Tomorrow’s much-anticipated beatification of Pope John Paul II is, first and foremost, a major Catholic event solicited by and reflecting the great fame of holiness the late Polish Pope enjoyed during his life, in his death and since.
Many will surely remember the Italian phrase santo subito, which was on the lips of tens of thousands of mourners during his momentous April 2005 funeral in Rome. So many people across the globe wanted him declared a saint immediately.
In was only natural, therefore, that the Catholic world – and not only – reacted with enthusiasm and gratitude when doctors studying the miraculous healing of Sr Marie Simon Pierre Normand, attributed to John Paul II’s intercession, ruled it was “scientifically unexplainable”. That declaration led Pope Benedict XVI to approve the decree for the beatification of his predecessor.
The choice to have John Paul II’s beatification on the first Sunday after Easter, celebrated by the Church as Divine Mercy Sunday, is essentially linked to the fact that Divine Mercy was absolutely fundamental to his pontificate. However, the choice is further significant because tomorrow also happens to be Workers’ Day and John Paul II’s love for the working world was very much renowned. He was always very ready to offer a word of encouragement, affection and friendship to workers and to express his solidarity with them.
John Paul II’s concern for the plight of the worker, also very evident in his insightful teachings, had some of its roots in his direct experience with the world of manual work, before becoming a priest. Indeed, as a young man, during the terrible period of the Nazi occupation of Poland, to earn a living and forestall deportation and imprisonment, the future Pope Karol Wojtyla had to work as a stone cutter in a quarry and, later, at a chemical plant, both in Krakow.
The late Pope’s documents include the 1981 landmark encyclical on human work, which presents him seeing human work as probably the essential key to the whole social question, if one tries to see that question really from the point of view of man’s good.
For him, work is a good thing for man and a good thing for his humanity because, through work, man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfilment as a human being and, indeed, in a sense, becomes “more a human being”.
He used to plead in favour of the moral obligation to link industriousness as a virtue with the social order of work, to enable man to become, in work, “more a human being” and not be degraded by it because of the wearing out of his physical strength – which, at least up to a certain point, is inevitable – but also and especially through damage to the dignity and subjectivity that are proper to him.
John Paul II was an extraordinary figure of great courage who this tiny island had the great pleasure of welcoming twice. Throughout his pontificate, he stole the hearts of millions who, in him, saw a role model both as a man and as a spiritual leader who encouraged them not to be afraid. Many who met him agree that, for those moments, they felt he was focused completely on them, and that he truly saw in them a reflection of the image and likeness of God. No wonder so many millions of people are already celebrating his beatification.