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Happening ... in the Local Church
 Pope
Benedict XVI on Palm Sunday (Photo/Joan Watson) |
By
Joan Watson
Special to
The
Catholic Moment
I remember standing in St. Peter’s Square when Pope Benedict XVI was elected, surrounded by 20 of my college classmates. We were studying abroad in Rome for the semester — and what an eventful semester it had turned out to be. After greeting our new pope with great excitement, we remained in the square long after he had disappeared from the loggia. Singing, laughing, crying tears of joy — it was that euphoria that makes you lose track of time and not care.
A reporter approached me to ask me what I thought about Cardinal Ratzinger’s election. He clearly had his own thoughts on the cardinals’ choice. Perhaps he thought the tears in my eyes were sadness? Never mind the fact that I was shouting with happiness. I responded that I was very happy with Pope Benedict’s election. Almost as if he wanted to convince me otherwise, he persisted, “Really? But he’s so old!” He began to point out that I was a young person, Benedict was almost 80 … but I reassured him that age didn’t matter.
After he walked away, dejected that I continued in my rejoicing, I paused to think about his reasoning. Had he slept through Pope John Paul II’s pontificate? Even in the last years of John Paul’s life, when his health was failing and he looked so much older than his 80 years, the youth embraced him with vigor. What did this old man have in common with the youth of the world? Why did he attract them more than any other world leader? In America, we hear how politicians are always trying new strategies to woo young adults. John Paul II didn’t have strategies. He had the Truth.
People who never understood the youth’s attraction to John Paul are now scratching their heads even harder. Joseph Ratzinger!? How could this happen?
I have now returned to Rome for graduate work, and my time here has given me a few unique chances to observe Pope Benedict’s rapport with my peers. One of these was a Marian prayer vigil to mark the annual European Day for Universities. Via satellite, the Holy Father prayed the rosary with 10 different universities throughout Europe and America. I was honored to be in the Audience Hall in Rome with him. As we watched the thousands of young people from across the world greet him with incredible excitement, he came alive. His were not the scripted actions of a world leader, but the genuine love of a father.
A week later, my friends and I were privileged to participate in a small Mass with Pope Benedict to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the International Youth Center, located near the Vatican at San Lorenzo in Piscibus.
John Paul II established the center so that the youth in Rome — the residents and the pilgrims — could have a place of their own to pray, study the faith, and socialize. Cardinal Ratzinger had celebrated Mass often at the center before his election, but now this March morning saw him returning as pontiff. My friends and I were among the 200 youth present in the small church, and I was able to watch him closely throughout the Mass. After beginning his homily, he set down his notes and looked at us intently. He continued without the notes, speaking to us freely. He spoke with such animation, that although I did not understand everything he was saying in Italian, I knew he was speaking from his heart. He was not content to address us from his prepared notes — he wanted to look us in the eyes and address us with a message he knew we needed.
Exactly a week after that, we were chosen to participate in the procession of palms at the papal Palm Sunday Mass. Palm Sunday marked the 23rd World Youth Day, and youth were in the forefront of the liturgy. Besides the thrill of waiting in the Apostolic Palace before Mass, participating in the procession out into the square, processing up to the main altar, and sitting yards away from Pope Benedict during the whole Mass, there was also a feeling of intense responsibility. We were more than pretty faces marching with palms. We represented a youth that have been entrusted with a great responsibility, a youth whom John Paul II and Benedict XVI have challenged out of love.
Pope Benedict is giving us the same thing John Paul II did: truth and respect. A friend of mine once commented that John Paul II knew what we were capable of, and he expected it of us. This is why we love him. In a society that force-feeds us condoms because they assume we will be sexually promiscuous, he called for chastity and fortitude. In a society that pushes euthanasia for those who inconvenience us, he called for an embrace of sacrifice and suffering. In a culture that promotes moral relativism and lives of selfishness because they are comfortable and easy, he called us to lives of absolute truth and self-gift. He called us to something higher. We loved him ... because he truly loved us.
Pope Benedict is continuing this call. Speaking the same unchanging message of Jesus Christ, he has told us in clear, certain terms that there is a higher calling, a greater life. We must not be content with the culture around us, nor can we step back and wait for an older generation to renew the world. Benedict has given us the commission to build the civilization of love.
In his address on the European Day for Universities, he said: “Youth have always been, in European and American history, heralds impelled by the Gospel. ... Young builders of the civilization of love! Today, God has called you, young Europeans and Americans, to cooperate together with your contemporaries of the entire world, so that the life-blood of the Gospel may renew the civilization of these two continents and of humanity as a whole. ... Behold, dear friends, the charge I entrust to you today: Be disciples and witnesses of the Gospel, so that the Gospel may be the good seed of God’s Kingdom, the civilization of love! Be builders of peace and unity!”
It is not surprising that a man who just celebrated his 81st birthday is attracting millions of young people across the world. Age doesn’t matter; the message is eternal.
Joan Watson, 24, is a member of St. Boniface, Lafayette. A graduate of Central Catholic Junior-Senior High School and Christendom College, she is now a student of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, pursuing a master’s degree in theology. She currently is studying at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.