Crossing the Finish Line
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - April 8, 2005
On the walls to the right and left of the tabernacle in Pope John Paul II's private chapel in the Vatican, there are large bas relief sculptures of the deaths of Saints Peter and Paul.
Whenever I had the privilege to visit that chapel for the Pope's morning Mass, I was always struck by the inscription at the bottom of the sculpture dedicated to the Apostle of the Gentiles. It was taken from his parting words to St. Timothy, his spiritual son:
Bonum certamen certavi. Cursum consummavi. Fidem servavi.
Pope John Paul II contemplatively gazed at those words for over two and a half decades. On April 2, he was able to make that valedictory fully his own and state it to us, his spiritual children: "I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith" (2 Tim 4:7).
He indeed fought Christ's good fight for decades. His whole life was a fight for Christ and for those for whom Christ himself fought to the death. He fought to defend his Jewish friends in Wadowice as a young boy. As a young man under Nazi occupation, he fought to keep Polish Christian culture alive, risking his life to perform with other young people in the Rhapsodic Theater. He again put his life on the line to break the Nazi ordinance and enter the secret seminary in Cardinal Sapieha's basement. As a young priest and bishop in Poland, and later as Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow, he fought against the Communist oppression of the Polish people. And through his 9,670 days as St. Peter's successor, he fought to bring the Gospel of Christ to people of every generation and in every land. He was wounded, almost killed, on the battlefield of St. Peter's square. He stared down communist dictators in Poland, Cuba and El Salvador. He publicly defended the sanctity of every human life in front of various world leaders and protagonists of the culture of death. He always fought fearlessly, because he knew he wasn't fighting alone. With Christ, and for Christ, he fought for the downtrodden. He fought for those for those for whom no one else fought. He fought for us.
He likewise fought to finish the race Christ gave him to run. Once St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win!" (1 Cor 9:24). Pope John Paul II indeed ran with his eyes on the prize. Dubbed "God's athlete" early in his pontificate," Papa Wojtyla ran the 26-year-marathon of his pontificate as a continuous hundred yard dash. He worked seventeen hour days almost to the very end, packing so much into each day that he left many of those around him — from his assistants, to photographers, to journalists — gasping for air. In his foreign travels alone, he ran the equivalent of 28 times around the earth, or three times back and forth to the moon. He ran until he could run no longer — until the time he needed the help of modern Cyrenians to finish the last station on his modern Way of the Cross. But neither old age, nor bullet wounds, nor broken hips, nor Parkinson's, nor tracheotomies, nor feeding tubes nor any other possible excuse could stop him from following Christ to victory across the threshold of the eternal promised land.
And in that long pilgrimage, in which he didn't just "walk by faith" but "ran" by faith, he proudly "kept the faith" while at the same time lavishly passing it on. Faith is, of course, a content of truths we believe, and Pope John Paul II was faithful to Christ's teaching — including on the issues most controversial to moderns — and called us all to similar fidelity. But faith is, first and foremost, trust in a person, and it was here that Pope John Paul II was like a modern Abraham and a modern Mary. It was his trust in Christ that gave him the courage to fight the good fight no matter how tough the battle. It was his trust in Christ that gave him the fortitude to cross the finish line. It was his trust in Christ — in his word, in his promises, in his help, in his love — that allowed him, notwithstanding odds and experts, to "put out into the deep water and lower his nets for a catch" (Lk 5:4). Like with St. Peter's catch on the Sea of Galilee, John Paul II's trust did not go unrewarded. His greatest legacy may be that he has inspired countless young people — of every state of life — to emulate that trust, cast an anchor into heaven, and similarly lower their nets. Fishing season has not ended with his death, but, in many ways, has just begun.
The passage from St. Paul's letter to St. Timothy ends, "And now a crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me." We pray that Pope John Paul II now wears that imperishable crown, so that, in losing so good a pope, we may gain an even greater intercessor!
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
