If you spent your life studying the writings of one Catholic saint (alongside, of course, the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Diary of St. Faustina), you could hardly do better than to study the writings of St. John Paul II.
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By Chris Sparks
I love Pope St. John Paul II (1920-2005), a patron saint of the Marian Congregation (feast day: Oct. 22). He was the pope all my life until my senior year in high school.
But I didn’t really know that consciously until sometime in my teenage years when I happened to notice George Weigel’s wonderful biography Witness to Hope sitting on the table next to my saintly grandmother’s chair, picked it up, and began to read.
Light in a dark century
What an extraordinary life!
What an incredible model of faith, perseverance, prayer, and the union of faith and reason!
What a model of devotion to Our Lady, to Divine Mercy, to the truth of the Gospel, to the proclamation of Jesus Christ in the face of totalitarian terror!
What strength, arising from tremendous natural gifts being built on by the grace of God!
Saint John Paul II seems superhuman from even a quick glance at his life and the enormous contributions he made to the Church, to Poland, and to the world. The reason for that is his fervent, persistent, mystical prayer life, which truly did make him superhuman.
Amid glory, penance
Now, as the Catholic scholar and author Mary Ann Glendon recently acknowledged, St. John Paul II was not gifted as an administrator. There was much to do penance for in the administration of the Church during his pontificate — the clergy abuse scandal; liturgical and theological abuses from heterodox clergy; many Catholic universities and institutions leaving orthodoxy behind; and more.
And yet his personal sanctity, incredible service to the Church as an evangelist, and heroic promotion of human rights, human dignity, and the culture of life through the new evangelization leading to the civilization of love all merit him the title “the Great.”
Not least among his acts as archbishop of Krakow and as pope was the start and completion of the successful cause of canonization for St. Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938), the Secretary and Apostle of the Divine Mercy.
Then there's the publication of the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska in many languages; and the establishment of Divine Mercy Sunday as a universal feast of the Church. Indeed, St. John Paul II died just after having received Holy Communion on the Vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday in 2005, and was beatified (2011) and canonized (2014) on Divine Mercy Sunday.
If you spent your life studying the writings of one Catholic saint (alongside, of course, the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Diary of St. Faustina), you could hardly do better than to study the writings of St. John Paul II.
Teaching for today
Saint John Paul II’s life, papal magisterium, and example is more relevant than ever. We celebrate the feast of the Great Mercy Pope on Oct. 22 — fitting, since it’s the month of the Holy Rosary, to which he was so devoted and which he prayed and promoted so frequently. And Oct. 5, of course, is the feast of St. Faustina.
This month, let’s learn more about how to be true Friends of Mercy from the life and writings of one of the greatest friends Divine Mercy has ever had. Let’s pick up George Weigel’s Witness to Hope or a comparably faithful biography, or read Jason Evert’s wonderful Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves.
I also recommend the imaginative new work from Marian Press by Kevin Wilson, The Saint I Knew! Exciting "Encounters" with Holiness, which features an encounter with the young Karol Wojtyła.
Let’s look into the teachings of St. John Paul, especially his encyclicals, apostolic exhortations, and those documents or papal teachings directly relevant to our vocation, the duties of our state in life, or the challenges facing us today as a Church and world.
And let’s ask his intercession, especially for peace. Saint John Paul II was a mighty man of prayer in this life. He is all the mightier as one of the Communion of Saints in Heaven. Let us pray the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet, as he did, knowing that Heaven has attached extraordinary promises to these devotions.
And let us love our Lord, Our Lady, and all our neighbors as he did, even those who persecute us.
Pope St. John Paul II, pray for us!
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