 20:29).
In today’s Gospel Jesus proclaims this beatitude: the beatitude of
faith. For us, it is particularly striking because we are gathered to
celebrate a beatification, but even more so because today the one
proclaimed blessed is a Pope, a Successor of Peter, one who was called
to confirm his brethren in the faith. John Paul II is blessed because
of his faith, a strong, generous and apostolic faith. We think at once
of another beatitude: "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh
and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven" (Mt 16:17).
What did our heavenly Father reveal to Simon? That Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of the living God. Because of this faith, Simon becomes
Peter, the rock on which Jesus can build his Church. The eternal
beatitude of John Paul II, which today the Church rejoices to proclaim,
is wholly contained in these sayings of Jesus: "Blessed are you,
Simon" and "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to
believe!" It is the beatitude of faith, which John Paul II also received
as a gift from God the Father for the building up of Christ’s Church.
Our
thoughts turn to yet another beatitude, one which appears in the Gospel
before all others. It is the beatitude of the Virgin Mary, the Mother
of the Redeemer. Mary, who had just conceived Jesus, was told by Saint
Elizabeth: "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a
fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord" (Lk 1:45). The
beatitude of faith has its model in Mary, and all of us rejoice that
the beatification of John Paul II takes place on this first day of the
month of Mary, beneath the maternal gaze of the one who by her faith
sustained the faith of the Apostles and constantly sustains the faith
of their successors, especially those called to occupy the Chair of
Peter. Mary does not appear in the accounts of Christ’s resurrection,
yet hers is, as it were, a continual, hidden presence: she is the Mother
to whom Jesus entrusted each of his disciples and the entire
community.
In particular we can see how Saint John and Saint Luke
record the powerful, maternal presence of Mary in the passages
preceding those read in today’s Gospel and first reading. In the
account of Jesus’ death, Mary appears at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25),
and at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles she is seen in the
midst of the disciples gathered in prayer in the Upper Room (Acts 1:14).
Today’s
second reading also speaks to us of faith. Saint Peter himself, filled
with spiritual enthusiasm, points out to the newly-baptized the reason
for their hope and their joy. I like to think how in this passage, at
the beginning of his First Letter, Peter does not use language of
exhortation; instead, he states a fact. He writes: "you rejoice", and he adds: "you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls" (1 Pet 1:6,
8-9). All these verbs are in the indicative, because a new reality has
come about in Christ’s resurrection, a reality to which faith opens the
door. "This is the Lord’s doing", says the Psalm (118:23), and "it is
marvelous in our eyes", the eyes of faith.
Dear brothers and
sisters, today our eyes behold, in the full spiritual light of the
risen Christ, the beloved and revered figure of John Paul II. Today his
name is added to the host of those whom he proclaimed saints and
blesseds during the almost twenty-seven years of his pontificate,
thereby forcefully emphasizing the universal vocation to the heights of
the Christian life, to holiness, taught by the conciliar Constitution
on the Church Lumen Gentium.
All of us, as members of the people
of God – bishops, priests, deacons, laity, men and women religious –
are making our pilgrim way to the heavenly homeland where the Virgin
Mary has preceded us, associated as she was in a unique and perfect way
to the mystery of Christ and the Church. Karol Wojtyła took part in
the Second Vatican Council, first as an auxiliary Bishop and then as
Archbishop of Kraków. He was fully aware that the Council’s decision to
devote the last chapter of its Constitution on the Church to Mary meant
that the Mother of the Redeemer is held up as an image and model of
holiness for every Christian and for the entire Church. This was the
theological vision which Blessed John Paul II discovered as a young man
and subsequently maintained and deepened throughout his life. A vision
which is expressed in the scriptural image of the crucified Christ
with Mary, his Mother, at his side. This icon from the Gospel of John
(19:25-27) was taken up in the episcopal and later the papal
coat-of-arms of Karol Wojtyła: a golden cross with the letter "M" on
the lower right and the motto "Totus tuus", drawn from the
well-known words of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort in which
Karol Wojtyła found a guiding light for his life: "Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria – I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart" (Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 266).
In
his Testament, the new Blessed wrote: "When, on 16 October 1978, the
Conclave of Cardinals chose John Paul II, the Primate of Poland,
Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, said to me: ‘The task of the new Pope will
be to lead the Church into the Third Millennium’". And the Pope added:
"I would like once again to express my gratitude to the Holy Spirit for
the great gift of the Second Vatican Council, to which, together with
the whole Church – and especially with the whole episcopate – I feel
indebted. I am convinced that it will long be granted to the new
generations to draw from the treasures that this Council of the
twentieth century has lavished upon us. As a Bishop who took part in
the Council from the first to the last day, I desire to entrust this
great patrimony to all who are and will be called in the future to put
it into practice. For my part, I thank the Eternal Shepherd, who has
enabled me to serve this very great cause in the course of all the years
of my Pontificate". And what is this "cause"? It is the same one that
John Paul II presented during his first solemn Mass in Saint Peter’s
Square in the unforgettable words: "Do not be afraid! Open, open wide
the doors to Christ!"
What the newly-elected Pope asked of everyone, he
was himself the first to do: society, culture, political and economic
systems he opened up to Christ, turning back with the strength of a
titan – a strength which came to him from God – a tide which appeared
irreversible. By his witness of faith, love and apostolic courage,
accompanied by great human charisma, this exemplary son of Poland
helped believers throughout the world not to be afraid to be called
Christian, to belong to the Church, to speak of the Gospel. In a word:
he helped us not to fear the truth, because truth is the guarantee of
liberty. To put it even more succinctly: he gave us the strength to
believe in Christ, because Christ is Redemptor hominis, the Redeemer of man.
This was the theme of his first encyclical, and the thread which runs though all the others.
When
Karol Wojtyła ascended to the throne of Peter, he brought with him a
deep understanding of the difference between Marxism and Christianity,
based on their respective visions of man. This was his message: man is
the way of the Church, and Christ is the way of man. With this message,
which is the great legacy of the Second Vatican Council and of its
"helmsman", the Servant of God Pope Paul VI, John Paul II led the
People of God across the threshold of the Third Millennium, which thanks
to Christ he was able to call "the threshold of hope". Throughout the
long journey of preparation for the great Jubilee he directed
Christianity once again to the future, the future of God, which
transcends history while nonetheless directly affecting it. He rightly
reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense
faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress.
He restored to
Christianity its true face as a religion of hope, to be lived in
history in an "Advent" spirit, in a personal and communitarian
existence directed to Christ, the fullness of humanity and the
fulfillment of all our longings for justice and peace.
Finally,
on a more personal note, I would like to thank God for the gift of
having worked for many years with Blessed Pope John Paul II. I had known
him earlier and had esteemed him, but for twenty-three years,
beginning in 1982 after he called me to Rome to be Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I was at his side and came
to revere him all the more. My own service was sustained by his
spiritual depth and by the richness of his insights.
His example of
prayer continually impressed and edified me: he remained deeply united
to God even amid the many demands of his ministry. Then too, there was
his witness in suffering: the Lord gradually stripped him of everything,
yet he remained ever a "rock", as Christ desired. His profound
humility, grounded in close union with Christ, enabled him to continue
to lead the Church and to give to the world a message which became all
the more eloquent as his physical strength declined. In this way he
lived out in an extraordinary way the vocation of every priest and
bishop to become completely one with Jesus, whom he daily receives and
offers in the Eucharist.
Blessed
are you, beloved Pope John Paul II, because you believed! Continue, we
implore you, to sustain from heaven the faith of God’s people. Amen.
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