Today at four o’clock (EDT) the Mass at which Pope John Paul II will be declared “blessed” will begin in the exact place where little more than six years ago he lay for his funeral Mass. Saints do not get to be saints because every decision they made in life was correct or perfect. They are saints because of their personal holiness, their self-sacrificing service to the Gospel imperatives. In his life the focus was applying the Gospel to daily life. Blessed John Paul II had an unerring sense of popular piety and what it needed and when it could he helpful. With Blessed John Paul II’s soul mate, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, I have now been touched in my lifetime by two people whom the Church universal will likely soon refer to as “saints” but it didn’t take the process of Beaitification to convince me that these two were in different ways extraordinarily holy people.
I wish I could be there in person, but it will be wonderful to watch that vast piazza at St. Peters and the surrounding streets burst once again with people chanting as I know they will, “santo subito.” Blessed John Paul II, intercede with the Father to whom you are now close, to help this local Church serve all of God’s people.