Eulogy for pope

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 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.

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, where the sufferings and troubles of this life are banished forever, and where we come to experience that eternal joy, love and peace that Jesus has promised to those who hope and believe in Him.

Jesus said: "I am the resurrection and the life, and those who hope and believe in me will never die."

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. 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 three days and, then, by rising gloriously on Easter Sunday morn, heralding the triumph of life over death.

Our faith as Christians 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.

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 as the Supreme Shepherd in our Church.

In the past few years, as his body was plagued by debilitating Parkinson's disease and showed so visibly the ravages of age, he offered a most powerful witness to the role in the Christian life of pain, suffering, the cross and ultimately death.

Pope John Paul II embraced the harsh realities of suffering 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 conditions for entrance into eternal life.

Pope John Paul II unquestionably was one of the most extraordinary popes in the 2,000-year history of the papacy. I would venture to say that, over the past quarter of a century, there was no public figure in the universe 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 tenure in the history of the papacy, there are many sterling images of this remarkable spiritual leader which come to mind.

EVANGELIST

John Paul II was the most traveled pope in history. 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" (Hebrews 13:8).

He had a particular rapport with young people, and my own favorite memories of 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.

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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 authored 14 major encyclicals and several books, which will be a permanent part of his legacy.

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 his 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, Mehmet Ali Agca. He also taught by having the 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 clergy.

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DIPLOMAT AND ADVOCATE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Throughout his pontificate, John Paul met constantly with world leaders and was an unrelenting apostle of peace. For more than 26 years, 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.

His conviction led the Holy Father to advocate vigorously for peace with justice in the Mideast, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Nicaragua, East Timor and other troubled spots.

But nowhere were the Pope's efforts more successful than 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 responsible: "Nothing that happened in Eastern Europe would have happened without the Polish Pope."

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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, D.C., amidst the symbols of U.S. institutional power, he called upon all Americans "to stand up for life."

"The Gospel of Life," the Pope's 1995 encyclical, 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 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: poverty, abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, or all of those ills that undermine respect for life, such as racism, sexism, ageism, terrorism, xenophobia and homophobia.

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PROMOTER OF ECUMENISM AND INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

John Paul II labored tirelessly to remedy the scandal of Christian disunity. Under the Pope's leadership, there have been numerous ecumenical dialogues with our sister churches, perhaps the most notable being the one with the Lutheran community.

In his remarkable encyclical, "Ut Unum Sint" ("That All May Be One"), Pope John Paul took the unprecedented step of inviting ecumenical dialogue about the nature, scope and exercise of the Petrine ministry, considered by some to be the greatest obstacle to Christian unity.

Undoubtedly born of his 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, between the Roman Catholic Church and Judaism.

It should be noted that Pope John Paul 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.

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SAINT MAKER

Pope John Paul canonized almost 500 people, as many as all other popes combined.

Cardinal Jose Saravia Martins, prefect emeritus of the Vatican's Congregation for Saints, offered three reasons for John Paul's saint-making proclivity:

1. his desire to remind the faithful of the universal call to holiness;

2. to present local churches with models of holiness from their own cultures, and

3. to promote the "ecumenism of holiness."

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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 five years, John Paul 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 five to eight 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.

Those personal encounters were a source of great inspiration and affirmation.

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MAN OF HOLINESS AND PRAYER

Hanging in my room in the rectory of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany 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 on whom an 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 radiated. He was a man who devoted quality time each day to prayer. I observed him at the prie-dieux 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 the importance of meditating on Christ's life, especially the role the cross played in Jesus' salvific journey among us.

Certainly, Pope John Paul 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 that 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.

As we commend this holy man...this man for the ages...to 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 version of the Bishop's eulogy appeared in the 4/7/05 print edition of The Evangelist. To read the entire text, click here.)

(4/7/05)