St. John Paul II In The City Of Freedom

Declaration of Independence, by John Trumbull, 1819

The schedule is set for the Holy Father’s visit to the United States. Pope Francis will visit both Washington, D.C. and New York City in September, followed by a stop at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.

Pope Francis won't be the first pontiff to step foot in Philadelphia. Saint John Paul II actually visited the city twice—once before he was Pope, and once at the beginning of his pontificate. He was sent to the International Eucharistic Congress there in 1976, and he stopped in the “city of brotherly love” during his pastoral visit to the United States in 1979.

During his pastoral visit, John Paul II said Mass at Logan Circle. In his homily, he named Philadelphia as the city of the Declaration of Independence and the Liberty Bell. He said:

Your attachment to liberty, to freedom, is part of your heritage. When the Liberty Bell rang for the first time in 1776, it was to announce the freedom of your nation, the beginning of the pursuit of a common destiny independent of any outside coercion. This principle of freedom is paramount in the political and social order, in relationships between the government and the people, and between individual and individual. However, man's life is also lived in another order of reality: in the order of his relationship to what is objectively true and morally good. Freedom thus acquires a deeper meaning when it is referred to the human person. It concerns in the first place the relation of man to himself. Every human person, endowed with reason, is free when he is the master of his own actions, when he is capable of choosing that good which is in conformity with reason, and therefore with his own human dignity.

Our beloved Holy Father reminded Philadelphians of the gift of their freedom, and what that freedom really means for the human person. May we be reminded of that again as we prepare for the World Meeting of Families and Pope Francis’s visit.

Saint John Paul II, Pray for Us!

Mother Of Peace, Pray For Us

On this Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, the Church prays for peace throughout the world. In his message for the World Day of Peace, Pope Francis asks all people of good will to pray especially for enslaved men and women, whose fundamental rights are suppressed and abused.

The Holy Father calls us “to forge a new worldwide solidarity and fraternity” with those who live clandestinely:

I invite everyone, in accordance with his or her specific role and responsibilities, to practice acts of fraternity towards those kept in a state of enslavement.  Let us ask ourselves, as individuals and as communities, whether we feel challenged when, in our daily lives, we meet or deal with persons who could be victims of human trafficking, or when we are tempted to select items, which may well have been produced by exploiting others.  Some of us, out of indifference, or financial reasons, or because we are caught up in our daily concerns, close our eyes to this.  Others, however, decide to do something about it, to join civic associations or to practice small, everyday gestures—which have so much merit!—such as offering a kind word, a greeting or a smile.  These cost us nothing but they can offer hope, open doors, and change the life of another person who lives clandestinely; they can also change our own lives with respect to this reality.

Let us open our eyes to the exploitation of the enslaved, and let us answer Pope Francis’s universal prayer intention this month, by working together with others for peace.  

Oh Mary, who gave birth to Peace Himself, please bring peace to all of those who do not live in freedom.

The Freedom To Serve

At the school of the Mother, the Church learns to become every day "handmaid of the Lord," to be ready to go to encounter situations of greatest need, to be caring toward the small and the excluded. But we are all called to live the service of charity in ordinary life, that is, in the family, in the parish, at work, with neighbors. It is the charity of everyday, ordinary charity.

…the Church is the people who serve the Lord. For this, it is the people who experiences his freedom and lives in this freedom that He gives. The Lord always gives true freedom. First of all, the freedom from sin, from selfishness in all its forms: the freedom to give of oneself and to do so with joy, like the Virgin of Nazareth, who is free from herself, she does not close in on herself in her condition – and she would have had reason! – but thinks of those who, in that moment, has greater need. She is free in the freedom of God, which is realized in love. And this is the freedom that God has given us and we must not lose it: the freedom to adore God, to serve God and to serve him even in our brothers and sisters.

This is the freedom that, by the grace of God, we experience in the Christian community, when we put ourselves at each other’s service, without jealousy, without taking sides, without chatter… Serving one another. Serving! Then the Lord frees us from ambition and rivalry, which undermine unity and communion. He frees us from distrust, sadness — look, this sadness is dangerous because it casts us down. It casts us down. It’s dangerous. Be careful. He frees us from fear, internal emptiness, isolation, regret, and complaints. Even in our communities, in fact, there is no shortage of negative attitudes that make people self-referential, more concerned with defending themselves than with giving of themselves. But Christ frees us from this existential grayness…

                -Pope Francis