ST JOHN PAUL II
Job, Chapter 21, Verse 9
Their homes are safe, without fear, and the rod of God is not upon them.
With
the current political climate of today-The Dark State, Turkey, Sanctuary
Cities, Gangs etc.; we may not be feeling safe in our homes. We may feel God’s
rod is upon us. Yet, we learn that God does not wish to destroy us but bring
about the best in us. The wages of sin are usually destruction, but God is
mercy. As in the parable of the wheat and tares God allows the weeds to grow
with the wheat. We often ask with Job, “Why do the wicked keep on living, grow
old, become mighty in power? Mercy!
·
Zophar decides to beat a dead horse.
·
Not literally.
·
He tells Job that the wicked get what they
deserve from God.
·
For good measure, he adds that the venom of
asps will poison people's stomachs and kill the sinners. Well that's graphic.
Job Refutes Zophar
·
Job sticks to his guns.
·
The wicked, he says, go unpunished all the
time. Not that he's cool with that. He prays for the sinners' destruction, and
then tells Zophar to stop being so depressing.
True Audacity of Hope[2]
Today is also the feast
of Saint John Paul II. He was a man afflicted, he was a man of endurance, he
stresses that Christ is our only hope and he showed us the love of God.
Karol Wojtyla came of age at one of the darkest moments of the
twentieth century. When he was 19 years old and just commencing his university
career, the Nazis rolled through his native Poland and instigated a reign of
terror over the country. Almost immediately, the conquerors decapitated Polish
society, killing the intelligentsia outright or sending them to concentration
camps. All distinctive forms of Polish culture were cruelly suppressed, and the
church was actively persecuted. Young Wojtyla displayed heroic courage by
joining the underground seminary run by the Cardinal of Krakow and by forming a
small company of players who kept Polish literature and drama alive. Many of
his colleagues in both of these endeavors were killed or arrested in the course
of those terrible years of occupation. Sadly, the Nazi tyranny was replaced
immediately by the Communist tyranny, and Fr. Wojtyla was compelled to manifest
his courage again. In the face of harassment, unfair criticism, the threat of
severe punishment, etc., he did his priestly work, forming young people in the
great Catholic spiritual and theological tradition. Even as a bishop, Wojtyla
was subject to practically constant surveillance (every phone tapped; every
room bugged; his every movement tracked), and he was continually, in small ways
and large, obstructed by Communist officialdom. And yet he soldiered on. Of course,
as Pope, he ventured into the belly of the beast, standing athwart the
Communist establishment and speaking for God, freedom, and human rights. In
doing so, he proved himself one of the most courageous figures of the twentieth
century. Karol Wojtyla was a man who exhibited the virtue of justice to a
heroic degree. Throughout his papal years, John Paul II was the single most
eloquent and persistent voice for human rights on the world stage. In the face
of a postmodern relativism and indifferentism, John Paul took the best of the
Enlightenment political tradition and wedded it to classical Christian
anthropology. The result was a sturdy defense of the rights to life, liberty,
education, free speech, and above all, the free exercise of religion. More persuasively
than any other political figure, east or west, John Paul advocated for justice.
George Weigel titled his magisterial biography of John Paul
II, Witness to Hope, by identifying Karol
Wojtyla with a theological virtue. In October of 1978, the newly elected Pope
John Paul II gave his inaugural speech to a packed St. Peter’s Square. This
man, who had witnessed at first hand the very worst of the twentieth century,
who had intimate experience of how twisted and wicked human beings can be,
spoke over and over again this exhortation: “Be not afraid.” There was, of
course, absolutely no political or cultural warrant for that exhortation, no
purely natural justification for it. It could come only from a man whose heart
was filled with the supernatural sense that the Holy Spirit is the Lord of
history. Finally, was Karol Wojtyla in possession of love, the greatest of the
theological virtues? The best evidence I can bring forward is the still
breathtaking encounter that took place in a grimy Roman jail cell in December
of 1983. John Paul II sat down with Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who had, only a
year and a half before, fired several bullets into the Pope. John Paul spoke to
him, embraced him, listened to him, and finally forgave him. Love is
not a feeling or a sentiment. It is, Thomas Aquinas reminds us, an act of the
will, more precisely, willing the good of the other. This is why the love
of one’s enemies—those who are not disposed to wish us well—is the great test
of love. Did John Paul II express love in a heroic way? He forgave the man who
tried to kill him; no further argument need be made.
Daily Devotions
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