It wasn’t a Wednesday when I visited St. Peter’s in Rome in 1979. So we didn’t get to see the new Pope. The tour guide pointed to the window at which he would otherwise appear; the same window on which the cameras have been focused these past few days. It was a very hot day and we marveled briefly at the statues atop the double colonnade, then moved on into the cool sanctuary of the basilica.

I knew even then that I would never have the words to describe the beauty of the interior of that place. If you’ve never been there, you should go. Michelangelo’s Pieta is there, a great volume of marble which looks like nothing in this world so much as the essence of sacrifice and grief. Then there’s the canopy over the tomb of St. Peter, so massive and ornate that my eighteen-year-old mind could scarcely take it in.

We humans are very good at building monuments to heroism and glory, but when it comes to marking the passage of humility and love, it seems the best we can do is gather with candles and cry. As it should be. Pope John Paul II has always struck me as a man of humility and compassion, never bombastic or proud. And while I have, as an Orthodox Christian, disagreed with his doctrines now and then, not to mention that of papal infallibility, I’ve always respected his message of peace. His presence brought people hope and pointed them to Christ, and how can one be a better Christian than that?

The Pope was opposed to the attack on Iraq, and he said so, right to President Bush’s face. No one expected John Paul to slap a yellow Support the Troops magnetic ribbon on the back of the popemobile. We knew where he stood, that he supported the troops in ways that elude the consciousness of American leadership. Let that be a lesson to us all.

Finally, he showed us how it’s done. The one thing we each and all have to do is to die, to leave this world in God’s will and God’s time. He accepted his suffering in peace and died with dignity. And it’s sad, and my thoughts and prayers are with all my Roman Catholic friends. If God wills, he will go on praying for you and for the world.