The hours of that Saturday

“A sign and a witness of the Resurrection of Christ”. That’s how Benedict XVI defined the pontificate of John Paul II, in the mass offered for the soul of the late pontiff, celebrated in St. Peter’s Square on 2 April. The eucharistic celebration opened the world apostolic Congress of Mercy, dedicated to the memory of the great Polish Pope. “We re-live with emotion – said the Pope – the hours of that Saturday evening, when the news of [John Paul II’s] death was received by a huge throng of well-wishers in prayer who packed St. Peter’s Square”. Then, “for several days the Vatican Basilica and this piazza were truly the heart of the world. An incessant flow of pilgrims paid homage to the mortal remains of the venerated Pontiff, while his funeral marked a further testimony of the esteem and the affection that he had won in the hearts and minds of so many believers and people all over the world”. “Do not be afraid”. These words, added Benedict XVI, “became a kind of motto on the lips of Pope John Paul II, ever since the solemn beginning of his Petrine ministry”. They were words that he “repeated on several occasions to the Church and to the humanity making its way towards the year 2000, and then through this historic goal and also beyond it, at the dawn of the third millennium”. Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope’s vicar for the diocese of Rome, recalling the Polish Pope, observed that the life eternal “is our vocation, our destiny. This was the secret of the life and testimony of John Paul II, the origin of his capacity to love and to suffer”. “This life – he added – is the fruit of God’s love for us: it is not a blind destiny, and therefore this life is not interrupted and does not end with death”.A sign from Heaven. John Paul II “found in the words, in the messages that Sister Faustina received from Jesus and that she transmitted in very simple language, the answer to the great questions and challenges of our time”, said the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, in commemorating Karol Wojtyla on the third anniversary of his death. John Paul II, added Schönborn, “reflected, in the light of these messages, throughout his life, on the inexhaustible mystery of Divine Mercy. This mystery shaped his action as priest, as bishop and as pope and touched, through his person, an infinite number of men and women throughout the world. He truly was a unique witness of Mercy”. The cardinal also pointed out that “the earthly journey” of John Paul II came to an end just on the “Sunday of Mercy”, a feast he himself had introduced during the Great Jubilee of 2000″, when he canonized Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska. “It’s difficult, indeed impossible, not to see in this coincidence a ‘sign from Heaven'”. And the cardinal asked himself: “Did not God himself place his signature” below John Paul’s “programme of life”.The power of love. “John Paul II lived under two dictatorial regimes and experienced the depth of the power of darkness by which also the world of our time is beset”, said Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, private secretary of John Paul II for 25 years and now Archbishop of Krakow, “but God opposes these forces, which He does not allow to prevail, with a totally different and divine power, posing a limit to evil. It is the power of truth and of love”. John Paul II, in the cardinal’s view, died three years ago, but ever since “he has never left us alone”. Cardinal Dziwisz expressed his will to “take up the legacy” of Karol Wojtyla and to continue his programme of the new evangelization: “We wish to proclaim the sacredness of life and the holiness of the family in marriage. In the name of Jesus we are on the side of the poor, of the humble, of those who don’t have anything, and of those who are persecuted on account of their origin or their religion”.Dialogue is possible. John Paul II “revived the Mercy of God in the heart of the life of the Church and of the world”, said Cardinal Audrys J. Baèkis, Archbishop of Vilnius (Lithuania). Devotion to Divine Mercy, according to the cardinal, “is an invitation to strengthen our own faith in Jesus Christ, in the embrace of the Church, which is expressed in deep prayer and through the sacraments”, especially through the Eucharist, but also through “the sacrament of reconciliation”. In the view of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon, “mercy is one of the major themes of our dialogue with other religions, in particular with Judaism and Islam”. Cardinal Barbarin also recalled that fruitful interfaith dialogue between Catholics and Muslims has been in progress in Lyon for over fifty years. “My conviction – he concluded – is that only a humble interior attitude, which makes us ready to recognize and receive the gifts of God in us and in others, will permit us to be true servants of His mercy, servants of joy at the heart of mankind”.