The Pope Who Brought Me Home

I became Catholic quite against my will. Well, to be fair, when I actually became Catholic I was 3 months old and had very little will to speak of. But when I came to believe–when I left my adolescent atheism behind and embarked on the great adventure that’s brought me anguish and ecstasy, guilt and mercy, uncertainty and risk and sacrifice and so very much joy–it was not something I sought. The Lord looked past my rolling eyes, dragged me into a confessional, and didn’t let me go till I was washed clean and convicted.

And there I was, a wide-eyed 13-year-old knowing nothing but that Jesus was God and he loved me. So, like any other 13-year-old, I grabbed a Catechism and a Bible and set out to know all the things there were to know.

As it turns out, there’s quite a lot. And some of it is hard. And some of it seems illogical, especially when you know nothing about logic because you’re 13 and getting your answers from AskJeeves. But I’d read John 6 and I’d read Matthew 16 and I knew I was stuck. Like it or not, I was Catholic. But the Church still struck me as an ideology, not a home. Until I got to know my papa.

JPII was not a popular figure in my house. We were too liberal for his conservative nonsense. I distinctly remember my father remarking with disgust on “the latest papal bull” in such a way that I didn’t realize “bull” was a technical term, not a profane one. We didn’t pray for him, we didn’t have pictures of him, and we certainly didn’t admire him.

So I don’t know when I first got to know him. I don’t know if I realized at once how amazing he was. I just know this: by the time I was 16, I was absolutely convinced that my papa loved me. It didn’t matter that he’d never met me. He adored me. And he became the Church for me. When being Catholic seemed too hard or illogical, I knew it would break his heart if I left. Oh, he wouldn’t know, exactly, but this mystic pope of ours would feel the poorer for having lost me. I couldn’t do that to him.

There was something in his eyes that told me I mattered, something that spoke the love of Christ in a more powerful way than anyone I’d ever seen. I saw Christ move so powerfully in him that I fell in love. I used to creep my students out by telling them how handsome he was, how he was my number 2 crush of all time.¹ Sure, he was handsome. But it wasn’t just his face that drew me.

JPII was a baller. He was a brilliant philosopher, poet, actor, athlete, and polyglot. He was charming and charismatic, a Catholic rock star if ever there was one. He was handsome enough to swoon over, a man of prayer, and the Rock that Christ rebuilt our Church on during a tumultuous quarter century. He revolutionized the way we think about sex and the human person. He transformed our attitude towards youth. He destroyed communism in the West. But that’s not why I love him. I love him because he loved me.

I love him because he taught me what it meant to be loved by Christ. He longed for me and suffered for me and spoke truth to me. He put a human face on this institutional Church of ours and showed me that the Church was more than my teacher, she was my mother and my home. It wasn’t just that every explanation he gave satisfied my intellectual curiosity, it was that he spoke truth with the love of Christ. In writing about him now, I almost believe that he and I used to sit together and discuss these issues. That’s how much I could feel his love, even before he died and finally learned my name.

That was why I went to World Youth Day in Rome in 2000–to be near him. It was why I studied in Rome. I minored in Italian so that I could hang around the Vatican. I used to go to St. Peter’s and check the language signs on the confessionals to see if any had Polish, Italian, English, German, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, etc. on the outside. Popes hear confessions too, right? It was why I started crying when a student told me he had kissed her when she was a little girl: because this Vicar of Christ had Jesus eyes and I felt the love of the Lord every time I was near him.

I remember being in class once with a professor who didn’t strike me as a huge JPII fan. I would have guessed that he was too far left to much admire my papa. He was big into peace and justice, running Pax Christi and the Catholic Worker House, and at the time I wasn’t aware that people could be all about social justice and all about personal morality at the same time.² So when a girl in class started lamenting the popes’ teaching on contraception, I wasn’t excited to hear his response.

“I don’t understand why some old man living in his golden palace in Rome gets to tell me what I can do with my body!”

“Old man in Rome?” he asked quietly. “He also lived in Nazi- and Communist-occupied Poland, Miss White Suburban America.” I’m pretty sure I applauded.

This was the thing about John Paul–sure, some people hated him,³ but far more loved him because he loved truth and he loved liars. He hated communism but loved communists. He hated sin but loved sinners. He endured loneliness and oppression and near starvation and came out the other side so filled with the love of Christ that you were almost compelled to look away. It was almost too beautiful to endure.

To this day, when I see a picture of him, I feel a pang. Not because I miss him but because I miss Christ. The face of Pope John Paul makes me long for heaven because he loved me–loves me–the way that Christ loves me. He pointed me to Christ. He still does. He made me love Christ and his Church more. He taught me what it meant to be human, to be a woman, to be a Catholic and a lover of humanity. Tomorrow’s canonization is a formality. I’ve known he was a Saint since long before he died.

My 4-year-old nephew was recently filling out the Sacramental record in his Bible. After listing his baptismal date (which I’m sure he has memorized) and his anticipated dates of First Communion and Confirmation, he had to put his confirmation sponsor’s name. “What’s a confirmation sponsor?” he asked his mom. “It’s someone who helps you stay Catholic,” she answered.

Without hesitation, he carefully wrote, “Pope JPII.”

Me, too, buddy. Me, too.

Linking up with Jenny and everybody else who loves my papa–find their stories over here!

1. Number 1: St. John the Beloved, because a guy with the courage and the faithfulness to stand at the foot of the Cross is more attractive than any Ryan Gosling meme. [↩]
2. Somehow I hadn’t noticed that they’re inseparable…. [↩]
3. I’m not unaware of his flaws, most especially his colossal failure to act in the face of the clergy sex abuse. Knowing him as I do, I can’t help but believe that he did the best he could with the information he was given and the understanding of pedophilia that was prevalent during his formative years. I am terribly, terribly sorry for those victims who felt that his silence was compliance and whose pain is raw this weekend. Please know that I weep for you and that your Father in heaven aches for you and rages against those who hurt you. Your Church longs for you and will never stop loving you. This canonization is not a declaration that all his actions were impeccable–none of us are without fault, not even the saints among us–but a celebration of the many, many ways he did act to make Christ’s love more tangible to the many empty hearts in this world. [↩]