20 years since that helicopter landed

By Marie Luttrell

Can it be 20 years since the Pope visited us in Vancouver? Could he have known that he would be living these very words 20 years later? It seems almost a prayer about Pope John Paul’s life right now, as his own body is ending its useful life. Yet here he is, still of great value to all of us.

Some people look at the photos of him and wonder why he still persists in his duties, curtailed as they now are. Why does he allow the images with the Parkinson’s disease causing the sagged face and drooling mouth, the limp hands and slouched posture? Surely this is not the image of strong leadership that the Church needs right now, they say.

On the contrary, we need this Pope as he is.

In 1984, our country and our world were far different. Power seemed to be the key word of the time, with the economy pulling out of a time of insane inflation and interest rates, and stepping up the corporate ladder the most important social trend.

We were in the midst of the years of the great peace marches, the Berlin wall was yet to fall, and the sabre-rattling between superpowers had us on edge in an “out-there” kind of way. No one paid much attention to Afghanistan or other Middle East countries.

Our archdiocese was in a building boom, constructing schools and parishes. The renewals of Vatican II were still being worked out in the parishes and in the archdiocese, with both the thoughtfulness and the arguments that change brings with it.

The Pope’s visit, which had been announced two years earlier, had brought together volunteers of every size, shape, and age. People were eager to give their time to do anything from singing in choirs to directing traffic to picking up litter. Here was the Pope we had known for a scant six years coming to visit Canada, and we, his people in Vancouver, wanted to be sure everything was right.

I recall vividly the Mass in Abbotsford, sitting on lawn chairs in our assigned sections, the roar going up from the crowd when his helicopter landed. I don’t remember much of the words of the homily or the prayers of the Mass, but I can still hear the stillness of the attentive crowd.

I can feel the touch of God over His people gathered on that tarmac, and wanting that feeling to last. Here was God, speaking to the Church, our Church, through this great man in white garments, a picture of health and vigour and unrelenting work for us.

Our world has taken a beating since then. Communism has fallen, but has left many in hopelessness and destitution. Great acts of inhumanity have left terrible scars in Tiananmen Square, in Rwanda, in Afghanistan, in the Philippines, in New York City: the list is far longer.

Our economies crash and rebuild, crash and rebuild, but it seems to be the trend that the gap between rich and poor is widening at an alarming rate. Cynicism and fear are the undercurrents of our day and age, replacing hopefulness and idealism.

Our Church, too, has lost credibility here in North America, first in Canada, then a decade later in the U.S. The sexual abuse crisis has lamed us for a time in sorrow, in shame, and in loss of some of our baptized members.

We face a world not with an outdated message of God’s love, but with a mode of communicating it that does not reach the hearts of the doubting, the downcast and the sceptic.

We are, Church and World, in the wilderness. The wilderness is where the Israelites fashioned a golden calf when Moses was so long on Mount Sinai. The wilderness is where the Good Shepherd left His 99 sheep when he went off in search of the lost sheep.

We are not abandoned. We are not unloved. We are in a place where God trusts us, but our human weakness leads us into sinful ways.

So when I look at Pope John Paul II, still at work, still speaking out, still loving his people even through his bodily weakness, I know God loves us. Pope John Paul is in his wilderness too, but he is teaching us God’s trust in us, without words, only by his steadfast presence. He is loving us, as Jesus did, “to the end.”

* * * * *

The passing of the years brings its frailties. You may be forced to give up activities that you once enjoyed. Your limbs may not seem as agile as they used to be. Your memory and your eyesight may refuse to give service. And so the world may cease to be familiar: the world of your family, the world around you, the world you once knew.

Even the Church, which you have loved for so long, may seem strange to many of you as she goes forward in this period of renewal. Yet despite changes and any weaknesses you may feel, you are of great value to all. Society needs you and so does the Church.

We need your experience and your insight. We need the faith which has sustained you and continues to be your light. We need your example of patient waiting and trust. We need to see in you that mature love which is yours, that love which is the fruit of your lives lived in both joys and sorrows. And yes, we need your wisdom, for you can offer assurance in times of uncertainty. You can be an incentive to live according to the higher values of the spirit.

Pope John Paul II, Vancouver, Sept. 18, 1984.