Question 3.51

3.51 What do you find most touching about this pope?

I admire his extreme courage in facing all the storms he weathered throughout his life. His last struggle with the illness that was consuming him was heroic. In refusing to hide himself or to deny the progressive destruction of his body, John Paul II intended to help all sick people, who could look to him as an example. For the pope, people who suffer are worthy of being honored.

I think that his last moments on earth were a sort of unwritten encyclical. The pope was carrying the Gospel in his broken body, which was more luminous than ever. While his sickness was leading him to the gates of eternity, he had to make his last Way of the Cross, on that Good Friday in 2005, in his private chapel. We could see him only from the back. Deprived of all physical strength, he was literally fastened to the Cross, as though to invite us to focus, no longer on him, but on the “sign” that reveals God and his love. That Good Friday summed up the whole life of John Paul II, who wanted to be totally configured to Christ and to live in profound communion with his sufferings, to be conformed to him in his death, so as to arrive one day, if possible, at the resurrection from the dead with him. He actualized what Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18). On Sunday, March 27, 2005, he had already entered into the silence of the “passage” that prepares for the rising of new life. That day he wanted to speak a few final words to us from his window, but not a word came out of his mouth. He had entered into the silence of God. At that painful moment, we got the impression that we could hear John Paul II murmuring: “I am happy to be nailed to the Cross with Christ, my side against his side, my hands against his hands, my feet against his feet, the same nails pass through him and through me, our blood mixed into one blood.” And despite so many sufferings, a long and painful agony, the mystery of the apostolic tenacity of John Paul II and of his serene death reminds us of this remark by Saint Bernard: “The faithful soldier does not feel his wounds when he lovingly contemplates the wounds of his King.”

The words that he could no longer manage to express during those final hours of his life, at the time of the Angelus on Easter Sunday, should not sadden us. God willed that his own Word should now be read in the tormented body of the pope.

Sometimes we are such a bookish, academic Church that it is not easy for us to understand the truth of this testimony of bodily suffering. The Cross of Christ is not a theory but a dreadful ordeal and a sign of love. The message is given not only thanks to the Word of God, but also through the Incarnation. The body of John Paul II bore Christ’s message for mankind.

The pope who had written so much about the human body was now fastened to the tormented body of Christ.