ST JOHN PAUL II
Let
all the earth FEAR the LORD; let all who dwell in the world show him
reverence.
Reverence is the attitude of submission we owe to
God as the source of our being. It is the posture proper to us as human persons
who should recognize our finitude: I did not make myself and I do not hold
myself in being. Reverence can be called a posture in both senses of
the word: it involves not only the subjection of our minds, but also the
humbling of our bodies. The first leads to the second, like charity in the
heart leads to charity in deeds. In fact, the posture of reverence is formed in
us by a whole host of virtues with charity at their head. Reverence thrives on
charity because charity is a love of God, self, and neighbor for God’s own sake
that informs all the Christian virtues, animating and perfecting them
like the soul informs, or animates, the body. Charity forms reverence in
us, first, by teaching us the fear of the Lord. When our fear of God is a slave-like
fear of punishment, our reverence is real but imperfect. Reverence reaches its
perfection when our fear matures into a childlike dread of separation
from a beloved Father. As Saint Augustine says, “It is one thing to be afraid
he may come, another to be afraid he may leave you.” Brought to perfection by
love, reverence becomes the sign of the Holy Spirit in us crying “Abba!
Father!”[1]
(Gal. 4:6).
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
·
do
a personal eucharistic stations of the cross.
·
Offering to the
sacred heart of Jesus
·
Rosary
[1]https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/devotional-reading/the-necessity-of-reverence
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