The New Advent Prophet
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - December 2, 2005
Catholics are long accustomed to having Isaiah and John the Baptist prepare them, during the first two weeks of Advent, for the coming of the Lord. Theirs are the voices, crying out in the desert, to make straight the paths of the Lord.
This Advent another voice has joined them: the deep, sonorous baritone of John Paul II. Last night, ABC aired the two hour biopic Have No Fear: The Life of Pope John Paul II. On Sunday and Wednesday next week, CBS will show the four hour miniseries, Pope John Paul II. Peggy Noonan, the mellifluous Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal Columnist, has just released a highly readable biography entitled, Pope John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father, which is sure to make Papa Wojtyla's message continue to resonate long after our Advent wreaths have been stored away.
All boldly attempted the impossible: to condense a dramatic and momentous eighty-four year life and twenty-six year pontificate into something that can be digested in one, two or a few sittings. The end product for each is necessarily similar to a visual or verbal highlight reel in which certain events are stressed and many important moments left out.
What all capture, however, is the fundamentally Advent-oriented message of Pope John Paul II.
In the heart of what Benedict XVI, in his inaugural homily, called the "desert" of the modern world, Pope John Paul II incessantly clamored for man to prepare the way of the Lord. In his own inaugural message two and a half decades before, John Paul encapsulated the cries of Isaiah and John the Baptist in modern terms: "Brothers and sisters, do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power.… Open wide the doors for Christ!" That courage to let Christ in to transform each individual life is what Advent is meant to effect. Christ is still coming and knocking. Our task is to do the opposite of the ancient inn-keepers, and open wide the door to embrace him.
The Advent message was not merely something John Paul II preached, but lived. His continual advent constituted the ongoing adventure of his life. The success of each of these new biographical snapshots will be determined by how much captures this essential reality.
John Paul II once commented to George Weigel that the essential error about the various biographies written about him prior to Weigel's monumental and authoritative Witness to Hope was, that "They try to understand me from the outside, but I can only be understood from inside." More than every other aspect of his extraordinary life, Karol Wojtyla was a disciple of Jesus Christ, who each day opened wide the doors to Christ and allowed him "inside." Once he made straight the paths for Christ to come to him, he became emboldened to take that same Christ out on the paths of the world.
That is the secret that makes his epic life imitable.
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.
