Rusted Cathedral Bells
Pope John Paul II At Prayer
I was asked recently by a group to tell a story from childhood that continues to shape my spiritual life. I quickly thought of that moment, early one morning, when I heard a murmuring coming from beyond the cracked door to my parents’ bedroom. I nudged the door forward and peeked guiltily into the semi-darkness. I saw my father on his knees, beside the bed. Edging a little closer, I thought he was talking to himself. The speech seemed intense, earnest, calm but urgent. Suddenly it dawned on me that he had come into the presence of his Lord, his friend, his companion. The suspicion sunk deeply that he did this every morning.
In his masterful biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness To Hope, my friend George Weigel tells this story: “Those who have heard Pope John Paul II groaning in prayer before morning Mass in his private chapel know that there is a dimension of Karol Wojtyla’s life in which God is the sole companion and interlocutor in a conversation literally beyond words.”
Shortly after Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope, he ventured out in June of 1979 on a pilgrimage to his homeland in Poland. This trip is now dubbed by some the nine days that changed the world, regarded by so many Poles as the real beginning of the fall of the Soviet Union. There was deep darkness and desperation among the Polish people, living as they were, under the iron fist of Soviet occupation, a land already tragically disfigured by Nazi invasion.
Could the Pope possibly shine new light into this profoundly darkened world? It quickly became obvious that he carried a source of light far brighter than the authorities of the regime could imagine. His message rang sharply, out over Victory Square in Warsaw, like an old, unused cathedral bell. To some three million people gathered, he began, without equivocation: “Praised be Jesus Christ.” “Christ cannot be kept out the history of any part of the globe,” he declared.
The Pope ended up calling on God to "send down your Spirit and renew the face of the earth and the face of this land." He and others began to evoke the language of Pentecost. The people began to respond rhythmically, interrupting his sermons: “We want God, we want God, we want God in the family, we want God in the schools, we want God in books, we want God, we want God.” The Spirit was sweeping across the land like a fierce wind.
There was another theme that began to crop out: “Let’s stop lying.” We’re drowning in a sea of lies. Will Jesus Christ bring truth along with his light? It is not true that God is dead or that Jesus Christ is only an antiquated teacher. It is not true that the regime promises a bright future. It is true, the Pope said over and over, that each human being deserved to be treated with dignity, from the womb to old age and death. We must stop living as if lies are true.
One recalls the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a few years earlier, as he was banished from Moscow into forced exile: We can only overthrow the regime of darkness when we “at least refuse to say what we do not think.” We must “never knowingly support lies!”
I find myself yearning for these same things in our own day. Can Jesus Christ ever again be lifted up as the center of culture? Can we find the strength to chant, all together, we want God, in our lives, our families, our schools, our books? Can we commit ourselves to refuse to say what we do not think? I fully understand, in our day of severe relativism, one person’s lie is another’s truth, but surely, if we are ever going to move in the direction of light, we must release ourselves from the tyranny of believing there is no truth. I am longing to hear those rusting cathedral bells ring loudly across our land.
So where does it all begin? Risking too much simplicity, I’ve come to believe it will begin each morning, as the sun rises, on our knees, in earnest conversation with our God, our companion. There is much more work to be done, but I suspect this is the most radical action we can take. On our knees we can see a new sun rising, in our lives, and out across our own darkened land.
I’m ready to give it a try.