He is more than a person in the history. A playwright, an artist, a sportsman, a scholar, a writer, a traveler, a speaker, a professor, a leader, an advocate of the youth, a Pope, a man who lived his life in holiness-- John Paul II.
Born Karol Józef Wojtyła on May 18, 1920 in Wadowice, Republic of Poland and whose birthday is celebrated on this very day.
I wobbled my head as I take a brief look into how he led his life. As I flip through the pages of George Weigel's book The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II-- The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy I get to come out with immense appreciation about how he maintained a holy life in celibacy despite catching the world in reprobate invasion.
On Communism
It was mid 1920's when the Red Army invaded Europe. The young polish never had an idea that he would grow up in a rather unstable society. He was 18 when he moved to Kraków to begin undergraduate studies in Philology at the Jagiellonian University. A year after, Germany invaded Poland sending forth World War II, crippling a nation of mostly Christians into a helpless one.
The shift in the lives of Karol's friends and relatives being murdered, and of few fighting Church leaders being imprisoned has immolated his aching heart. All human rights and hopes put in carnage, and the death of his father Karol Wojtyła, Sr. prompted him to take part in bringing back human dignity.
Karol Wojtyła's vocational discernment was profoundly shaped by his experiences of the Second World War...his daily life amidst brutality and random death; his resistance activities; his first experience of manual labor; and his first steps in Carmelite spirituality; the death if his father and the murder of his friends.
In late 1939, every man young and able in the family was forced to work for the Nazis (German invaders). Karol plied as manual laborer and began underground academic life and resistance activities. Eventually his name bobbed up in communist secret police records. He joined in student demonstration that attacked these communist secret police and internal security forces.
On Priesthood
In between the years of guns and bloods Karol was accepted into clandestine seminary program. Archbishop Sapieha believed in his ability and heart to influence especially the young, in spreading the word of God and in fighting for the rights of human dignity. Sapieha ordained him as priest in 1946 and sent him for a higher theological study in Rome.
He spent his first years in priesthood in Poland. He established to young men and women what he calls his Srodowisko where he took these young people into camping and kayaking as well as teaching and studying the words of God. He had unconfined appeal to the young people. Everyone who became part of his life gets enlivened.
He spent his first years in priesthood in Poland. He established to young men and women what he calls his Srodowisko where he took these young people into camping and kayaking as well as teaching and studying the words of God. He had unconfined appeal to the young people. Everyone who became part of his life gets enlivened.
Young people were attracted to Father Karol Wojtyła for many reasons: his intelligence, his friendliness, his human sympathy--- "his permanent openness".
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| The late Pope kissing a baby |
Father Karol who later on became Dr. hab. Wojtyla professor-ed in universities after being awarded the habilitation doctorate. He later became Bishop Wojtyla. The Second Vatican Council opened in 1962 and a year later, Karol was named Archbishop of Kraków by Pope Paul VI. In 1967 he became cardinal. He defended human rights of all Poles, believers and unbelievers.
Human beings, he insisted, had a natural instinct for the truth of things, a built-in inclination to the true, the good, and the beautiful. Yet men and women were free to make real choices, choices that we can know by reason to be decisions between what is objectively good and what is objectively evil, between what is noble and what is base. To reduce those choices, as communism did, to expressions of class interest or other economic forces was to dehumanize the human person. And if communism misunderstood human dignity and human freedom, it also misunderstood human community and society.
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| Cardinal Wojtyla kneeling before Pope John Paul I |
After the short stint of John Paul I as Pope, Karol Wojtyla took over and became Pope John Paul II. He reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 1978 to 2005. He was the second longest-serving Pope in history and is undoubtedly the most-traveled one.
His strong passion to spread the light and words of God led him to conduct Papal visits in many countries-- to the works of Mother Theresa of Calcutta in India, to promoting the essence of intact family in the US, and even to non-Catholics [Judaism religion for example], to Al Qaeda's Operation Bojinka's plan to assassinate him, supposedly in his visit in Manila in 1995 but was materialized in St.Peter's Square. He respected other religions including Islam. Most people in the world saw his spiritual profoundness through his undying passion for forgiveness and prayer.
His strong passion to spread the light and words of God led him to conduct Papal visits in many countries-- to the works of Mother Theresa of Calcutta in India, to promoting the essence of intact family in the US, and even to non-Catholics [Judaism religion for example], to Al Qaeda's Operation Bojinka's plan to assassinate him, supposedly in his visit in Manila in 1995 but was materialized in St.Peter's Square. He respected other religions including Islam. Most people in the world saw his spiritual profoundness through his undying passion for forgiveness and prayer.
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| Pope John Paul II immediately after he was shot |
Weigel mentioned in his book that Pope now Blessed John Paul II gathered his largest crowd in human history on the world's least-Christian continent, when he celebrated the closing Mass of World Youth Day in Manila, Philippines on January 15, 1995. I feel honored as a Filipino on the vastness of warm welcome and support that my nation gave to the Pope that time.
Blessed John Paul II's message to the Filipino people:
God has given you two great gifts: the richness of your faith and the closeness of your family.
On Love and Marriage
He was not only a Pope concerned of life but of love, marriage, and sexuality. He wrote a book entitled Love and Responsibility in 1960 which speaks of work, philosophical in nature, on the human person, human sexuality, love and marriage which I will attempt to blog about in the next days.
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| Published in Polish in 1960 and in English in 1981 |
George Weigel's work for years paid off in fulfilling his promise to the late Pope to tell in complete detail the road to holiness that a man named Karol Józef Wojtyła did in the history of the 20th century.
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| Pope John Paul II praying at the Western Wall |
In Weigel's parting words to the late Pope before his death:
The conversation over dinner was wide-ranging, and at one point, after the usual papal kidding about my having written "a very big book," John Paul asked about the international reception of Witness to Hope, his biography, which I had published five years earlier. He was particularly happy when I told him that a Chinese edition was in the works, as he knew he would never get to that vast land himself. As that part of the conversation was winding down, I looked across the table and, referring to the fact that Witness to Hope had only taken the John Paul II story up to early 1999, I made the Pope a promise: "Holy Father," I said, "if you don't bury me, I want you to know that I'll finish your story."It was the last time we saw each other, this side of the Kingdom of God.
Even up to now, I still find myself in tears of joy and admiration to this great holy man.
Reference:
The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II-- The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy by George Weigel
wikipedia (dot) org
Photo/ Video Credits:
google (dot) com (slash) images
saieditor (dot) com- 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th photo
youtube (dot) com
