Thursday, May 18, 2006
I saw a saint at sunset
On John Paul II's birthday, I thought that it was appropriate to post this beautiful excerpt from Peggy Noonan's John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father. The excerpt, from the first chapter of the book, talks about seeing John Paul II at the end of his life.
And yet as I watched him, I realized I did not see him as ill and frail. I saw him as encased — trapped in there, in an outer immobility. Outside he is old and frail, but inside he is John Paul, the one who had walked out on the Vatican balcony and dazzled the crowd twenty-four years before. And for the first time I thought: He is a victim soul. His suffering has meaning, it is telling us something. He is giving us something, a parting gift.
He sang to us a little at the end, like an old man sitting in the sun. Most of us couldn't tell the words or the tune, but he was doing it for us, and there was something so beautiful and moving in it. I turned to a friend. "We are hearing a saint singing," I said. I wanted to put my hands over my ears so I could hold the sound in my head forever.
Throughout all this I would look over now and then at a young woman, a red-haired girl sitting with a Polish choir. She was nineteen or twenty, clean faced, pale. From the moment the pope had entered the room she had not taken her eyes off him. And she had not stopped weeping.
...
His suffering was his witness. Every other leader in the world stands straight and tall; they employ scores of aides who tell them to throw back their shoulders and walk forward looking like the leader of France, or England, or America. These public souls are acutely conscious of their public presentation. But John Paul came out broken and bent, as broken as the Christ on the cross he carried on his crozier.
And yet as I watched him, I realized I did not see him as ill and frail. I saw him as encased — trapped in there, in an outer immobility. Outside he is old and frail, but inside he is John Paul, the one who had walked out on the Vatican balcony and dazzled the crowd twenty-four years before. And for the first time I thought: He is a victim soul. His suffering has meaning, it is telling us something. He is giving us something, a parting gift.
He sang to us a little at the end, like an old man sitting in the sun. Most of us couldn't tell the words or the tune, but he was doing it for us, and there was something so beautiful and moving in it. I turned to a friend. "We are hearing a saint singing," I said. I wanted to put my hands over my ears so I could hold the sound in my head forever.
Throughout all this I would look over now and then at a young woman, a red-haired girl sitting with a Polish choir. She was nineteen or twenty, clean faced, pale. From the moment the pope had entered the room she had not taken her eyes off him. And she had not stopped weeping.
...
His suffering was his witness. Every other leader in the world stands straight and tall; they employ scores of aides who tell them to throw back their shoulders and walk forward looking like the leader of France, or England, or America. These public souls are acutely conscious of their public presentation. But John Paul came out broken and bent, as broken as the Christ on the cross he carried on his crozier.
