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Crossing the Threshold of Heaven
Apr. 8th, 2005 10:22 pmI watched the last fifteen minutes of John Paul II's funeral this morning; my mom was up and I'd asked her to tap on my door. I didn't hear her, but maybe I did, since at 6.15, I was wide awake and at first I couldn't figure out why. Then I remembered that CBS was broadcasting the funeral Mass, so I went downstairs and joined my mom in the living room.
I managed to get there in time for the Byzantine Catholic blessing at the end of the Mass (Different priests from the different liturgical rites of the Church each offered the final blessing in the language fitting that rite; the Byzantine Rite Catholics use Greek or Syriac for their liturgy). I was somehow not surprised to see that they were burying our Holy Father in a simple cypress box, unadorned except for a large cross and a capital letter M, for the Virgin Mary. He really was one of us, the "Servant of the Servants of God", a title he preferred over all the other titles applied to the Papacy.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger offered the Mass; since he's the head of the College of Cardinals, there's an outside chance that he might be elected to succeed the papacy. I'm hoping that he does, since he's a decent man... and he's German, and since my doomed parish is an ethnic German one, maybe a German pope could poke some sense into the mad Irishman who's trying to shut down Holy Trinity German Catholic Church.
But... back to the Mass... At the very end, the twelve "Gentlemen of His Holiness", male servants (laymen, not priests) who work in the Papal Apartments in the Palazzo Vaticano, turned the coffin around to face the people before carrying it in through the front doors of St. Peter's Basillica. I won't say I started crying at that point: I felt deeply sorrowful, but at the same time, I felt peaceful. I know he's up there in heaven right now, hard at work interceding for us. I won't say I'm a psychic or a mystic, but I sometimes get these little flashes.
I managed to get there in time for the Byzantine Catholic blessing at the end of the Mass (Different priests from the different liturgical rites of the Church each offered the final blessing in the language fitting that rite; the Byzantine Rite Catholics use Greek or Syriac for their liturgy). I was somehow not surprised to see that they were burying our Holy Father in a simple cypress box, unadorned except for a large cross and a capital letter M, for the Virgin Mary. He really was one of us, the "Servant of the Servants of God", a title he preferred over all the other titles applied to the Papacy.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger offered the Mass; since he's the head of the College of Cardinals, there's an outside chance that he might be elected to succeed the papacy. I'm hoping that he does, since he's a decent man... and he's German, and since my doomed parish is an ethnic German one, maybe a German pope could poke some sense into the mad Irishman who's trying to shut down Holy Trinity German Catholic Church.
But... back to the Mass... At the very end, the twelve "Gentlemen of His Holiness", male servants (laymen, not priests) who work in the Papal Apartments in the Palazzo Vaticano, turned the coffin around to face the people before carrying it in through the front doors of St. Peter's Basillica. I won't say I started crying at that point: I felt deeply sorrowful, but at the same time, I felt peaceful. I know he's up there in heaven right now, hard at work interceding for us. I won't say I'm a psychic or a mystic, but I sometimes get these little flashes.