Friends,
Last week, we received wonderful news: Bl. Pope John
XXIII and Bl. Pope John Paul II will be canonized next year on April 27th,
the Feast of Divine Mercy. This news
especially moved me, as that is the day after my anticipated ordination to the priesthood,
the day on which I will preside for the first time at Mass. In a particular way, this news renewed my
eagerness to ask these two great Popes to keep me in their prayers as I prepare
to serve the people of God as a priest.
Their gifts to the Church were (and continue to be) immeasurable, but
each of them has contributed a quote that I often pray with and has proved a
means by which the charity of Christ has urged me on to persevere in the
Christian life and my ministry.
On his election as Supreme Pontiff, John XXIII had
this to say to the crowds waiting in St. Peter’s Square: “The secret of
everything is to let yourself be carried by God, and so carry others to
Him.” God carries us! And the more I have stopped trying to row my
own boat, the more peace I have found carried by God’s saving action as
revealed in Jesus Christ. That being
carried is not a way of evading the rest of the world, though. Lived fully, it is a beacon on a hill. John XXIII has helped me make that my aim: to
be so open about my dependence on God that others see that and fall in love not
with me, but with Him.
The quote I have turned to time and again from John
Paul II is from one of his social encyclicals (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis).
At one point in this document, he talks of his desire to spread the
virtue of solidarity throughout the world, defining it thus: “a firm and persevering
determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say the good of
all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for
all.” I can’t count the times when I’ve
felt too tired to act on an impulse to help someone in need, when God has
carried me to a place where I can be of service and I’ve wanted to rest
elsewhere, on my own terms. Many times,
John Paul II’s words have rung in my ears, “we are all really responsible for
all,” and through them God has overcome my sloth and drawn charity out of me.
Today is Respect Life Sunday. What this Sunday should call from us is a
deep practice of solidarity with each human person. The greatest threats to life occur when we
view an other not as neighbor but as nuisance, not as someone to be carried to
God, but as an obstacle to be eliminated.
John Paul II coined the term “culture of death” (in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae) for the sad pattern we
observe that “a life which would require greater acceptance, love, and care is
considered useless... and is therefore rejected.” God never rejects. How can we make God’s acceptance, love and
care present to a waiting world?
Deacon Adam Booth, C.S.C.
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