PRAYER FOR POPE JOHN PAUL II’S HEALTH

Homily delivered by His Excellency Most Rev. Gaudencio B. Rosales, Archbishop Manila during the Mass for Pope John Paul II on March 4, 2005 at San Carlos Seminary Chapel, Makati
 

For one month now world news focused on the health condition of the Pope in Rome. We are concerned with the Pope’s health condition. Concern from many quarters is shown for this important world figure. The Pope is not only an important figure; he is the visible head of the Church. This is the reason why people are interested in him both as a father to emulate or a figure to criticize. There even were people, in the past, like Josef Stalin, the dictator of the Communist Soviet Republic, who, unchallenged at the height of the communist expansion, dared to ask in the Forties, “Why, how many divisions does the Pope have?” In health and in weakness the Roman Catholic Pontiff attracts interest.

We believe that after the Resurrection, and only after the triple assurance of Peter’s love for Jesus that the Lord Jesus Himself entrusted the Church (the flock) to Peter’s pastoral care. “Feed my lamb…feed my sheep.” He told Peter (John 21:15-17). “It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head that we believe that ourLord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the people of God.” So the Church’s teaching says of the Papacy. ( UR, 3)  

The pastoral care of the Church is given to the college of apostles the leadership for which belongs to Peter. After those words of Christ, “feed my lamb…feed my sheep,” heavy, very heavy, indeed, on Peter’s shoulders lays the great responsibility of guiding and leading the flock. The Pope as the successor of Peter bears the same pastoral burden.  

The “triplex munus” of prophesying, sanctifying and shepherding becomes the Pope’s greatest responsibility as shared also by the bishops (whose priests are all collaborators) in the building up and strengthening of the Church.  

We are aware that difficult times bring indescribable and unexpected challenges. Who could ever imagine that the last 60 years of the past century and the squeaky transit to a new millennium would see the world go through wars of indescribable violence, suffering, unparalleled poverty and the fall of powerful (persons, nations and ideologies) the recent use of the “language of terrorism” and the greater catastrophe of the dishonest and wasteful management of resources, both God-given and man-earned. And yet shepherding safely and accompanying the Church through these chaotic changes in the world remains the task of the Vicar of Christ.  

If we cannot fully decipher world events, perhaps we can better understand the moulding of the life and character of a man.

The human imagination could not match the provident wisdom of God. Four generations ago He was preparing a man from a polish family of six, toughening him through the sufferings of World War II, shaping his character in life in the underground, making him work as a miner in a stone quarry, studying theology surreptitiously, making him lose his loved family members one by one, he alone was left - - - a complete orphan! This way God taught him actual suffering and trained him to be his own man “in solitude.”

God made sure that this man knows real anguish for his faith, personal suffering for his God and heroic shepherding for responsibility as a shepherd. It was said that had there not been a serious attempt on his life on May 13, 1981, he could still be as strong physically as he is today alert mentally. But, unfortunately, suffering has always been part of his personal life.

He has to suffer in the likes of St. Paul who said to his friends in Colassa “I am happy to suffer for you now, and in my body to make up all hardships that still have to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church for which I am a servant with responsibility towards you…” (Col. 1:24).

For the man, Karol Wojtyla of Wadowice, Poland, now his Holiness, Pope John Paul II, suffering is very much part of his shepherding, as Vicar of Christ and Successor of Peter. Not minimizing his Parkinson’s disease or the severe cold and flu infection he presently suffers, just a look at his bent poise tells us, even more than just a symbol, that the man is in much suffering as he carries his papal responsibility tirelessly in search of peace, unity and communion of love among his flock. One can say that his heavily stooped frame shows that the world’s problems press heavily on his shoulders.

The flock that the Lord has entrusted to him is more than a responsibility to carry. Shepherding for the Pope, like it was for Peter, is a consequence of his love for the Lord. You and I, the Church, We, are part of the papacy’s shepherding commitment to love Jesus, the Lord. We pray for the Holy Father’s recovery.

When we pray for the Pope as the Vicar of Christ, we pray for the Pastor of the Church; and when we remember what the Holy Father is to the Church, in the end, we also pray for ourselves.

Day of Prayer for the Pope
+G.B. Rosales
March 03, 2005