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Saint John XXIII (1881-1963)
pope
Journal of a soul, 10th August 1961 (©Geoffrey Chapman, 1965)

"Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace"

After my first Mass over the tomb of St Peter I felt the hands of Holy Father Pius X laid on my head in a blessing full of good augury for me and for the priestly life I was just entering upon; and after more than half a century (fifty-seven years precisely) here are my own hands extended in a blessing for the Catholics, and not only the Catholics, of the whole world, in a gesture of universal fatherhood. I am successor to this Pius X who has been proclaimed a saint, and I am still living in the same priestly service as he, his predecessors and his successors, all placed like St Peter at the head of the whole Church of Christ, one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic.

These are all sacred words, which have a loftier meaning than that of any unimaginable self-glorification of my own, and they leave me still the depths of my own nothingness, though I am raised to the sublime height of a ministry which towers far above the loftiest human dignity. When on 28 October, 1958, the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church chose me to assume the supreme responsibility of ruling the universal flock of Jesus Christ, at seventy-seven years of age, everyone was convinced that I would be a provisional and transitional Pope. Yet here I am, already on the eve of the fourth year of my pontificate, with an immense programme of work in front of me to be carried out before the eyes of the whole world, which is watching and waiting. As for myself, I feel likel St Martin, who "neither feared to die, nor refused to live."

I must always hold myself ready to die, even a sudden death, and also to live as long as it pleases the Lord to leave me here below. Yes, always. At the beginning of my eightieth year I must hold myself ready: for death or life, for the one as for the other, and I must see to the saving of my soul. Everyone calls me "Holy Father", and holy I must and will be.