John Paul II" "
Entrusting ourselves means abandoning ourselves. It presupposes a knowledge of the person by whom we let ourselves be led through the roads of life. It is a radical expropriation of ourselves that does not precipitate us into the void but into an embrace that supports, nourishes and reinvigorates. In all lives we may glimpse perhaps only in retrospect the thread that supports the web of time given to us in history. It is not the thread that is cut by a single brutal act to consign us to dust, to oblivion. It is the thread without which the web of life would inexorably disintegrate and create a void, a space filled with chaos. Each one of us has his thread. To discover it is to enter into our own mission, grasp the meaning of our life. It is illusory to believe ourselves capable of self-discovery. It is wise to believe ourselves illuminated by the Spirit and to implore the illumination to grasp it. What is the thread that has supported the webs of the life of Karol Wojtyla and John Paul II? Webs dispersed between wars and regimes, struggle for survival and love for the theatre, tireless studies and magic mountains? As a boy and as a young man, before the lines of age furrowed his face. This thread is taking him to the threshold of his 83rd birthday and the 25th anniversary of a pontificate that has permitted him no rest and, in his tireless labours, has brought pastoral comfort to all the parallels and meridians of our world. That thread is a person, and has a name: Mary. Psychoanalysts (or those who claim to be such) would explain it like this: Karol has filled the void left by the precocious death of his mother. Even if that were the case, the Christian is not disturbed. The Christian does not always have the ready answer and is not always able to square the circle. All he knows is that the history and destiny of each person, by a gift of God, is invisibly supported, guided and led by the Father. Karol/John Paul II has received a gift for all of us: Mary. Precisely because it is a gift, if placed in the hands of others, it grows immeasurably. It is a leaven that raises, a flower that blossoms, inexplicably, but according to the laws of love and universal brotherhood. The road travelled by Mary and Karol/John Paul II is a universal trace, punctuated by a few words: “I am all yours and everything that is mine is yours. I welcome you in everything. Give me your heart, O Mary”. The Mother as all of us can perceive replied in the same words. Those of us who travel laboriously by foot can quench our thirst by drawing from and transmitting the hidden sources that the Pope has hewn with his hands. Hands that no longer have the beauty and slenderness of youthful vigour, hands that reveal the toil of hewing hard stone, veins of rock that break asunder and allow him to pass only if continuously invested with one Ave Maria after another. “Everything holds together”, wrote the Pope. Everything has its sense and its meaning, when, like him, life has been a life in close dialogue with Mary. We don’t know for how much longer this thread will continue to unwind and, in the last analysis, it matters little; we don’t travel through a labyrinth from which we need to escape, we travel the road that Mary indicates to us: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”. Mary is not a Mother and a Sister who selfishly detains for herself the person who has entrusted himself to her. Hers is the womb that delivers us to Jesus, who leads us to the Father. The thread then learns to dance to the sound of the “silent music” in the words of John of the Cross that characterizes the life of the Trinity, the life that awaits us, sooner or later. Memorizing the prayer to Mary is to dance along the polluted roads of the world, in our own office, in our own kitchen, on the shop floor or by flying an airplane. “Rediscovering the Rosary means immersing ourselves in the contemplation of He who ‘is our peace'”. The hands of John Paul II, tired and marked by the passage of time, symbolically tie the thread of all our lives to the thread of your life, Mary; we cannot yet see the design, we hope for it, we await it, but we know that it will dance over the world, designing Shalom, Shalom. We hope that the thread that bears the name of John Paul II will continue to unwind in history for a long time to come, as long as God wills. But if it be permitted to us to express a desire and secretly glimpse the ball of thread unwinding, we would like to say: “Mary, prolong that thread!”.
