Internment

I was reflecting on the Pope's Last Will & Testament and recalling my family's visit to the crypt beneath St. Peter's Basilica during our Jubilee Pilgrimage to Rome, Easter 2000.

When we descended to the silent echoes of the place where so many Pontiffs repose in their tombs and sarcophagi, I found two things very intriguing. The first was the ornate qualities of Bl. John XXIII's tomb. Not that his final resting place is decadent, but it departed very little from the Baroque funerary architecture we had seen throughout the Eternal City's many churches and basilicae. One tomb after another featuring death masks and decrees in expensive marble finery we strolled past in silence. And the Good Pope John's tomb was no different- intricate carvings, golden laurel wreaths- except perhaps that his tomb was still dressed with carnations and candles.

Walking past Paul VI's tomb elicited a very different response. Its austere simplicitly starkly contrasted with the rest of the pontifical burial chamber- a plain marble slab, like a headstone rather than a monument. I could not help but admire Paul VI as I prayed before his grave. According to his requests, they laid him in a simple wooden box and buried him in the soil, like a common man. Paul VI was humble and simple and totally misunderstood and underappreciated in his time. And I thought perhaps he would have remained equally underappreciated in his slumber.

Until I saw the Holy Father's grave. Almost identical to his predecessor, John Paul II has been laid to rest in a simple wooden box in the soft earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The antechamber in which he rests is simple and unadorned, like Paul's. How fitting and sublime. What a tribute to the Apostle Pope.

It pleased me immensely to learn that John Paul the Great would prayerfully reflect on the last will of Paul VI each year during his spiritual exercises. If anyone bore a Cross during his papacy, it was Paul. If anyone lived each day fully aware within and incessantly reminded from without of his faults and weaknesses, it was Paul.

Here was a man who did more than any Pope in the last century to return the Church to its apostolic mission. I do not doubt that our late Pontiff brought that mission to its fulfillment in his 26 years and I do not doubt that Blessed John decreed that vision, but Paul set the course. Paul reformed the Church, Paul broke the mold, Paul did the Spring cleaning. All John did was open the window- a remarkable step in its own right, to be sure, but merely an invitation. Paul accepted and embraced the vision of his predecessor and carried it out faithfully to its natural conclusion. Had John survived, I do not think he would have gone so far to simplify and pare down the Church as Paul did.

In fact, that's the greatest irony I find in studying the lives of these two men: so many progressively-minded people in the Church love to hold John on a pedestal. "He was so radical, so engaged in the signs of the times!" they coo. His aggiornamento is looked upon by so many as the great liberation from the Institutional clutches of the Roman Curia. But John died halfway through the second session of Vatican II. He did not live long enough to accomplish anything but the Council's inception. It fell on Paul's shoulders to not only finish what John had started, but to execute that vision faithfully and in accordance with the wishes of his predecessor.

Paul did all the work, and the progressively-minded Catholics, especially in this hemisphere, never give him the credit he is due. Why is this ironic? Because Paul VI was the real progressive! John still wore embroidered slippers and told people to kiss his ring. He loved the pomp and circumstance! He was jovial and outgoing, but it was Paul who broke with centuries of protocol by stepping outside the Italian Peninsula, by visiting with rabbis and patriarchs. It was Paul who wrote Octogesima Adveniens, one of the most "with-it" documents in the whole of Catholic Social Teaching. It was Paul who reformed the Papal Household, simplified the rituals of Conclaves, set aside the papal tiara at his coronation, elevated the most diverse College of Cardinals that had ever been seen up to that point, and worked tirelessly to promote the Church's preferential option for the Poor. And then chose to be buried like a peasant- in a wooden box underneath the dirt.

I really don't believe Vatican II could have been executed as faithfully to its apostolic vision had it remained under the guidance of its visionary. As I said, John may have opened the window, but Paul did all the Spring cleaning. John was too reluctant to keep the Curia at bay. He was still too attached to the gilt and finery. Paul was the one who brought the Church to a real confrontation of its Gospel mandate; Paul lived the Sermon on the Mount, and he challenged the bishops conferences around the world to do the same.

You know why Paul never gets any credit? Because he had the audacity to prophetically proclaim that no good could come from birth control. He boldly foresaw that society's hedonistic sexual license would be the downfall of civility. With birth control comes the crippling of marriage comes the breakdown of families as the fundamental building block of life. Ever since the sexual revolutionaries of the 70's snubbed their nose at Paul, we have witnessed the swift descent down a slippery slope of moral deformity. And like every other Prophet before him, Paul was run out of town. He was made to seem a failure, a weakling. He was impaled to a Cross of slander, revilement, and total indifference by a spoiled, self-centered, "Me" generation of Catholics who refused to be told "NO". And they have raised their children to believe that the highest moral good is to be able to do whatever I want whenever I want it as long as it doesn't infringe on someone else's right to do whatever they want whenever they want it.

People say that John Paul II was reactionary and regressive. Perhaps its matter of perspective: while this sad generation of adolescent libertarians threw a hissy-fit and stuck its feet in the mud, the Pope progressed and moved forward, so he seems to be receding away from them. He reached out to a new generation crawling out of its parents hypocrisy and surveying the rubble; he told us to be not afraid. He gave us the courage to be true to our convictions that some things just aren't right no matter how much we want it. He showed us how to be truly Christian people, humble Servants. He showed us that the Baby shouldn't be thrown out with the bathwater.

And so he lays to rest alongside Paul, as if to say, "You're not alone, dear soul. I'm here now; let's rest in peace. We done good, you and I- real good!"