I'm glad that His Holiness is out of the hospital. Its always great to get back to your own bed and away from the ever-present nurses that show up every hour prodding and poking. Maybe the Pope will have better days ahead but I doubt it. As Peggy Noonan points out in her column over at OpinionJournal, the Pope is hear to suffer or should I say he feels that his suffering is part of the job as Pope. I think she puts it best when she wrote:
His suffering is his witness. It has a purpose. It is telling us something. Yesterday, in thinking about this and remembering that audience, I called the great writer and thinker Michael Novak. He thought aloud for me. St. Therese of Lisieux, he reminded me, believed her suffering could help others. She would take her moments of pain or annoyance or sadness and offer them to God, believing that they became united with God's love, united that is with something infinitely powerful which works always for the betterment of man. She would ask God to take her suffering and use it to help the missionaries of the world. She knew, Mr. Novak said, what Dostoevsky knew: there's a kind of web around the world, an electric web in which we're all united in suffering and in love. When you give to it what you have, you add to the communion of love all around the world. Therese was a Carmelite. Mr. Novak spoke of George Weigel's observation that the pope has a Carmelite soul, a soul at home with the Carmelite tradition of everyday mysticism.
What should the pope's suffering tell us? Several things, said Mr. Novak. He is telling us it is important in an age like ours to honor the suffering of the old and the infirm. He wants us to know they have a place in life and a purpose. He not only says this; he lives it. He was an actor as a youth; he teaches by doing and showing, by being. His suffering is a drama he is living out quite deliberately. John Paul stands for life, for all of life. He wants to honor what the world does not honor.
But why, I said, does God allow this man he must so love to be dragged through the world in pain? He could have taken him years ago. Maybe, said Mr. Novak, God wants to show us how much he loves us, and he is doing it right now by letting the pope show us how much he loves us. Christ couldn't take it anymore during his passion, and yet he kept going.
Which reminded me of something the pope said to a friend when the subject of retirement came up a few years ago: "Christ didn't come down from the cross." Christ left when his work was done.
I tend to agree with Noonan on this because he's a representative of Christ's work. Just think about it, the Pope has bared a considerable amount of pain through his work with the Church. Throughout his early years in Poland, the young man who would become Pope, faced the the evils of Nazi Germany, Soviet domination and continued his struggle against this atheistic totalitarian system throughout his tenure in Rome. Some years after he took the reigns of The Vatican, he suffered the pain from a gunshot of a troubled young man. During all of these events, the Pope still seemed to endure. Yes, I'd love it if he didn't suffer the pain of his disease but its somewhat of a relief that he does suffer because it makes our belief in the power of the Lord stronger.
When the Pope does leave this Earth, he will have touched and inspired countless individuals in his devotion to the Lord and his teachings. I can assure you, that his time on this planet will definitely ensure his path towards sainthood.
I you want a more plain spoken low frills and realist look at the Pope's struggle, I'd refer you to William F. Buckley Jr's recent column on the Pope here.
No comments:
Post a Comment