Introit: The Lord chose him to be his high priest – he opened his treasures and made him rich in all goodness.
Brothers and sisters,
If you remember President John F. Kennedy, then you also remember today’s Saint, Pope John XXIII… they died the same year, 1963.
If you remember the day Kennedy was assassinated, how people unashamedly wept in public, in front of strangers, then you remember how people wept and mourned the death of the man they called “Good Pope John.”
Their friend, a source of good and hope in the world. Gone.
Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was one of thirteen children, born into a family of poor sharecroppers, then unexpectedly, elected to the highest office in the Catholic Church.
When his brothers came to Rome to visit the new pope for the first time, they brought him paper bags full of homemade bread and country sausage.
He tried to avoid the limelight as much as possible, but few people had as great an impact on the 20th century as Pope John XXIII.
One of his most remarkable qualities was that he remained so “ordinary” through it all.
He really believed in one thing: in God’s Divine Providence, that God is at work in the world, that each of us has a God-given job to do. Throughout his whole life, he simply wanted to be a tool in God’s hands, a tool to do the work of God.
As we begin this Mass, let us be sorry for the times we have worked against God, worked against the plan He wanted us to carry out. I confess, etc.
After the Gospel:
Back in 1958, black smoke appeared over the Vatican after the first ten ballots; finally, following the eleventh ballot, white smoke announced a new pope.
The world waited for him to appear on the balcony.
Inside, they had three white cassocks ready, in different sizes for whomever the new pope might be, but none was even a close fit, because the new pope was roly-poly, five foot 2 inches tall, well over 200 pounds, so they had to cut and piece a robe, holding it together with safety pins.
The new pope showed he could laugh at himself; passing a mirror, he remarked, “This man will be a disaster on television.”
Moving toward the balcony for his first blessing to the crowds below, he told the monsignor, “My first appearance before the globe, and I feel like a newborn babe wrapped in swaddling clothes.”
He took the name of his father, John,
he would be called John XXIII.
Age 76, the sixth-oldest pope ever elected, a dark horse candidate, he was expected to be a caretaker who would mark time until a serious pope.
However, few people had as great an impact on the 20th century as Pope John XXIII.
He began by chipping away at papal formality, dropping the formal “we” when referring to himself, declining to be carried on the portable throne on the shoulders of 12 footmen in red uniforms.
Early on, he showed that he liked people and could reach out.
He refused to continue as “prisoner of the Vatican,” became the first pope in ninety years to step outside the Vatican walls,
visiting children with polio,
going to Regina Coeli prison, where he told the prisoners:
“You could not come to me, so I have come to you.
I have wanted to come here for some time.”
He believed the Church is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic, so he reached out to the Orthodox.
During ten years as Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece, he had become well-acquainted with Orthodox Church leaders. As pope, he invited them to be Observers at the Second Vatican Council, to see up-front the largest gathering of bishops in history, 2600 bishops working together.
His sense of God’s providence at work in the world made him the ideal person to promote dialogue with Orthodox and Protestant Christians. And he reached out to the Jews.
As Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece during World War II,
he helped to save an estimated 24,000 refugees, mostly Jewish people.
As pope, he made a confession of the Church’s past sins of anti-semitism;
he received the Chief Rabbi of Rome with a warm embrace and familiar words from the book of Genesis: “I am your brother, Joseph (Giuseppe);”
he revised the Good Friday liturgy to change wording offensive to Jews.
For 400 years, the College of Cardinals had been limited to 70.
He increased the number to 85, chose non-Italian cardinals, including the first cardinals ever from Africa, Japan, the Philippines… in total, naming 52 cardinals.
Because the whole world was his parish, he offered to mediate between US President Kennedy and Nikita Khruschev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962.
He was the First Pope named TIME magazine’s MAN of the YEAR 1962.
The next year, after 4 years 11 months in the papacy, he died from the complications of stomach cancer.
Perhaps President Lyndon Johnson spoke for the world when he posthumously conferred the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Pope John XXIII, calling him:
“a man of simple origins, simple faith, simple charity, always the gentle pastor, whose goodness reached across the earth’s boundaries to warm the hearts of men of all nations and of all faiths
as he spoke to us of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.”
Ordinarily we celebrate saints on their heavenly birthday, the day of their death.
By way of exception, we celebrate John XXIII on the day he opened the Council… October 11.