His Holiness John Paul II
May 18, 1920 - April 2, 2005
In his first Encyclical Letter to the Church, Redemptor Hominis, Pope John Paul II made clear his vision for the Church:
"The Church wishes to serve this single end: that each person may be able to find Christ, in order that Christ may walk with each person the path of life, with the power of the truth about man and the world that is contained in the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption and with the power of the love that is radiated by that truth"(Redemptor Hominis, 13).
Quoting Lumen Gentium (the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church in the Modern World) from the Vatican Council II, John Paul insisted, therefore, that "man [and woman] is the road the Church must walk."
"Man and woman is the road the Church must walk"; just as Christ unites himself with each man and each woman, so the Church, the Body of Christ, must reach out to each man and each woman, every man and every woman, "without any exception whatever", he insisted. The Holy Father not only taught this, but in myriad ways he also lived this: by his travels, by his solidarity with the poor, the dispossessed, the young and the old, in his prayer and in what he exhorted and taught, Pope John Paul II walked with each of us, every one of us, without any exception whatever.
For this reason the world now seeks, for a moment, to walk with him -whether the millions of pilgrims who have traveled to Rome to celebrate his life, or whether the hundreds of millions who cannot be there, but accompany him in prayer. Let us now attend him by our prayers, but then let us be about the work of the Church, which he has so wonderfully illumined for us, so that, in very fact, "each man and woman may be able to find Christ."
Rev. Michael Sweeney, O.P.
