“Be
imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (I Cor 11:1)
"Dear
young people of every language and culture, a high and exhilarating task await
you: that of becoming men and women capable of solidarity, peace and love of
life, with respect for everyone. Become craftsmen of a new humanity, where
brothers and sisters — members all of the same family — are able at last to
live in peace." (From the message for young people for the celebration of
the world day of peace, January 1, 2001)
Karol
Wojtyla,
a man who became Pope John Paul II, is my hero, a model of a lived faith. His friends called him Lolek. The official announcement of the canonisation of Bl. John Paul II together with Pope
John XXIII on the 27th April 2014 on the Divine Mercy Sunday, a feast
instituted by him as the leader of the Catholic Church indeed is a good news. We can imitate him as he imitated Christ. We have seen him on T.V,
heard him often and he is not a distant historical figure. He is still in our
memory. To him we pay our homage. He was very close to the young people. It is
enough to think of the World youth days he ushered in the life of the Church.
Once when addressing the young people he said, “I am a young person aged 83.”
What can we learn from this great saint of the Church?
He
saw every experience of life in the light of faith in God. He could see the digitus dei finger of God directing him
in all things. He suffered. Early in life he had to encounter the realities of
war, sickness and death. He had to make sense of a tumultuous world, his own
experience of having to
find meaning in a stunning catalogue of personal losses: his mother died, his
only brother died, his father died, his Jewish friends and families were
uprooted and killed in the Holocaust-- all by the time he was 25. In 1981, an
assassin shot John Paul twice in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City.
Fortunately, he was able to recover from his injuries and later forgave his
attacker. He suffered from Parkinson’s disease. The themes of suffering, the
centrality of Christ and the belief in God's ongoing supernatural intervention
in our lives were the bedrock of John Paul’s papacy.
He
was an intellectual giant, a philosopher, a theologian but he was often moved by a piety associated
with the uneducated masses and sought consolation in the extraordinary, in the
supernatural.
He wrote extensively. He was a moral
theologian, specialized in sexual ethics. Two of his works are of great importance
to us: The Acting Person and Love and Responsibility. Fr. Robert Barron when commenting on these two books, he offers us the following insights:
- He speaks of sex and marriage, not as a burden
but as an invitation to fullness of life. From his two works we can unearth an
important insight for life.
- He says that every moral act
accomplishes two essential things. On the one hand, every action produces its
own immediate consequences. On the other hand every act in the longer run
contributes to build one’s character. Everything I do everyday is either
building up my character or undermining it. He warns us of the danger of a typical
modern attitude especially among young people. This attitude echoes as they
mouth this expression, “I do a lot of bad things but deep down I am a good
person. And it’s ok.” It is a separation of what one does and what one is.
There is something wrong in this modern dictum. You cannot engage in all sorts
of manipulative, superficial, trivial and sexually abhorrent behavior without
affecting your character. You cannot remain a simply good person when something
is essentially wrong. Who we are and what we do are intimately connected. There
cannot be any separation. His teachings through his writings became a fountain
of living water which could quench the thirst of every seeker while leading him
to Christ, the ultimate meaning.
He
tells us how to seek God. In a homily given on the feast of Epiphany in his own
home town, Krakow, on 6th January 1976, he spoke of the ways to seek
God. He speaks of the rationale behind seeking God quoting St. Augustine: “I
would not be looking for you, if I had already found you.” Every man, before
beginning to seek, has already found God in some way. If he had not found Him
in an initial, fundamental sense, he would not be looking for him. Man seeks
God. When he finds Him, like the three wise men, through faith, he seeks Him in
faith: he wishes to approach Him, the One he has found, and finally to reach
the eternal Bethlehem. And if he has not yet found Him through faith; he seeks
faith, he seeks the truth and so he seeks God. He would say that “Youth is a
time given by providence to every person and given to him as a responsibility.”
We
are all on the path that has been walked by many great human beings before us.
John Paul II walked before us setting us an example. During his first solemn
Mass in Saint Peter's Square, Bl. John Paul II said these unforgettable words:
"Do not be afraid! Open, open wide the doors to Christ!" Let us
listen to him. Following his example, let us entrust ourselves to Mary, who
walked the pilgrimage of faith, hope and love.
We find the motto of his papacy in the coat of arms with the words
"Totus tuus", drawn from the well-known words of Saint Louis
Marie Grignion de Montfort in which he found a guiding light for his life:
"Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia.
Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria - I belong entirely to you, and all that I
have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart."
“His example of
prayer continually impressed and edified me: he remained deeply united to God
even amid the many demands of his ministry. Then too, there was his witness in
suffering: the Lord gradually stripped him of everything, yet he remained ever
a "rock", as Christ desired. His profound humility, grounded in close
union with Christ, enabled him to continue to lead the Church and to give to the
world a message which became all the more eloquent as his physical strength
declined. In this way he lived out in an extraordinary way the vocation of
every priest and bishop to become completely one with Jesus, whom he daily
receives and offers in the Eucharist.” (From Pope Benedict XVI's homily at the beatification of Pope John Paul II on
May 1, 2011)
