St Mary's University...

...at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, has an atmosphere of great friendliness.  Tonight the lively  Cathsoc met, over freshly-brewed coffee in the comfortable coffee-room...lots of pleasant chat as people gathered and were joined by the young chaplain in his Dominican robes...

It was a real delight and pleasure to be their speaker for the evening. Topic was  St John Paul - a figure known to them only from their childhood memories, honoured and venerated but  somewhat mistily, covered by the decade that has passed since his death and by the enormous changes that occurred in and through his pontificate...

Where to start? I began by explaining to them something of what Poland was like under Communism - and as I spoke the memories were suddenly back: the shortages of everyday items, the shop windows with displays of  dusty paper flowers because the proper goods weren't available...it's strange what details one remembers.  I first visited Warsaw in the 1980s under martial law, with a thumping heart,  a suitcase crammed wth books and other materials for the then-banned Solidarity movement, some names and addresses hidden on my person, and detailed instructions about how to circumvent the secret police surveillance and ensure that the whole operation went well. Golly, it's all so long ago...

But St John Paul the Great was - is - about more, much, much more than just the collapse of Communism. More than just World Youth Day, more than just the radical Theology of the Body and the magnificent teaching of the Divine Mercy, more than just a great revival of Eucharistic devotion, more than just the fresh presentation of the Rosary, more than just great missionary journeys, more than just magnificent teaching and leadership . He was a  hero was survived an assaination attempt - and forgave his would-be murderer, from his heart - he was a poet, a playwright, a great preacher,a philosopher, a mystic. He was a sportsman, a man of the mountains, a man of prayer, a priest whose celebration of Mass took him into such deep Communion with the Lord that he seemed oblivious to everything else even when he was with a crowd of millions.

When John Paul gave his first inspiring calls to the young, I was young. But his message still rings true for today's generation in the Church:"Young people: Christ calls you, the Church needs you, and the Pope believes in you, and expects great things of you."

This was a happy and very special evening.