25 Years Ago, John Paul II Led Us Across the Threshold of Hope

National Catholic Register, 1 January 2025

The quiet of Christmas Eve and the revelry of New Year’s marked a great moment of history with Pope St. John Paul the Great.

Twenty-five years ago, the Great Jubilee opened with two historic moments at St. Peter’s — the opening of the Holy Door on Christmas Eve and the appearance of the Holy Father at his window above the square on New Year’s Eve. Both moments are etched in my memory — the former for its silence, the second for its sound. 

When the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve 1999, I was in St. Peter’s Square with cherished mentors and friends from the Tertio Millennio Seminar, which I had attended in 1994 in Krakow, Poland. Among them were Michael Novak, Father Richard John Neuhaus and George Weigel, who had just published his monumental biography of St. John Paul the Great: Witness to Hope. 

We had had a festive dinner at a local restaurant — Armando’s, a simple enough place that occasionally earned the custom of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who, as Benedict XVI, would later pass away on New Year’s Eve 2022). My brother had come from Canada to be on hand for the new millennium in Rome. 

In St. Peter’s Square, the Holy Father customarily appears at his window at noon on Sundays for the Angelus. This time, he came at midnight for an extraordinary urbi et orbi (“to the city of Rome and to the world”) address and blessing. The crowded square was electric with excitement. When John Paul appeared, less than six months shy of his 80th birthday — the old man having completed his mission of leading the Church into the third millennium — there was jubilation. 

What would he say?

“The clock of history strikes an important hour,” the Holy Father began, expressing good wishes and speaking for only a minute or two. 

He chose words from the lighting of the Paschal candle at the Easter vigil. Jesus Christ is the true Light that dispels the darkness of the night — and of this night of “passover” from the second millennium to the third.

“Christ, yesterday, today and forever,” he said. “To him belong time and the ages. To him be glory and dominion forever. Amen!”

The first papal words of the third millennium were, in effect, “Christ is Risen.” Jesus is the Lord of history! It was a solemn, biblical and liturgical blessing in the first moments of the year 2000.

And then it got very loud, very quickly. As per local custom, pious revelry included firecrackers being set off, in the midst of a packed St. Peter’s Square. The noise of the excited crowd, the noise of the fireworks, the noise of those shouting to each other to get away from the explosives — it was quite a din as we fled out of the square. We repaired to higher ground on the Janiculum Hill to watch the impressive and festive official fireworks of the city of Rome over its millennial skyline.

A few nights earlier, there had been a great silence — loud in its own way. John Paul came to the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica at 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve. The Great Jubilee 2000 would begin with his opening the door before midnight Mass. The 2,000th anniversary of the Nativity had arrived. I was with a few journalists inside the darkened basilica, in a direct line on the other side of the door. When it opened, we would be the first to see the Holy Father on the other side. 

About a half hour before John Paul arrived, the immense crowd inside went completely silent. The usual murmur that accompanies a congregation of thousands ceased entirely. I knew then the expression “deafening silence.” This was the first time I had ever heard silence as being loud. I have heard it only one other time since, at Westminster Hall in London, when Britain’s great and good gathered to hear Pope Benedict XVI speak at the place where St. Thomas More was condemned to death.

Those in St. Peter’s knew that a great moment in history was at hand. Not only the Great Jubilee, but a Jubilee inaugurated by this great Pope — the Pope who had changed history himself and survived gunshots and growing infirmity to lead the Church to the year 2000. John Paul the Great was meeting the Great Jubilee. 

He had spoken of it in his first encyclical in 1979. In 1994, he had called it the “key” to understanding his whole pontificate. And now, here it was. Here he was. 

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