Pope John Paul II gave us his fearless example

Years ago, when I was in the hospital laboring to deliver our seventh child, my husband paced the floors and a television tuned to MSNBC blared from a corner of the room.

Pope John Paul II was dying.

It seemed especially fitting that this man, who had spent a lifetime waging battle against the forces of what he called the “culture of death,” should offer such a fearless, contrasting example of embracing suffering at the end of his life.

Our world does not understand suffering. It sees no value in it. It does not understand a God who might allow for it and has no tolerance for the idea that some forms of suffering might be redemptive. The idea that even the smallest, even the weakest of human lives are an irreplaceable gift from God, intrinsically valuable and worthy of protection, is a radical notion today. But it was an idea John Paul II was unafraid to embrace.

John Paul II was the only pope I ever knew. I was just six years old when white smoke wafted from the chimney in the Sistine Chapel and my mother stood before the television, mesmerized and clutching a dishtowel, as Karol Wojtyla was elected pope decades ago.

Though I paid little attention at the time, the famous opening lines of John Paul II’s inaugural sermon came to have more meaning for me as I grew older:

“Be not afraid. Open wide the gates to Christ. Open up to his saving power the confines of the state, open up economic and political systems, the vast empires of culture, civilization and development. ... Be not afraid!”

It can be hard not to fear.

As parents raising the next generation of Christians in a world that often mocks our values and offers all manner of godlessness presented in seductive packages, it can be very hard not to fear.

That day in the hospital, when my unborn son’s heartbeat slowed unexpectedly and became erratic, one nurse ran to the hall and shrieked for the doctor while two others threw me roughly onto my side and forced an oxygen mask onto my face. When my eyes met my pale-faced, stoic husband’s, fear pressed hard against my heart.

Hours later, though, when I held my healthy, pink-faced newborn son, traced my finger along the gentle curve of his dimpled elbows, and felt his sturdy legs kick hard against the swaddling, I thought of our beloved, dying pope. I recalled his abiding love for families and unfailing confidence in the next generation.

John Paul II once said, “As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.”

Sometimes that makes me tremble. We are the families in whom he had such confidence. Ours was the generation he predicted would bring about a “new springtime” in the Catholic Church.

I am no pope. How can I raise up a new generation to wage war against a culture of death that devalues human life, promotes impurity, scorns faith, and forgets its dependence on God?

John Paul II had no patience for such paralyzing fears. I think this is what he had in mind when he reminded us, “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” He intended that we should establish a culture of life by forgetting our fears, “opening wide the doors to Christ,” and letting Him take care of the more worrisome details.

I am grateful for that reminder.

Recently, my son Raphael, born into this world just as John Paul II was leaving it, approached me with a hand-hewn wooden sword his older brother whittled for him from a tree branch.

“Can you attach this to my belt?”

As I worked the sword through his belt loops, Raphael wiped his sun-kissed face with a dirty hand and his chocolate eyes squinted toward the trees.

“Where can I find some bad guys to fight?” he wondered aloud.

I watched Raphael march boldly into our open field with his sword at his side.

Be not afraid, John Paul II once reminded us. If we raise up soldiers for Christ, and if we place the future of our Church in such capable hands and hearts as these, we will have nothing to fear.

Danielle Bean  | Apr 29, 2011 1:00 PM