Notebook with Andrew O’Connell
"He broke our hearts last Easter Sunday,” wrote Breda O’Brien in the commemorative edition of this newspaper published days after the death of Pope John Paul II 10 years ago. She was describing that agonising moment when the Holy Father came to the microphone but failed to speak. A week of worry was to follow. The eyes of the world would soon focus on the window overlooking St Peter’s Square, behind which lay a dying Pope.
A few days after his death, I travelled to Rome with a group of friends. We stood in line for 15 hours to file past the remains. The atmosphere inside St Peter’s Basilica, where the body lay, was unusual; eerie, almost.
I had seen John Paul in person several times, including only a few months before. His appearances were always accompanied by noise – applause, yells of ‘Viva il Papa’, cheering – but on this occasion it was just silence, a perfect metaphor for the stillness of death.
It was a week of striking images: the flying of giant papal and Irish flags at the four corners of O’Connell Bridge, the lowering to half-mast of flags on State buildings, and on the day of the funeral, a minute’s silence by shoppers at the Dundrum Town Centre.
Churches around the country welcomed large congregations to Masses of remembrance and a ‘Sunset Service’ in the Phoenix Park drew 10,000 people.
Many were surprised at this outpouring of emotion. They shouldn’t have been. There had always been a deep well of affection for this Pope in Ireland. Those days in April 2005 were cathartic, allowing many emotions to be released.
Tears
One woman told me she cried a lot that week. They were the tears she had been unable to shed at her own father’s funeral. Another man described how he was choked up because he was mourning memories – happy memories of bringing his children, then toddlers, to see the Pope on a fine, autumn day in Dublin, 26 years before.
I remember walking home from a friend’s house on the night he died. It was now the early hours of the following morning and the sky overhead was majestic with a multitude of twinkling stars.
It was a moment to pause and reflect, open-mouthed, on the vastness and beauty of the cosmos.
The perfect stillness of the night felt like that heavy silence which follows the final notes of a glorious symphony.
The Polish Pope who changed the world was gone. But, as Mozart put it, the music is as much in the silence as in the notes.
And, in the silence of that night it felt as though John Paul had arrived home, home at last to the company of God’s peace and God’s love.
Missionary character
We had adult baptisms in our parish at this year’s Easter Vigil. Watching an adult receive the sacraments of initiation commands the attention of the congregation in a way few homilies do. Perhaps it reminds cradle Catholics that faith is a conscious decision and not a passive inheritance.
The RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) introduces the candidates to the life of the Church.
By welcoming and seeking out newcomers, it also challenges a ‘closed shop’ mentality in a parish. In addition, it prompts a parish to reflect on its own witness as a community of believers.
Overall, it’s a very practical way for a parish to strengthen its missionary character.
Knock Congress opportunity for unity
News of a National Eucharistic Congress in Knock this September (26 & 27) will be welcomed by the thousands who carry warm memories of the 2012 International Congress in Dublin.
Gatherings like this have great potential to renew and re-invigorate. They provide moments of prayer, worship, learning and fellowship.
The 2011 National Eucharistic Congress was also held in Knock and while the basilica was full that day, overall, it was a tame affair.
A congress is not about rustling up a crowd for the cameras, but properly coordinated, one imagines that a multiple of that number could be present in September. It could be an opportunity too to involve younger faces, rather than the easier option of assembling big crowds of older people.
One Dublin parish I know will be discussing their plans to support the congress at the next Parish Pastoral Council meeting. Perhaps many others will do the same and this autumn’s congress could become another moment of unity, reunion and renewal for the Church in Ireland.