Editorial: the month of good things

A month later, it’s still worth talking about. The Royal wedding was, we were told, watched by something like a quarter of the world’s population. It was in many ways fascinating, not merely for details such as the long-awaited gown and how the couple would manage to carry it all off in front of intense global scrutiny and expectation, but also for the significance of the ceremony and what the watching global audience made of it all. It was a great ceremony and, coming in a moment when at some levels the world appears to be officially and inexorably drifting further and further away from the inheritance of belief in God, it was a surprising Christian moment. The prayer composed by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge was simple yet full of the happiness of spousal love, sounding very much as if it was centred in gratitude for things that are really important, such as family.
The homily given by the Dean of Westminster Abbey was, one might simply and accurately say, excellent. As a homily on the meaning of Christian marriage it was the sort of composition that could go down as a textbook model for all future wedding homilists. The very first sentences delivered by the Dean are worth quoting again to get some sense of its flavour and substance: ““Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” So said St Catherine of Siena whose festival day it is today. Marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman help each other to become what God meant each one to be, their deepest and truest selves.” Among other observations one could make is that at the very beginning the good Dean was centring marriage in it’s author: Jesus Christ.
For Catholics there was the very pleasant, indeed gratifying, surprise of the opening reference to St Catherine of Siena, not only one of the Church’s greatest figures (she is one of only three women to be accorded the title ‘Doctor of the Church’) but also one of her favourite daughters, a woman of great elegance and beauty in every sense of the words who had uncommon courage and eventually prevailed upon a Pope to restore the papacy from Avignon to Rome.
In short, the Royal wedding, beyond anyone’s expectations, was Christianity and the Christian vision of marriage beamed live into the homes of a quarter of the world’s population in the most positive and affirming way.
The wedding also came shortly after the greatest celebration and moment in the Christian year – Easter. For millions of Christians around the world Easter is the joy that expresses the truth that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the Christian life. This paradox bears constant repetition and meditation. At Easter we can recall, as we enter into its mystery, that in Baptism Christians die with Jesus and in our deaths we rise with Him to eternal life. The life that continues after physical death is not one, as some religions believe, that is extinguished or annihilated into nothingness and merged with the a cold and stark universe. For the Christian man and woman it is precisely the triumph of the resurrection which shows that our unique individual identities continue without loss and in fact are glorified beyond our comprehension in eternal happiness with God and all those who, as we pray in the Mass, have gone before us marked with the sign of faith. A fortnight after Easter The Record produced its special Easter roundup edition, reporting on how thousands of Christians young and old around WA came together again to recall and mourn the sacrifice of Jesus and then rejoice in the victory of His resurrection.
The third good thing to transpire last month was the beatification of Pope John Paul II on 1 May in Rome. What can one say? When Pope John Paul II died in 2005 there was a genuine outpouring of grief around the world. Two million Poles or so simply upped and left Poland, headed south for the funeral of a man who was not only their Pope but, just as importantly, their brother. This remarkable personality who dominated the world stage for three decades seemed to exhibit God’s mysterious providence at work in every aspect and at every turn of his dramatic life. Many saw in him the clearest living proof of the existence of God, the truth of Jesus Christ and the reality of a supernatural order that a person could get. He seemed more like a titan. In fact, he was a saint. Many have long quietly wondered whether he was not already effectively canonised on the spot by the sensus fidelium in St Peter’s Square in 2005 by the hundreds of thousands chanting over and over again at his funeral ‘Santo! Subito!’ or ‘Sainthood! Now!’ The actual beatification seemed, in some regards, more like a formality.
Regardless of the technicalities, millions had no problems believing that John Paul II the Great was in heaven at about the same moment of his death and the beatification received almost universal approval, with perhaps only the sad exponents of Cafeteria Catholicism looking on uncomprehendingly. Like the Royal wedding, millions around the world tuned in to watch the events in Rome unfold and those of us here in Perth who saw it had the unexpected pleasure of seeing Sr Bernadette Pike, a Perth woman who founded a women’s religious congregation known as the Missionaries of the Gospel, give the second reading at the official beatification Mass presided over by Pope Benedict XVI.
The significance of the beatification lay in many things but, most importantly it was always about one thing or, one should say, about one person: Jesus Christ. But of course in a spectacular way it was still the beloved Pope John Paul II’s day as well. And it was also yet another teaching moment, a Christian moment, a moment when Catholics could justifiably recall that despite the sometimes spectacular failings of many in the Church, despite the ridicule of popular culture, the truth of the Gospel always stands firm. Looking back in this way, one can honestly say that it was a month of very good things.