Lolek

Filipino Catholics sang Trina Belamide’s “Tell the World of His Love” as a sort of secondary national anthem in January 1995. Pope John Paul II was flying to Manila to lead the tenth celebration of World Youth Day.

I could watch the pope on TV at home because I had chicken pox and was excused from school for days. “JP 2” was a joy to see. When he landed at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, he wasted no time demonstrating his love for young people, stretching his security cordon to reach out to a troupe of youths who danced to welcome him.

His Holiness was bigger than a rock star when he hit the streets of the capital in his Popemobile. Crowds lined the roads to wave at him while he made the sign of the cross at them in a gesture of blessing. Their euphoria helps me imagine how early believers responded to the news that Saint Peter, the first pope, was coming. “People carried their sick into the streets. They placed them on stretchers and cots so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some sick people as he went by.” (Acts 5:15)

The pope had humor. At one of WYD ’95’s coat-and-tie evening events, he swung his cane round and round, as a peddler would a pair of tiny balloons with rustling or whistling toy tied to a string. When he was dying in 2005, I learned that the pope’s compatriots in Poland lovingly called him Lolek. Not a bad nickname. The man, amid his grave mission of shepherding souls, made everyone LOL often. Saint Peter’s 264th successor certainly healed with laughter.

I write on Oct. 22 the first memorial of Blessed John Paul II. His pontificate was inaugurated 33 years ago in 1978. His feast has yet to be inserted into the calendar of my home archdiocese of Cebu, but I used the Common of Pastors for lauds with its For a Pope concluding prayer. For 23 years, I had known no other Holy Father but the second John Paul and my spirit does miss him. His statue still stands in the lawn of the archbishop’s residence. It was the backdrop to a class picture, which was taken after our first communion at Lent in 1990. In high school, I clipped newspaper photos of his visits to places like Lebanon. I had hoped he would return to the Philippines for the World Meeting of Families in Manila a couple of years before he died. He had promised in 1995, in a long goodbye to Filipinos, that he would come back.

One has to take seriously Jesus Christ’s words to Saint Peter in the gospel to understand what the papacy means to every Catholic. In the original text our Good Shepherd didn’t say, “You are Peter the rock and on this rock I will build my Church.” He said, “You are Rock and on this rock I will build my Church.” (Matthew 16:18) The passing of a pope therefore marks a Catholic’s life just as the complete laying of a brick on a house pulls the bricklayer’s eyes to the empty space that would hold the next brick. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of the edifice, of course and by his Spirit influencing the princes of the Church, He chose Pope Benedict XVI as the new brick, so to speak.

And so the building up on the cornerstone who is Jesus continues under the leadership and servanthood of the new pope, who has a wondrous gift of teaching and eloquence. (I’ve read his encyclicals “God Is Love” and “Saved in Hope” as well as his book “Jesus of Nazareth Part I.” I hope to finish the sequel in this semestral break.) But I won’t forget the pope of my formative years—the one whose “Be not afraid; open wide your doors to Christ” still rings in the ears of my heart, who taught me the luminous mysteries of the Holy Rosary, who helped me love the Lord more through his letter Church of the Eucharist.

“In the Eucharist we have Jesus, we have his redemptive sacrifice, we have his resurrection, we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, we have adoration, obedience and love of the Father. Were we to disregard the Eucharist, how could we overcome our own deficiency?” the pope said.

“In the humble signs of bread and wine, changed into his body and blood, Christ walks beside us as our strength and our food for the journey, and he enables us to become, for everyone, witnesses of hope. If, in the presence of this mystery, reason experiences its limits, the heart, enlightened by the grace of the Holy Spirit, clearly sees the response that is demanded, and bows low in adoration and unbounded love.”