Remembering John Paul the Great

O God,

who in Your ineffable providence
was pleased to number
Your servant John Paul among the sovereign pontiffs:
Grant, we beseech You,
that he who reigned as the Vicar of Your Son on earth,
may be joined in fellowship
with Your holy pontiffs for evermore.
Amen.

"Oh Man, on You I call, for You I search
in whom man's history finds its body.
I approach you saying, not 'Come'
But simply 'be'.

Be there where not one trace is found
but where man once did dwell
where heart and soul, desire, pain, will,
were consumed by emotions ablaze with holy shame.
Be as the eternal seismograph of things invisible but real.
O Man, in whom are met the heights and depths of man,
in whose deep centre weighs no dark, but only heart,
Man in whom each man can find what's nearest to his heart,
the root of all his actions, mirroring life and death, gazing on human doings.

Man, ever to you I come, wading through the slender stream of history
going to meet each heart, each thought
(history is thronged with thoughts and deaths of hearts).
Your Body I seek for all of history,
Your depth it is I seek."

- Easter Vigil, 1966, in Poezje - Poems
by Pope John Paul II

In the moving photo above, Cardinal Dziwisz who was Pope John Paul the Great's faithful secretary prays at the late Holy Father's tomb in the crypt of St Peter's Basilica.