taken from Witness To Hope: the biography of Pope John Paul II by George Weigel
*287 PROGRAM NOTES FOR A PONTIFICATE
as the 21 epistles in the New Testament suggest, Christina leaders have used letters as teaching instruments from the very beginning of the Church. Scholars date the origins of the modern papal 'encyclical', a letter to a specific group of bishops or to the world episcopate, to Benedict XIV 's Ubi Primum in 1740, although it was Gregory 16 who, in the early 19th century, first used the term 'encyclical' to refer to these documents. before the First Vatican Council, encyclicals were largely admonitory, warning against this or that deviant teaching. after Vatican !, Leo XIII used the encyclical as a vehicle for addressing theological issues and the Church's relationship to modern social, political, economic and intellectual life, as did Popes Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII and Paul VI. Benedict XV used the device of an 'inaugural encyclical' to declare a halt to the brawling over Modernism that had damaged.
*288 Catholic theology and the Communio of the Church. Paul VIs 'inaugural encyclical' Ecclesiam Suam, signaled that ecclesiology - the Church's self understanding and mission - would be the theme of his pontificate.
John Paul II has said that he began work on a letter addressed to the entire Church and to all men and women of good will 'immediately' after his election. like Paul VI, he wanted to announce and explain the great theme of his pontificate through a major teaching document with doctrinal authority and Christian humanism, as he put it, 'was a subject i had brought with me' to Rome. 5 months after he arrived, he published the first encyclical ever devoted to Christian anthropology. (def - study of the nature and essence of mankind)
when it was released publicly on March 15, Redemptor Hominis
1.24.1979 Soviet foreign minister Andre Gromyko calls on Pope John Paul II in the Vatican
3.2.1979 the Pope moves to strengthen Czechoslovakian Catholicism through a letter on religious resistance to tyranny
3.15.1979 John Paul II releases the encyclical Redemptor Hominis, nature and essence of man
3.19.1979 a papal letter to Ukrainian Cardinal Iosyf Slipyei anticipates the 1988 millennium of Christianity in Kievan Rus' and defends the principle of religious freedom for all.
7. 2-10,1979 John Paul II's first pilgrimage to Poland.
8.14-31,1980 Gadansk shipyard strike gives birth to Solidarity trade union
291 in 1966, Poland's community rulers had been singularly unsuccessful in their efforts to co-opt the millennium of Polish Christianity. the regime hung signs in the streets:
A Thousand Years of the Polish State
every church in the country prominently displayed a banner reading, Poland's Sacred Millennium, 966-1066.
other church banners read the Polish government
For God and Country Socialism and Fatherland
the Nation Is With The Church the Party is with the Nation
Poland Ever-Faithful the Communist Regime is the Guarantee of
Peace and Frontiers
292 the regime didn't even try to keep pace with the Church symbolically during John Paul II's return to is homeland in June 1979. Victory Square, scene of many of the Polish communist regime's great public displays, had been transformed by government workers into an enormous liturgical stage for the papal Mass. from it, John Paul would address 1 million of his countrymen live, and tens of millions more on radio and TV. the centerpiece of the altar platform was a 50 foot tall cross, draped with an enormous replica of a priest's stole, reminding all present that they were witnessing a sacramental representation of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary. beneath the huge cross, where Mary had stood faithfully by, was a replica of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa.
no hero in polish history -not King Jan III Sobieske, not Tadeus Kosciuszko, not Jozef Pilsudski - had ever entered Warsaw as John Paul II did on June 2, 1979.
rebuilt Warsaw was a grim, gray place, its skyline dominated by the Palace f Culture and Sciences, a garish communist-baroque confection given to the city by Stalin. the city's grayness too often matched the people's mood. now for the pope, Warsaw had come alive, visually and spiritually. thousands of pilgrims had been welcomed into the homes of strangers. every church in the city had remained open overnight to give shelter to those who could not find places elsewhere. the entire route from Okecie Airport to the rebuild old City was lined with hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, 5 and 10 rows deep, waving small Polish flags. there was no disorder, only jubilation, as the enormous crowds kept to the places assigned to their parishes by the Church's efficient organizers.
the city had been transformed by homemade decorations. the windows and porches of the drab apartment blocks along the roads John Paul would travel had been turned into shrines and altars bedecked with flowers, flags and photographs of the pope. as the papal motorcade moved slowly along the street, bouquets were thrown in the Pope's path while the crowd broke out in songs, cheers and , in some cases, uncontrollable tears. many Poles knelt on the roadside as a beaming John Paul II scattered benedictions left and tight from the converted truck on which he rode. on June 2, 1979, 3 million Poles, twice the city's normal population, had come to see their countryman, Karol Wojtyla of Wadowice. Krakow and Rome.
some 230,000 tickets had been issued for the Mass; 300,000 people had wedged themselves into Victory Square, with another three-quarters of a million or so overflowing int the surrounding streets. it was a brilliantly sunny, hot day. accompanied by the strains of the papal anthem and the hymn 'Gude Mater Plonia' (Rejoice, Mother Poland), the Pope and Primate Wyszynski walked slowly toward the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the square. a young couple gave the Pope a bouquet, which he laid on the tomb before kneeling in silent prayer. he kissed the grave, signed the book of
*293 remembrance ( 'To Poland's Unknown Soldier -John Paul II') and walked to a tent where he vested for Mass.
attended by the Warsaw diplomatic corps and by representatives of the Lutheran, Reformed, Orthodox, Methodist and Baptist churches, the Mass began with a greeting from the Primate, who proclaimed that national unity - a constant theme of Communist propaganda - had now, in fact, been achieved: 'Holy Father, the capital is united today in prayer, led by the head of the Roman Catholic Church... Christ's vicar on earth, apostle of Christ and His Gospel, messenger of truth and love, a son of Poland, chosen by God...'
after the proclamation of the Gospel, a deep silence fell over the tremendous crowd.Polish Communist Party leader Edward Gierek watched nervously from a window in a hotel adjacent to the square, he and millions of others wondered : What would he say? what Could he say?
Karol Wojtyla looked out at a sea of expectant faces, paused - and then gave what may have been the greatest sermon of his life.
Today, he began, he wanted to 'sing a hymn of praise to divine providence' which had enabled him to come home 'as a pilgrim'. in doing so, he was fulfilling the wish of pope Paul VI, who had so 'ardently desired to set foot on the soil of Poland' that his desire reached 'beyond the span of a pontificate'. on his election, this polish Pope had 'immediately understood' that he had been chosen in order to fulfill what Pope Paul had been prevented from doing during the millennium celebration in 1966.
his papal pilgrimage was a continuation of those celebrations, because he had come for the anniversary of St. Stanislaw's martyrdom and that epic event in 1079 had been a fruit of Poland's conversion in 966. st. Stanislaw's witness, his resistance to the tyranny of autocratic state power, had become 'a special sign of the pilgrimage that we poles are making down through the history of the Church'. He, Pope John Paul II, was a product of that national spiritual journey and the defense of religious freedom that was one of its hallmarks.
why had a Pole been called to the chair of St. Peter? was it not because the Poland of today had become, through the terrible trials of the 20th century, 'The Land Of A Particularly Responsible Witness'?
the Poles, he insisted, had a right to think that, to think 'with singular humility but also with conviction' that it was to Poland, today, that 'one must come...to read again the witness of His cross and His resurrection'. this was no cause for boasting, however. 'If we accept all that I have dared to affirm in this moment, how many great duties and obligations arise? are we capable of them?'
the crowd began a rhythmic chant, 'We want God, we want God....'
it was, John Paul continued, the Vigil of Pentecost, so let us return in our imagination to the Upper Room in Jerusalem. there, the apostles and Mary waited for the Holy Spirit so that they could be the risen Christ's witnesses to the ends of the earth. Pentecost, the feast of the descent of the Holy Spirit, was
294 'The Birthday Of The Faith And Of The Church In Our Land Of Poland, Also'. just as the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, had gone from the Upper Room and preached in foreign tongues, so, too, was Pentecost 'the proclamation of the mighty works of god in our Polish language'. the mightiest of those works was the human person, redeemed by Christ; 'therefore Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude of geography. the exclusion of Chris from the history of man is an act against man. without Christ it is impossible to understand the history of Poland especially the history of the people who have passed or are passing through this land....' even those who 'doubted or opposed', lived within the Christian context of polish history and culture, anyone who tried to deny this or to uproot it damaged the Polish nation. for Poland and its history - 'from Stanislaw in Skalka to Maximilian Kolbe at Oswiecim' - could not be understood without reference to Jesus Christ. that was why he had come to Poland: to reaffirm that 'Christ does not cease to teach the great cause of man', for Christ was 'an ever-open book on man, his dignity and his rights...' today, in Victory Square, he and his countrymen were asking, in the supreme prayer of the Mass, 'That Christ will Not Cease To Be For Us An Open Book Of Life For The Future,, for our Polish future'.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier bore silent testimony to a truth for which countless Poles had died, that 'there can be not just Europe without the independence of Poland marked on its map! Polish soldiers had fallen on numerous battlefields 'for our freedom and yours'. was history thus absurd? No. for that spirit of sacrifice was emblematic of 'every seed that falls into the earth and dies and thus bears fruit. it may be eh seed of the blood of a soldier shed on the battlefield o eh sacrifice of martyrdom in concentration camps or in prisons.it may be the seed of hard daily toil...in the fields, the workshop, the mine, the foundries and the factories. it may be the seed of the love of parents who do not refuse to give life to a new human being and undertake the whole task of bringing him up. it may be the seed of creative work in the universities, the higher institutes, the libraries and the places where the national culture is built. it may be the seed of prayer, of service of the sick, the suffering and abandoned -'all of that of which Poland is made'.
all of that, he concluded, was in the hands of the Mother of God - 'at the foot of the cross on Calvary and in the upper Room of Pentecost'. all of Poland's suffering and triumph; all of he history of the peoples who had lived on this land, 'including those who died in their hundreds of thousands within the walls of the Warsaw ghetto' all that was what he - 'a son of this land... who am also Pope John Paul II - offered to God in this Eucharistic sacrifice.
...and I cry from all the depths of this millennium, I cry on the vigil of Pentecost:
let Your Spirit descend.
let Your Spirit descend
Amen.
*295 throughout the Pope's sermon, the crowd responded rhythmically;
'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...'
seven hours after he had arrived, a crucial truth had been clarified by a million Poles response to John Paul's evangelism. Poland was not a communist country; Poland was a Catholic nation saddled with a communist state.
Poland's 'second baptism', which would change the history of he twentieth century, had begun.
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