Three helicopters hovered over the racetrack at Aqueduct. Which one was he in? One almost landed, but it didn’t feel right from the start. Then the musicians moved on to the another song, “He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands.” Ah. Now is the time! The second helicopter landed and out stepped JP2, as he was known among the young people. It was one of seven trips to the USA. And we were there. We were only a football field away, catching a glimpse of holiness, seeing a man, a pope, and a saint with a passion for bringing Jesus to the whole world.
Pope St. John Paul II was so filled with zeal for bringing Jesus to others that he embarked on 104 trips abroad, logging a total of 725,000 miles. He challenged us to undertake a “new evangelization,” a proclamation of the gospel that is “new in its ardor, methods and expression.” And he made this appeal to the whole Church:
The moment has come to commit all of the Church’s energies to a new evangelization and to the mission ad gentes [“to the nations”]. No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.(Emphasis ours)