Well the news
is out! Yesterday Pope Francis announced that the canonization of both Blessed
John XXIII and Blessed John Paul II is to take place on April 27, 2014, the
day the Church celebrates the Second Sunday of Easter, or Divine Mercy Sunday.
This is a special day for Blessed John Paul II, for he instituted Divine Mercy Sunday in
2000, he died on the vigil of the feast in 2005, and he was beatified on Divine
Mercy Sunday by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in 2011.
Of course,
we here at the Shrine couldn’t be more excited. Yesterday was full of visitors, celebrations, and
prayers. In his homily for Mass celebrating the canonization announcement, our
Chaplain Fr. Gregory Gresko introduced the congregation to the first-class
relic of the soon to be canonized Blessed John Paul II, hosted on the altar for
veneration:
In
the relic we have before us today, we encounter evidence from Blessed John Paul
II’s own life of the extent to which he would go in order to show God’s Love.
This first-class relic -- containing a piece of the white papal cassock he was
wearing that became soaked with his blood when his would-be assassin attempted
to take his life by shooting him in Saint Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981 – is a
sign of John Paul II’s gift of himself to the Church, to you and to me, his
personal testimony that shows us what it means to be a witness to God’s Love…
Fr. Gresko’s
full homily is worth the read! For more on happenings at the Shrine
yesterday, check out this report
from the Catholic News Service. It includes some sneak peaks of our re-modeled Be Not Afraid exhibit.
Blessed John
Paul II, Pray for Us!
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