How Pope John Paul II made me quiver in humility and awe

MANILA, Philippines - My first face-to-face encounter with Pope John Paul II was in October 1985. I was starting my doctoral program at the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome when His Eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin brought me along during his ad limina visit with the Pope. Cardinal Sin introduced me to the Holy Father as the first Parish Priest of the University of the Philippines, Diliman.

In my life as a priest for these past 44 years, Pope John Paul II’s influence looms large in both my personal journey faith and academic pursuits. My direct one-on-one encounters with him on three occasions at the Vatican have each left an indelible mark in my life.

On this first encounter, what touched me was the way Cardinal Sin described the ministry of the Archdiocese of Manila in UP. He informed the Holy Father that UP is the center of intellectual ferment in the country. And as the Archbishop of Manila, he felt he had to adopt the establishment of Basic Christian Communities (BCCs) as the key strategy to effectively serve the pastoral needs of the diverse constituents of the premier university in the country.

After the Cardinal’s introductory remarks, I presented to Pope John Paul II three books about Basic Christian Communities in the Philippines. One of them was The Basic Christian Communities: The UP Experience, which narrated my ministry at UP. The affirmation I got from both John Paul II and Jaime Cardinal Sin regarding my eight-year stint as UP’s first parish priest left me speechless. It was an affirmation that was not so much personal as ministerial. The Church ministry in UP and the promotion of BCCs in the Philippines is something that I know St. John Paul II had taken to heart. Receiving his blessings during the ad limina visit, I was convinced that the future of the Philippine Church lies in its evangelizing presence among the youth and the poor of God’s people.

This first meeting had a profound, life-long impact on me. For this reason, I decided to dedicate my doctoral program of studies to his teachings and exhortations. I wanted to find out how he perceived the place of Christianity and the mission of Church in the highly secularized and secularizing societies of all the continents. In particular, I was fascinated by his pastoral visits to the diverse and complex settings of Asia, a continent where all the major religions in the world reside.

My second encounter with Pope John Paul II was truly one-on-one. It was in October 1988, at the Pope Paul VI Auditorium, where I was again gifting the Holy Father with a copy of my doctoral dissertation, John Paul II’s Missiological Perspectives in Asia.

All the years of researching into these missiological queries were now contained in the book that I was handing over to the man himself in our second meeting. Leafing through the pages in his presence made me quiver, not in fear and trembling, but in awe and humility. When he put his hand on my shoulder, I felt graced and liberated, convinced and assured that the findings of my research on his missionary perspectives in Asia would provide a constant challenge and continuing relevance to my work and ministry. John Paul II afterwards thanked me and gave me his blessing. And I felt I had reached the most significant peak moment of my adult life.

The third time I met John Paul II was in a private audience with the family of the first Filipino Nuncio, Archbishop Oswaldo Padilla, at the Vatican in 1991. The Holy Father welcomed the parents and siblings, the nephews and nieces of Archbishop Padilla. He was enjoying enormously the experience of meeting the members of the Nuncio’s family, who were all reunited for that event.

When it was my turn to be introduced, Archbishop Padilla quipped that Fr. Manny Linterna and I were his “family” in Paris, France, since we were the team that provided pastoral care to the Filipino migrant workers in Paris. I took this as an opportunity to briefly orient the Holy Father on the plight of the Filipino migrant workers in France. I informed him that there were about 20,000 Filipinos in Paris and about the same number in the Cote d’ Azur region of Southern France. At that time, 80 percent of them were without working documents and were subjected to a lot of moral, spiritual and socioeconomic hardships. I requested the Holy Father to bless the Filipino migrant workers worldwide and those in France. As he blessed me, what came to my heart and mind were the countless Filipino migrant workers I had met and served, workers whose hopes and struggles, whose joys and pains I deeply shared. John Paul II’s blessings, I knew, reached them as well.

Since Pope John Paul II’s demise in 2005, every time I got a chance to visit Rome, I would drop by the crypta where he is buried and spend a couple of hours beside his tomb just meditating on the mystery of Jesus Christ’s redemptive love — the centerpiece of John Paul II’s theology — and praying for friends in need of spiritual and physical healing. A number of those I prayed for through the intercession of Pope John Paul II attested that they had received the grace of healing and recovery. Because of this, I composed two prayers through the intercession of Pope John Paul II titled “A Prayer for Inner Healing” and “A Prayer of Healing for the Sick,” which have been distributed to parishioners and friends. To date, John Paul II has continued to touch my life, to animate my pastoral commitments and ministry, and to stimulate my theological and academic undertakings.

John XXIII and the second Vatican council

My entire seminary formation (1960-1970) at the San Jose Seminary and Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo Manila University was nourished under the inspiration of Pope John XXIII, the convenor of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. My studies were anchored on Vatican II’s image of the Church as a Pilgrim People — ecclesia semper reformanda — a Church that must always be in a state of renewal and reformation. The Church has to veer away from regarding itself as a “perfect society” or a “monolithic” bureaucracy to becoming a community of humans whose faith in the Lord has healed them of their brokenness and empowered them for the mission of Evangelization. Pope John XXIII reminded me that the Church I embrace as imperfect as I am. In the same way that I struggle to achieve integrity and holiness, so does the Church as a community of God’s people.

Another dimension of John XXIII’s pastoral vision that impacted on my early formation was his focus on aggiornamento, the opening of the Church’s windows to the winds of change.

It was this spirit of the aggiornamento that propelled the Second Vatican Council to stress the necessity of adopting “dialogue” in the Church’s pursuit of its mission in contemporary societies. Dialogue must guide the Church in the encounters between the truths of Christian faith and the historicity of the human person, between the proclamation of the Good News and the demands of culture and cultures, between the Church as a community of believers and the challenges of social realities.

John XXIII gave me the legacy of a dialogical attitude and a listening heart as I seek to be relevant and effective in my ministry.

New Saints: Their legacy to the church

Today, I am in Rome to witness the canonization of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II. Accompanied by 31 co-pilgrims from the Resurrection of Our Lord Parish, BF Homes, Parañaque City, I join the throngs of believers in praying that, through the intercessions of Saints John XXIII and John Paul II, the Church remains steadfast in centering its mission and identity towards the proclamation of God’s Kingdom, that the Church continue to re-root itself in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus and the renewing life of the Spirit.

On a personal note, the canonization of the two Popes means a great deal to me. The breadth and depth of their theological perspectives and pastoral vision have directly influenced and shaped my entire personal life and pastoral ministry. During this time, my prayer centers on the Philippine Church. I pray that, through their intercessions, the Church, particularly bishops, clergy and religious, will undergo a journey of conversion: from a clericalized mindset to a Christ-centered viewpoint, from a top-bottom and centralizing style of leadership to a genuine and passionate concern for the grassroots and the marginalized, from a lifestyle that is secularized and peripheral to one that is authentically human and spirit-led.

At the same time, I pray that our laity take the lead in the evangelization of the secular arena of human life, unafraid and creative in humanizing what is dehumanizing and in enhancing what St. John Paul II calls “the spiritual vision of man.” Lastly, I pray that our disenchanted youth and broken homes, the victims of injustices and corruption in the country, the hungry and the homeless, the sick and the suffering, and particularly those affected by super-typhoon Yolanda — I pray that the spirit of renewal confirm them in truth and deed, to rise from death to a new life in Christ.

Saints John XXIII and John Paul II, pray for us Filipinos!  

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The writer is the present parish priest of the Resurrection of Our Lord Parish in BF Homes, Paranaque City. As a young priest, he was appointed as the first parish priest of the University of the Philippines, Diliman, where he served for eight years. He earned his licentiate and doctorate degrees in Missiology, summa cum laude, at the Gregorian University, Rome, Italy. He has written several books such as A Catholic’s Treasury of Prayers for the Jubilee Year 2000; Doing Theology: Basic Ecclesial Communities, A New Way of Being Church in the Philippines 2008; and his doctoral dissertation entitled John Paul II’s Mission Theology in Asia: Agenda for the Third Millennium.