In Case You Missed It

Many things happened last week, as the Church journeyed through Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. We’ve put together a quick recap here, just in case you missed any of the happenings at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine and other John Paul II news.

-Hundreds came to the Shrine on Saturday, March 28, to venerate eight rare relics as part of the Relics of the Passion Prayer Program. See photos here.

-The Shrine took part in a Seven-Church Pilgrimage on Holy Thursday.

-A Knights of Columbus Documentary, John Paul II in America: Uniting a Continent, began airing on national television this past weekend. It will continue to air throughout the month of April. Check the current schedule here.

-There is a beautiful Easter Reflection on the Shrine’s website, as well as reflection for the upcoming Feast of Divine Mercy.

-This Saturday, April 11, Andreas Widmer, author of The Pope and the CEO and former Swiss Guard for Saint John Paul II, will be speaking at the Shrine. After the talk there will be time for veneration of the relics of St. John Paul II, followed by a Vigil Mass of Divine Mercy. 

-Finally, here are a few of our favorite stories from the tenth anniversary of Saint John Paul II’s death:

     St. John Paul II Taught Us That Sanctity Was Possible in the Modern Age

     Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz: St. John Paul II ‘Showed People the Way to Christ’

     Ten years since the death of St. John Paul II

     St. John Paul II and the “Tyranny of the Possible”

St. John Paul II, Pray for Us!

In The Places Where God Pitched His Tent

We are less than two weeks away from the canonization of Blessed John Paul II, and only a few months away from opening the exhibit of his life and legacy at the Blessed John Paul II Shrine. As we prepare here, especially during this Holy Week, we thought it would be appropriate to reflect upon one of the most important moments in the late Holy Father’s papacy: his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Blessed John Paul II’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land was a key part of the Jubilee Year celebrations in 2000. It was also part of a bigger desire of his to visit the “‘places’ in which God has chosen to ‘pitch his tent’ among us”:

I have a strong desire to go personally to pray in the most important places which, from the Old to the New Testament, have seen God's interventions, which culminate in the mysteries of the Incarnation and of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ.

This desire was fulfilled in March of that year, when John Paul II made this pilgrimage for the entire Church.

His pilgrimage began symbolically with honoring Abraham in Rome, and it continued on to Mount Sinai where the Holy Father meditated upon those moments in the Old Testament linking the Church with the ancient people of the Covenant. There he spoke of “the Law of life and freedom,” and how, through “revealing himself on the Mountain and giving his Law, God revealed man to man himself.”

Remember the Suffering Servant

In his Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris, Blessed John Paul II reminds us of the messianic texts in the Old Testament which foreshadowed the Passion of Jesus Christ. He includes the Fourth Song of the Suffering Servant, from the Book of Isaiah:

"He had no form or comeliness that we should look
at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray
we have turned every one to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all"(41).

As we approach Holy Week, let us reflect on Christ’s suffering and death. Let it help us to endure the rest of this penitential season and prepare our hearts for the joyous Resurrection.