Pope John Paul II now belongs to history. He has gone to God. In time, theologians will debate the themes of his pontificate. Human rights activists will champion his struggle for the freedom of the oppressed people of the world.
And, Catholics around the globe will remember a man whom they believe loved them.
But the future invariably belongs to the youth. And so, the legacy of the Holy Father is necessarily bound up with our own stories of faith.
In 1995, he convened the largest outdoor gathering in human history in the context of an international meeting with us in Manila, Philippines. In 2000, we journeyed to Rome in order to meet with him during the course of the Great Jubilee of the Incarnation. Our meeting in Rome constituted the largest gathering in European history up to that point.
Indeed, for more than two decades, Pope John Paul II traveled the world seeking us out. He met with us on every corner of the globe and at every step of his pontificate. It was fitting, then, that a little while before he died, he remembered us. With his voice already failing, he said of the youth gathered outside: “I have looked for you. You have come to me. And I thank you.”
John Paul never tired of imbuing that search with a spirited challenge. He dared us to become leaven for our societies and bright oases of hope for our world. As he told us in 2002, “You are the men and women of tomorrow. The future is in your hearts and in your hands.” Throughout his papal ministry, he encouraged us to refuse to give in to mediocrity or to settle for the materialism and the consumerism of the modern world. And he invited us to live in dramatic union with Christ.
In a word, he challenged us to become saints — to live the kind of saintliness that he enthusiastically proposed in his many audience addresses on the theme of human love in the divine plan, which have been published together under the title of the Theology of the Body.
He drew the themes of those addresses from his experience as a young bishop at the Second Vatican Council, where he helped to craft the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. In that constitution he said that man could only discover himself and his most high calling by looking to Christ. By studying the particularly hideous form of a God on the Cross, man comes to realize his potentiality to transcend himself and to make a gift of himself for the sake of the good — and, undoubtedly, the Good, which lies on the far side of every form of human suffering and is imminent to every shade of human joy.
John Paul lived that kind of suffering in his own life. His own homeland was occupied twice during his lifetime — first by the Nazis and then once again by the Communists. As pope, he traveled to regions of the world where people suffered, like Christ, in the most humiliating and disturbing ways imaginable. And in his final days he bore witness to the salvific meaning of human suffering.
Throughout his pontificate, John Paul stood with us in the midst of our suffering — in the darkness that is each human night. Yet like the new rosary mysteries he gave to the Church just a few years ago, he never ceased to point to the Light.
As young people, we will recall how he shone like light in a world so often overshadowed by the darkness of sin and the culture of death. We will recount how our brothers and sisters were categorically denied their fundamental right to life. And we will remember the language our societies used to objectify us, how they called not a few of us the unfortunate products of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. When the world found it hard to love us, John Paul broke through the false values and deceptive slogans of contemporary culture in order to admonish us to “reflect the light of Christ through [our] lives of prayer and joyful service to others.”
When the world pandered to us and wanted us to give in to our basest inclinations and desires, this Polish pope, from the small farming town of Wadowice, encouraged us to seek out the highest values, to live out the deepest desires of our human hearts, and to totally entrust ourselves to the unquenchable love of a God nailed to a cross. And so, we will always prayerfully keep in our hearts his belief that we “are called to make the light of Christ shrine brightly in the world.” When we do so, we will join ourselves to the Hope to Whom he gave witness in his life, saying: “We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy Cross, you have redeemed our world.”
In the summer of 2002, John Paul II met with us for one final time. He wanted to journey with us to the city of Toronto in order to stand with us at the dawn of the third Christian millennium and to give witness once more to the hope that is given to every human heart in Jesus Christ.
There, he told us that despite his age, he “still fully identified with [our] hopes and aspirations.” He said that “although [he] had lived through much darkness, under harsh totalitarian regimes, [he had] seen enough evidence to be unshakably convinced that no difficulty, no fear is so great that it can completely suffocate the hope that springs eternal in the hearts of the young.”
Then he laid upon our shoulders a tremendous task: “Do not let that hope die! Stake your lives on it! We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son.”
Those words echoed throughout the park that afternoon like light breaking through dark clouds. We knew that he was speaking the truth to us.
When the time came for the pope to say goodbye, we lingered long enough to watch the papal helicopter lift off the ground, and turn, and head into the setting sun. Then, slowly, and as if on cue, each one of us turned to face the direction that would lead us home. And we returned with tears streaming from our eyes and smiles on our faces because we knew that we had been loved. That love has given birth to a new generation of young Catholics.
On the evening of the pope’s death, we, the members of that generation, instinctively came together throughout the world to pray the ancient Evening Prayer of the Church and to entrust ourselves once more to the love of God. In the reading from that prayer, we heard the words of St. Peter, the first pope, who reminded the early Christians that “once you were not a people, but now you are a people.”
That night, we felt as if our people — the youth of the world of today — had been orphaned. Shortly after the formal announcement of the pope’s death, I went to the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, because I wanted to be with other young people on that momentous night. I remember their faces. Many of them were filled with tears — others were sobbing quietly. But, eagerly we sought out one another. We wanted to be together, to sit quietly side by side in prayer for our dead father.
At the close of that night, when most had already returned home, we came together in the darkness outside to light candles, to sing songs, and to tell stories of our love for our pope. We wanted to be together in prayer because we felt deeply that he was our pope and that we were his generation: The JP2 Generation.
So it was throughout the world. Wherever they were, young people came together in darkness in order to bring hope to the world. In Krakow, Poland, students would turn their dormitories into giant glowing cosses by lighting up windows. And, in Rome, young seminarians would answer the pope’s call for a new evangelization as they distributed thousands of miraculous medals and rosaries to the teeming crowds that filled St. Peter’s Square and the Via della Conciliazione.
In the words of the Vatican newspaper, our meeting that night constituted a spontaneous World Youth Day. No one had to tell us where to go or when to be there, somehow we already knew.
In his countless meetings with young people, John Paul never tired of inviting us to remake the world for Christ. And so that night we wanted to take up our work and to remember the confidence with which he entrusted it to us.
I remember his last visit to the United States of America. He went to the city of St. Louis on the threshold of the third Christian millennium. At the conclusion of our meeting with him, he spoke to us one last time.
“Young friends, in the days and weeks and years ahead, for as long as you remember this evening, remember that the pope came to the United States, to the city of St. Louis, to call the young people of America to Christ, to invite you to follow Him. He came to challenge you to be the light of the world!” And so, “Remember: Christ is calling you; the Church needs you; the pope believes in you and he expects great things of you!”
Let us not disappoint him. Let us go forward into our world with our hearts filled with joy and songs of rejoicing on our lips.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
John Paul Shimek frequently writes about the JP2 Generation and issues related to men's spirituality. His writing has appeared in theNational Catholic Register, the Newark Catholic Advocate, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He lives in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Readers can contact him at intermirifica@hotmail.com.
