Short Prose

Blessed

Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

Written for dVerse Poetics – May 7, 2024 –
Pilgrimage, Wandering and Walkabout

Chapel, St. Joseph’s Seminary © NAR

Did you ever find yourself in a situation that was so intense, everything around you ceased to exist? It’s an extraordinary feeling, one that’s difficult to explain without using every adverb and adjective and superlative in the English language.

The date was October 5, 1995 – a most inauspicious day – and yet I remember every detail of the events of that evening almost 30 years ago. At the time I was quite active in my church as a choir member, leader of song, and director of the children’s choir. Our adult choir was one of the best in the county and we were selected by Cardinal O’Connor of New York to sing for His Holiness Pope John Paul II during his visit to St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, New York. When the Cardinal requests someone’s services, it is an honor and should be treated as such.

For those of you old enough to remember Pope John Paul II, he was universally beloved and is now Saint John Paul II after his beatification on May 1, 2011. He possessed a spirituality that is rare among men, a divine nature of love, peace, kindness and forgiveness.

On that October day in ‘95, in the evening after vespers, it was arranged for John Paul II to have a walkabout around the grounds of the seminary. It was then that I had the greatest honor of my life .… to meet His Holiness and to receive his blessing. The moment I placed my hand in his and looked into his most serene and forgiving blue eyes, I knew I was in the presence of a divine being. There is no other way to describe how I felt other than to say it was rapturous; I had never felt that way before or since.

I have led a charmed life when it comes to meeting famous people …. just a matter of being in the right place at the right time …. but there is nothing that will ever surpass this encounter.

Time and events have a way of changing our perspective and I am no longer a member of the Catholic Church; however, my break from Catholicism has not and never will change the events of October 5, 1995 nor how I felt that day. It is something that will remain with me until my final days on earth.

NAR©2024

dVerse Poetics — Pilgrimage, Wandering, and Walkabout

This is Kenny Chesney with “Song For The Saints”

His Holiness Pope John Paul II

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32 thoughts on “Blessed”

  3. Nancy, I think it was meant to be that you met The Pope, especially since after that you left the Catholic Church. God wanted you to have that experience to carry with you beyond structured religion. Thank you for sharing your amazing story of the experience <3

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    1. You make an interesting point, Lisa. I was a recent convert to Catholicism at the time and found it all extremely meaningful and deeply moving …. until it wasn’t (but that’s another story). The way I feel about what goes on behind the scenes of the RC Church may have been derailed but my feelings for JPII will remain unchanged. He was an inspiring and God-like man.

      Thank you for your gracious comments.

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