April 10, 2005
As I dictate this weekly message I am still dazzled by the funeral
of the Pope. Like a great many people we got up at Trinity at 4:00 in the morning
and watched this wonderful event, which was a great preaching of the Gospel.
The commentators said that there were four kings, five queens and seventy heads
of state in attendance. The crowd that really impressed me however was not the
bishops or clergy or even heads of state, but the incredible number of young
people who were there. The average age of the crowd seemed to be in the early
twenties and it was a magnificently done funeral. The singing was wonderful
and Cardinal Ratzinger’s celebration of the Mass was devout and as one
might expect from a good German, very proper.
It struck me at first after the funeral was over that this was the last great
evangelization of the Pope, but he has left us with very substantial encyclicals,
especially the one on Christ’s role as Our Redeemer, on the Gospel of
Life and on Divine Mercy and many other subjects including philosophy, social
problems and social justice. These encyclicals will have their effect long after.
There were signs in the crowd saying Santo Subido, which means a saint as soon
as possible or immediately, literally suddenly a saint. If that does happen
it will be another great act of evangelization.
A person my age can easily go back in their mind to when Pope John Paul II was
elected and the confused state of the church at that time and the dangerous
situation in the world with the communist empire having intercontinental ballistic
missiles with hydrogen warheads pointed at us. It was a modest consolation indeed
that we had the same weapons pointed at them. Without firing a shot the Holy
Father made an essential contribution to the collapse of that empire.
We Catholics need to be very grateful to God that we lived in the Pontificate
of a great Pope, probably the greatest pope since Pope Innocent III who ruled
at the time of St. Francis, maybe the greatest pope since Gregory the Great
who was the last pope at the collapse of the Roman Empire.
I know you will join the friars and sisters in your prayers for our great Pope.
I don’t think that he needs our prayers to get him into the kingdom of
heaven, but certainly our prayers that his message and apostolic work as shepherd
of the church will continue on and bring the church into an even stronger situation
then it was before his Pontificate. Let us be grateful to God that we have lived
in the time of such great people, including two of the greatest Christians of
the church history, Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa.
-Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR
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