Going Away Sadly

"Where have the last feelings of decency and self-respect gone when even our statesmen, in other ways a very unprejudiced kind of man and practical anti-Christians through and through, still call themselves Christians today and go to Communion?...A young prince at the head of his regiments, splendid as the expression of his people's egoism and presumption--but without any shame professing himself a Christian!...The practice of every hour, every instinct, every valuation which leads to action is today anti-Christian what a monster of falsity modern man must be that he is nonetheless not ashamed to be called a Christian!" --Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, 1888

"The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt."   --Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, 1952

"It is not difficult to see how today's world, despite its beauty and grandeur, despite the conquests of science and technology, despite the refined and abundant material it offers, is yearning for more truth, for more love, for more joy. And all of this is found in Christ and in his way of life."   --Pope John Paul II, 1979

WHO IS HE? An image on a television screen. A brusque man, a stolid face, the body of a peasant. He descended the airplane ramp and kissed the asphalt of East Boston. And through the cluttered landscape of eyes and ears and signs that viewed him, he smiled warmly and told them all to condemn abortion, to uphold marriage, to aid the weary and the poor. He looked at masses of well-to-do's, of down-vested students all packed off to Business and Law and Success School and told them to forsake "possessions" and to forsake themselves, for Christ.

He is a walking irony, standing at the crest of Boston Common. Caesar's men fought for the right to pay his way. They swept out the winos, bums, petty thieves and rapists who populate the Common until the Boston cold runs them out in November just to bring him there and hear him say: "...it is part of your task in the world and the Church to reveal the true meaning of life where hatred, neglect or selfishness threaten to take over the world...Faced with problems and disappointments, many people will try to escape from their responsibility: escape in selfishness, escape in violence, escape in indifference and cynical attitudes. But today, I propose to you the option of love, which is the opposite of escape. If you really accept love from Christ, it will lead you to God."

Pope John Paul II said it with hardly a wince, hardly a quiver of intimidation even with the Combat Zone burning bright to the South, with Kruggerrands on sale in banks down the street, with every journalist and photographer struggling in vain to convert him and his mission to a catchy cliche for sale on the morning stands:

The Boston Globe: "The Pope is Here"

Time Magazine: "John Paul II, Superstar"

Newsweek Magazine: "The Pope's Triumphant Visit"

AND AFTER WEEK, he leaves them all disemboweled--leaves them with so much cheap comment over his simple, warm homily. For a week, America stopped for him. The granite monuments and the country-of-many-crises blurred in the background of his presence, all the analyses were mere enatter. Who is he? "A pilgrim of faith," he answered in Boston. A mission to America, "a successor of Peter." The Pope who lived, who lives. The Pope who came with a message and left America all by itself, and suddenly there is a catharsis to be found in the ponderous eyes of those who watched--bums, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Moonies, pagans, Carters--that is rooted beneath the careers and ambitions and the cynical laughs: the hope that the Pope was right.

John Paul II touched on the hope that keeps every American muddling through a life measured by matter, a life that weans itself on so much hypocrisy and disbelief, idealized by pure myth, a life that--more and more--becomes dehumanized and objectified and reduced to...a method.

And now America is left to ponder their most recent phenomenon. No one--Mick Jagger, FDR, John Kennedy, Elvis Presley, Jimmy Carter, or Lucky Lindy--ever sucked the love and respect out of so many people in one meeting, at first sight, with so few and precious words and movements as John Paul II did in one week. Who is he?

"The sadness of the young man makes us reflect. We could be tempted to think that many possessions, many of the goods of this world, can bring happiness. We see instead in the case of the young man in the Gospel that his many possessions had become an obstacle to accepting the call of Jesus to follow him. He was not ready to say yes to Jesus, and no to self, to say yes to love and no to escape."

The cynics ask, "How? Give us a method." In the aftermath, the analysts are looking for practical applications. And the pontiff did leave his listeners with a "method," a highly impractical method which few modern men take seriously beyond the Bible--an impractical method for the most impractical of all things: life.

AND IT WAS PAINFUL TO HEAR, this uncompromising faith in the inviolability of life. It was almost unbelievable that any man alive today could utter the word 'truth' or 'God' in America after Vietnam, after Jimmy Carter's human rights campaign, after the eviscerating of an environment--in a land where God, in a 'practical sense', has been hewn into a bare symbol.

Unbelievable--it would seem--except for the fact that John Paul II did believe. With the easiness and simplicity of his words--hackneyed without the belief behind them--he took on the Supreme Court, the political machine, the Playboy Corporation, all the racists and sexists and economic and social oppressors in a breath. But there were no practical methods, no formulae or ten-point programs. None were needed. Who can reveal the method of falling in love?

That there is still poverty, starvation, fear, anxiety, doubt, oppression, hate, horror and evil in America the morning after his departure is no trifle of John Paul's. It is his horror. And today, the evil which the Pope addressed no longer threatens "to take over the world," as he understated--it is destroying it.

With every passing day, with each breaking tragedy, the visceral source of Christianity--of almost any religious faith--becomes more distant, yet more dear and alluring. And perhaps a society which has relegated the doctrine of love to its churches and temples and books can no longer afford to be so sure of itself. Science and technology have taught us so much, the Pope acknowledged almost wryly--so much in good and bad. How close are we--at this moment--beneath the desert and in submarines, in mental hospitals and in the nuclear core, to creating Hell?

So the Pope stands humbly in his prolific robes, offering a wager:

"Real Love is demanding. I would fail in my mission if I did not clearly tell you so...do not be afraid of honest effort and honest work; do not be afraid of truth. With Christ's help, and through prayer, you can answer his call, resisting temptations and fads and every form of mass manipulation. Open your hearts to the Christ of the Gospels--to his love and his truth and his joy. Do not go away sad!"

HOW MANY TIMES have you heard this on a cheap transistor radio at six in the morning, accompanied by "soul revival" hits? Well, no one sold tickets to the Pope, and you couldn't hear his words through mail order only. He offered it. And what if you refused?

You're forgiven, America, but you may never know it.