In June of 1979, John Paul II made his
first papal pilgrimage back to his homeland, Poland, then governed by a
Soviet-controlled puppet regime. The “Polish” authorities found themselves
perplexed by the dilemma. Obviously, to refuse the pope entrance to his own
country would prove catastrophic for international public relations. Simultaneously,
however, no one lacked knowledge of the new pontiff’s charisma with the masses
and opposition to communist regimes, least of all the Polish people. In a
correspondence between Edward Gierek, the Polish Party Leader, and Leonid
Brezhnev, the Soviet party chieftain, the latter cautioned, “Take my advice,
don’t give him any reception. It will only cause trouble… Tell the pope—he’s a
wise man—he can declare publicly he can’t come due to illness.” Yet after
Gierek expressed the impossibility of either proposal, Brezhnev conceded, “Do
as you wish. But be careful you don’t regret it later.”[1]
Thus
began John Paul’s pilgrimage to Poland—a pilgrimage in which he set the stage
for a quarter-century papacy. People saw for the first time on an international
stage who this man was, and how he would lead the Church into the third
millennium. Volumes have been written on his role in the collapse of the Soviet
Union, his emphasis on the dignity of human life, and his monumental efforts
toward ecumenism. Yet it was less his deeds and more his manner which moved the
hearts of so many—least of all the young. He neither scolded nor scoffed, neither
romanticized nor despised. Rather, he reminded
people who they are.
Memory (anamnesis) lies at the heart of the Church. Pope Francis’ most
recent encyclical calls our present culture one of “massive amnesia.” “The
question of truth,” he adds, “is really a question of memory, deep memory, for
it deals with something prior to ourselves and can succeed in uniting us in a
way that transcends our petty and limited individual consciousness.”[2]
Man possesses a primal knowledge of and orientation toward the true and the
good. This is the foundation of natural law, of Paul’s indictment of the pagan
Romans (Rom. 1:20), and of the Church’s (new) evangelization. Joseph Ratzinger
wrote:
This anamnesis of
the Creator, which is identical with
the foundations of our existence, is the reason that mission is both possible and
justified. The Gospel may and indeed
must be proclaimed to the pagans, because this is what they are waiting for,
even if they do not know this themselves.[3]
Man is
fundamentally oriented toward truth because at the dawn of his being stands
Truth himself. God’s free act of creation and his subsequent announcement that
“it is good” renders all creation ordered to Himself—the Good and the True.
Consequently, man’s existence is neither a diminution toward nothingness nor an
idealism toward the perfection of history. Man’s existence is a reditus, a return to the Creator. Man
finds himself naturally oriented to turn back, to conversion, which is a turn to the depths of being, to that which
is prior to himself.
Thus, never can the philosopher or
theologian posit that we live in a “post-Christian” era. “Every age is a
Christian age,” the French Dominican A.G. Sertillanges wrote. Christ dwells in
every age in the sacraments—Mother Church’s treasury of memory. Each Sunday we
hear “Do this in memory of me,” and we remember not some distant past, but a
reality present in our time. Only through memory can we rediscover our true
identity and that authenticity for which all our subcultures long. Memory
breeds authenticity.
When John Paul stood before the crowds
in Poland, he proclaimed in so many words, “You are not who they say you are.
Let me remind you who you are!” Only through memory would the Polish people
realize that they could not be defined by a recent history of political and
social distress. “It is impossible to understand this city,” John Paul spoke in
his famous homily in Victory Square, Warsaw:
… that undertook in 1944 an unequal
battle against the aggressor, a battle in which it was abandoned by the allied
powers, a battle in which it was buried under its own ruins—if it is not
remembered that under those same ruins there was also the statue of Christ the
Saviour with his cross that is in front of the church at Krakowskie
Przedmiescie. It is impossible to understand the history of Poland from
Stanislaus in Skalka to Maximilian Kolbe at Oswiecim unless we apply to them
that same single fundamental criterion that is called Jesus Christ.”
To remember who we
are is to remember Christ, for “The exclusion of Christ from the history of man
is an act against man.” Memory always reaches for that constant, Christ, who
stands at the apex of history while the world turns (Stat crux dum volvitur orbis). In the Incarnation, God remembered
his people, and thus his people remembered their God. The whole of their
history leapt to the fore as they looked upon the face of their long awaited
hope—“he has remembered his holy covenant.” The person of Christ refreshes
anamnesis—the person of Truth persists from “generation to generation.”
Brezhnev was right after all. John Paul did "only cause
trouble"—or in the words of our current pope, “a mess.” Poland was never the
same. Her son had returned, and he brought not only Peter but Christ. And when
he concluded his Victory Square ho
John Paul II—the Great Liberator, the Great
Evangelist, simply the Great? On this his feast day, I would like to posit
another title to his list: The Great Reminder. John Paul understood the heart
of evangelization to be the habitus of
memory. He reminded the Church who she was in the tumultuous decades of the
late twentieth century. He reminded her through his sermons, his travels, his
forgiveness, his love. Most importantly, however, he reminded her for two hours
every morning when he knelt in front of the tabernacle. “Here is your hope,” he
proclaimed in silence, “Here is He for whom your hearts long.” This was how he
responded to the chants of the Polish people—“We want God!”—in June of 1979.
May we likewise respond to the chants of our countrymen today.
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