Saturday 26 April 2014

John Paul the Great


I believe it is Richard Rohr who said in one of his books, that as a young boy grows up from teenage into young adulthood, he needs someone other than his own dad to be the role model - to 'mentor' him in values and life. Growing up in a culture which regards machismo as the ultimate expression of masculinity, university and young adulthood for me was mostly about that rising up, almost always unsuccessfully, to the levels of success which culture and a self-centred ideology had implanted in me. Yet, the more I failed, the more I yearned, the more I longed - the longing to belong and become - the quintessential pursuit of happiness, which lasted more than a decade - until finally I met a man, whom they called John Paul the Great, about 6 years back.





It was by chance that I, sometime in 2009, stumbled upon a biography of John Paul II by Edward Stourton, the BBC broadcaster and presenter, who wrote quite a "British Catholic" style critical analysis of the life and Papacy of JP2. Alas, little did I know then, as JP2 often used to say, that "in the grand design of providence. there are no mere coincidences". And it is with quite a lot of intent and thirst that I then devoured George Weigel's best seller, "The Witness to Hope". The more I knew JP2, the more I fell in love with him. The more I loved him, the more I wanted to love this God that he loved - a God about whom he wrote in his first encyclical "Christ fully reveals man to himself". All my life I have been a theist. Since (as someone said) atheism is mostly a luxury of the new world intellectual, philosophical elite and thanks to the below par nature of both my philosophical as well as ideological intelligence, I have never ventured into the realms of unbelief. Yet, before JP2, I had a God whom I turned to in times of struggle and need - and to be fair those instances were not few, far from it. With JP2, however, Jesus became "my" God, the Christ who is deeply, madly and passionately in love with me. A new world order was dawning for me, yet over the last many years, I have realised that millions of young people have gone through similar or more profound experiences during the life time as well after the death of this great man.

Dear Holy Father, as I would watch tomorrow the Church acclaiming and proclaiming your sanctity, along with the millions of young people around the world, there would be tears of gratitude in my eyes also - for you were there for me on those long winding rugged paths of life when all seemed lonely and alien. You showed me the beauty of love, you taught me the joy of fatherhood but above all, you kept on repeating again and again within me that "It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle."

Love you lots, Father..