He was a man in love

New York Daily News
By MSGR. LORENZO ALBACETE
Sunday, April 3rd, 2005

Pope John Paul's favorite poet was Cyprian Norwid. I think he loved most the poem called "Chopin's Piano," written after Norwid visited his dying friend. It refers to Chopin's "last days" of a "trajectory still not exhausted," and saw them as "full of Myth, pale as the dawn ... when the end of life whispers to the beginning: 'I will not erase you; I will highlight you.'"

I kept thinking about this poem as the Pope's body declined and began to disintegrate before the eyes of the entire world. What we saw as twilight, he saw as sunrise ("pale as the dawn"); while everyone wondered why he would not resign, he saw a "trajectory still not exhausted."

We thought of the beginning, when he appeared first before the world, young, strong and athletic; full of life and seemingly boundless energy. Toward the end he was unable to stand without help or to hold the pages of a speech in his shaking hands. But what we saw as the "erasing" of his life, he saw as the "highlighting" of the beginning.

Those were days "full of Myth." A Myth is a religious drama, and he was an actor. An actor is called to be a poet of the body. Bodily gestures are the embodied words and verses of the great poetic drama that is human life.

When I first met him in 1976, before he was elected Pope, this is what we talked about. When he learned I had been a scientist, he asked me questions about science as a language of the human person. He wanted to know if I could express all my experiences in scientific terms. He claimed that this was a problem today, the problem of the adequate language to convey the truth of our humanity. In all the years that followed, whenever I had the opportunity to speak with him, he asked me questions about my students' reactions to a course I was teaching based on the plays he had authored. He was happy when I told him that everything he had written was best understood in those plays and in his poems.

People saw in him a contradiction. Namely, he was so liberal in some issues (especially in the areas of social justice and peace) and so conservative in others (mostly having to do with sex). He understood the contradiction. He saw it as a contradiction in us. The problem is dualism. It is precisely the separation between our gestures and the truth of our humanity.

The contradiction can only be overcome by actor-poets. He wanted us all to be such actors, to be the true protagonists of the drama of human history.

That is why I think that his most important contribution to Christian thought was his "theology of the body."

In it he underlines the importance of spontaneity, which is the elimination of this contradiction.

Spontaneity is when our actions are consistent with the truth of our humanity.

It was his spontaneity that attracted so many people not burdened by intellectualism, especially the young.

Again and again young people would say that they did not exactly follow the Pope's teachings in all areas of life, but they loved him. Why? "Because he's for real," they'd say.

"For real" is not exactly a precise scientific term, but it conveys exactly the experience of spontaneity.

The opposite of real is fake: a fake gesture, a deceiving illusion, propaganda, the sound bite.

Perhaps this is the greatest compliment to be paid to a public figure and leader today, that he or she is "for real" - words and gestures coinciding, because they are both bearers of the truth of our humanity.

Why was he this way?

There is only one answer and, amazingly, many found it hard to understand.

He was this way because he was in love.

Someone once said that when you are in love every moment of life, even the most banal becomes a drama. He was in love with Jesus Christ.

Again and again he repeated it: it is the experience of the "mystery of Christ" that makes possible the experience of the "full truth of our humanity."

It turns out that the most baffling thing about this man was that he was a Pope and a Christian, at the same time!

He was a Pope 2,000 years after Peter. John Paul possessed the same human attractions and reactions, the same wonder, the same enthusiasm, the same spontaneity as the first Pope, who could not leave Jesus, even if his teaching was hard, because he had no other place to go, because he was hooked forever, because Jesus had the "words of life."

John Paul was driven by this wonder and amazement before the reality of Christ, the same amazement as that of Peter, his brother Andrew, James, John and the other apostles, the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, Zacheus, the paralytic, Mary Magdalene ... all of them, that entire bunch of overwhelmed people who had met this man that was so exceptional, so different, so amazing, so "real."

Now the curtain has fallen on his performance. I guess we now write the reviews.

His legacy is that of a fantastic performance, and that's the most wonderful thing we can say to an actor.

The rest is up to us.

Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete lives in the Bronx and works in New York's midtown headquarters as the national ecclesiastical adviser to the international Catholic lay movement, Communion and Liberation. On weekends, he celebrates Mass at St. Mary's Church on Grand St.