Monday, April 04, 2005
Remembering the Pope
This weekend, Van and I drove into Hastings to visit Rhia and Jon and their kids. We made good time, crossing the hilly Sussex country in less than an hour and a half. All this time the sun was shining and the weather was gloriously cool and springlike, even on the motorway.
Jon had done even more work on the house and now they had a loft workroom where all the computers and the playstation was moved. We played Tekken 4 with the kids and I got a few rounds in before Van - what an underdog - soundly beat me.
The news on the TV came in just then - Pope John Paul had finally died, after slipping in and out of consciousness. One of the first public reactions was, thank God he didn't fall into a coma... as this would have made it difficult for the Church to elect a new successor. We took our coffee downstairs and watched as the lights went out of the Papal apartments.
Pictures of my uncle, Father Deo Rosales, with the Pope used to adorn the piano on top of our living room. My mom, a devout Catholic who used to call us in to Rosary every 6:00pm, would always be excited about the latest bit of news from a tiny principality halfway round the world. Even in university, where I would ultimately reject the tireless religious instruction of my teachers, his visit for the World Youth Day was one we could not afford to miss.
It drew the largest crowd in history, 4 million of the poor, tired and dispossessed coming to see an old man in a glass car wave at them, pray for them. I remember clambering up a GMA7 scaffold to take photos for the school paper. Ultimately I caught a couple of fleeting glimpses as the Popemobile filed past.
He was the only Pope many of us ever knew. He was, as one commentator put it recently, a rock, one constant in a sea of uncertainty. And now he is dead, and his death will be just another moment in history. What really saddens me is not that he is gone; it is just another reminder that all our memories are of things gone or changed. Time is not a sea, after all; it is a river, and we can only move in one direction. We step into it briefly, and alongside others we ride the current, the present, leaving the rocks behind.
He's at peace now, at least, which is all anyone can ever ask for.
Jon had done even more work on the house and now they had a loft workroom where all the computers and the playstation was moved. We played Tekken 4 with the kids and I got a few rounds in before Van - what an underdog - soundly beat me.
The news on the TV came in just then - Pope John Paul had finally died, after slipping in and out of consciousness. One of the first public reactions was, thank God he didn't fall into a coma... as this would have made it difficult for the Church to elect a new successor. We took our coffee downstairs and watched as the lights went out of the Papal apartments.
Pictures of my uncle, Father Deo Rosales, with the Pope used to adorn the piano on top of our living room. My mom, a devout Catholic who used to call us in to Rosary every 6:00pm, would always be excited about the latest bit of news from a tiny principality halfway round the world. Even in university, where I would ultimately reject the tireless religious instruction of my teachers, his visit for the World Youth Day was one we could not afford to miss.
It drew the largest crowd in history, 4 million of the poor, tired and dispossessed coming to see an old man in a glass car wave at them, pray for them. I remember clambering up a GMA7 scaffold to take photos for the school paper. Ultimately I caught a couple of fleeting glimpses as the Popemobile filed past.
He was the only Pope many of us ever knew. He was, as one commentator put it recently, a rock, one constant in a sea of uncertainty. And now he is dead, and his death will be just another moment in history. What really saddens me is not that he is gone; it is just another reminder that all our memories are of things gone or changed. Time is not a sea, after all; it is a river, and we can only move in one direction. We step into it briefly, and alongside others we ride the current, the present, leaving the rocks behind.
He's at peace now, at least, which is all anyone can ever ask for.
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