On the Beatification of John Paul II

On the Beatification of John Paul II | Fr. Matthew J. Albright | Homiletic & Pastoral Review | May 2011

The pontificate of John Paul II was a gift from God to the faithful entering the third millennium.

The unique significance of a recent Vatican announcement has settled on the minds and hearts of Christ's faithful. The joyful news of the beatification of Pope John Paul II on the first of May contains layers of meaning for the Church and the world. This beatification of a pope so well-known and loved by the world drawn the attention of millions and provided the Church with an opportunity to focus the global gaze not on John Paul II, but on his greatest love, Jesus Christ. The beatification Mass is a celebration for the world, and a reminder to all that it was Jesus who inspired the Holy Father's life of universal ministry. People of every continent and creed appreciated John Paul II as a man of God who loved humanity. In his ever-present smile they saw, whether they knew it or not, the face of Jesus.

This is also an opportunity to remember the importance of the saints and the process of canonization in the life of the Church. The saints as well as those declared "blessed" are our heroes in the faith, our intercessors before the throne of God, and the exemplars of what it means to live in Christ. We honor them by seeking their intercession and putting into practice, in our own day, the virtues that made them honorable and brought them to eternal glory. We remember them in the Mass on their feast days, for in the Eucharist we are most fully united with one another and, beyond the boundaries of time and space in the mystery of the Eucharist, with the Church triumphant in heaven. We sing with the saints and angels the Sanctus—Holy, Holy, Holy—which is eternally resounding through the heavenly halls. We ask them to pray with us and for us to God in our needs. We display their images as tangible reminders of what God can do through the prayer and work of holy men and women.

Saints become recognized by the Church as worthy of devotion only after a long and careful process. When a person's cause for canonization is brought to the attention of the Church, his or her life is investigated for evidence of heroic virtue—virtue and sacrificial love beyond ordinary goodness—and the person is declared "Venerable" and a "Servant of God." Subsequently, two miracles must be proven to have taken place because of the person's intercession subsequent to his or her death. A painstaking investigation into the alleged miracle, involving doctors and experts in the appropriate fields as well as theologians, is undertaken to ensure that there is no natural explanation and, to the extent it is humanly possible under God's guidance, to determine that a miracle has taken place. After the first miracle, the person is declared "blessed," and, after the second, "saint."

John Paul's beatification is a call to remember his teaching and pastoral initiatives, which have impacted every aspect of the Church's life. John Paul II ascended to the papal throne in the midst of a confused and divided Church and led her over the course of 27 years in a journey of re-discovery of the eternal truths that define her. In 1978, the "spirit of Vatican II" was being manipulated to justify everything from clown Masses to the ordination of women. A hastily implemented reform of the liturgy seemed to create a false separation between the "new Mass" and the previous tradition, and left some Catholics ecstatic over the creative possibilities and others in despair over the loss of the sacred liturgy of their ancestors. The prematurely leaked majority report of a Vatican commission, which recommended to Pope Paul VI a change in the traditional teaching against contraception—a recommendation he did not accept when he published Humanae Vitae in 1968—opened the door of unprecedented dissent. The rugged individualism and anti-establishment climate of the 1960s and 70s infected the Church, and her people began to lose sight of who they were. As early as 1969, Paul VI realized the decline in understanding and devotion to the Eucharist, and thus he wrote the encyclical Mysterium Fidei in an attempt to re-affirm the traditional beliefs. Mass attendance and fidelity to Church precepts began to slip as well. Catholics were left wondering what would come next, and what the Church was really all about.

Into this confounding scenario stepped Karol Wojtyla, a brilliant philosopher and scholar who attended the Council; a man who had seen firsthand during the Nazi occupation and the Second World War both the horrific evil of which humanity is capable as well as the goodness inherent in men and women such as his fellow students, actors and professors. One cannot imagine a candidate better suited for such a daunting task as he would embrace—the task of bringing the Church back to her foundations. John Paul needed to do what so many in the decades before him failed to do: to embrace Vatican II's true aggiornamento (updating) by placing it within the context of the Council's other call for ressourcement (return to the sources). It was to the sources of our faith, and to the Source of truth, love and holiness themselves, that he would take us—to Jesus, whose identity and ministry are our reality.

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