JP II

Pope John Paul II was canonized today. The internet is flooded with images of him: as a small boy with his parents, as a young man skiing, hiking, praying, smiling, suffering. I can't help but reminisce about the day Lili and I met him face to face. She doesn't remember it, but I will always count it as one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

Lili had been born three weeks earlier.  Those first few weeks with our first newborn were more wonderful and difficult than I could have ever imagined. As any parent knows, having your first child unmakes you. Your dreams, desires, hopes and fears are is torn down and rebuilt in a different shape around this tiny little stranger with whom you have fallen madly in love. I remember feeling blindsided by the new found realization that my chosen vocation was not always going to be sunshine and roses and dinners out at Bucci's.

 

That Sunday when Lili was three weeks old, I was still not recovered from a long and difficult labor in a foreign country, I was having a really hard time nursing, and my mom had just gotten on a plane to fly back home across the Atlantic. I was having a hard time, as many new mothers do.

 

We were going to Mass at San Tomaso up at Castel Gandolfo with our latest visitors, Erika and Travis, who wanted to go to the papal Angelus. We were going to skip it that day, as I was just hoping to make it home before Lili woke up, so I could struggle with feeding her in private.  

 

Happily, Providence had other plans, and we ran into our friend Baldo, a captain in the Carabinieri, who asked us if we wanted to receive a Papal blessing for the new baby after the Angelus. That's not the kind of unexpected opportunity you politely decline. Only one parent would be allowed to present the child to the Holy Father.  I wanted Luke to take her, partly because (I'm ashamed to admit) I am a naturally shy and insecure person and I was afraid of doing something wrong. My husband, however, is confident and sociable, and I was pretty sure he would be able to conduct himself with dignity. Lucky for me, he is also a very generous man, and put his foot down and made me go instead. 

 

During the Angelus I was pretty distracted with worries running through my head, "What am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to kiss his ring, aren't I? How am I supposed to aim a kiss at his ring when both hands are busy holding  the baby? Am I supposed to say something? What if the baby wakes up and wants to nurse and starts screaming?"

 

And then it was my turn and all of those inconsequential thoughts flew out of my head as I put my tiny baby on the Holy Father's lap. He gently raised her up and kissed her forehead, and then put his hand on my face and looked me right in the eye. And that was it. My turn was up. (I hadn't done things right, by the way, I wasn't supposed to stop and kneel.) I did screw up after all, but it didn't matter a bit.

 

Only a few seconds...a kiss for my baby, his hand on my face, and a look. I don't think he even said anything,  My only memory from that moment is the beautiful bright blue of his eye as he looked straight into mine and the undeniable sense of charity pouring out of him. As our dear Bishop Conley put it so beautifully and simply in his recent essay, " One does not forget the glimpse of sanctity."

 

Anyone who saw him in those last years remembers how very very tired he seemed, how bowed with suffering he had become. You would have thought he would be in a hurry to get through the line of mothers and babies, so that he could retire to his chambers and rest, but I had the overwhelming impression that one hundred percent of his attention was focused on me in that moment. It was as if I was the only other person in the world. Peace, and hope, and joy filled my heart as I found my way back to my husband. Lili had slept for three hours straight (a minor miracle in and of itself.) Luke forbade me to wash her forehead. We went home to our little apartment.

 

I'm not usually someone who is overly emotional about my faith, but I can't look at a picture of John Paul II or even think about him without my eyes welling up. I think it is because my encounter with him, brief as it was, gave me a glimpse of what it will be like to have all of your petty thoughts and worries wilt away in the blazing light of pure Love.

I think of all the babies he kissed, all the people he gave seconds and minutes of his life to, the inexhaustible wells of strength and love he drew from and poured out for others. I am so filled with  happiness that today the Church in Her wisdom has given him to all of us as a saint and intercessor.

There will never be another like him.

JP II, we love you, pray for us!