The Pilgrim's Way: The Dignity Of The Human Person

As we prepare for the feast of Saint John Paul II, we invite you to continue on this pilgrimage through our permanent exhibit, A Gift of Love: The Life of Saint John Paul II. We hope you will walk through each of the nine galleries with us, so that you can get a taste of the spiritual and informational journey that awaits you here at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine.

This week we will explore the sixth gallery: The Dignity of the Human Person. Every human person is created in the image and likeness of God, and from Him we each receive irreducible worth and dignity. In an increasingly utilitarian world, St. John Paul II tirelessly defended this truth about the person.

The late Holy Father preached a Gospel of Life, calling the Church to defend those like the unborn, the sick, the elderly, and victims of war and genocide. He reminded us to defend and serve every human person as we would Christ, who reveals to us what is truest about man.

The Pope In DC

All human beings ought to value every person for his or her uniqueness as a creature of God, called to be a brother or sister of Christ by reason of the Incarnation and the universal Redemption. For us, the sacredness of human life is based on these premises. And it is on these same premises that there is based our celebration of life—all human life. This explains our efforts to defend human life against every influence or action that threatens or weakens it, as well as our endeavors to make every life more human in all its aspects.

And so, we will stand up every time that human life is threatened. When the sacredness of life before birth is attacked, we will stand up and proclaim that no one ever has the authority to destroy unborn life. When a child is described as a burden or is looked upon only as a means to satisfy an emotional need, we will stand up and insist that every child is a unique and unrepeatable gift of God, with the right to a loving and united family. When the institution of marriage is abandoned to human selfishness or reduced to a temporary, conditional arrangement that can easily be terminated, we will stand up and affirm the indissolubility of the marriage bond. When the value of the family is threatened because of social and economic pressures, we will stand up and reaffirm that the family is “necessary not only for the private good of every person, but also for the common good of every society, nation and state.” When freedom is used to dominate the weak, to squander natural resources and energy, and to deny basic necessities to people, we will stand up and reaffirm the demands of justice and social love. When the sick, the aged or the dying are abandoned in loneliness, we will stand up and proclaim that they are worthy of love, care and respect.

-Saint John Paul II, Homily at the National Mall, 1979

Death Out Of Love

Christ on the Cross, Eugene Delacroix, 1853

Today the Church celebrates the feast of Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, who was canonized by Saint John Paul II in 1982.

A Polish Franciscan with a deep devotion to Mary, Kolbe gave his own life for a fellow prisoner at the Auschwitz extermination camp, taking on the man's punishment of death by starvation because he had a wife and children. Not only this, but the saint also gave life to others in the camp, reminding them of their dignity as persons and that hope was not yet lost. Kolbe is particularly remembered for leading the nine others condemned to starvation in Marian hymns and the Rosary as they awaited their death.

St. John Paul II had a deep devotion to Maximilian Kolbe, and his sacrifice in the heart of darkness gave the late Holy Father much hope as he discerned his own vocation in war torn Poland. Kolbe’s Christ-like gift of self stood as a model of priesthood for him, and the Franciscan's hope in the midst of hatred inspired a renewed respect for the dignity of the human person in a place and a time in which it seemed to have been forgotten.

Dignity Of The Human Person

We know that man is made for love, because we know that man is made in the image of God (Gen 1:27). In his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, Saint John Paul II reflected upon what this means:

Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase.

St. John Paul II spent his entire pontificate defending this truth about man. All human persons—including the poor, the sick, the handicapped, the elderly, and the unborn—are called to the fullness of life.

The Centrality Of Man

Last week, Pope Francis reminded participants at an economic conference that man must always be at the center of the economy. Otherwise, we find ourselves guilty of an “anthropological reductionism.”

The Holy Father’s predecessor, Saint John Paul II, constantly challenged people to embrace a person-centered mentality. In his Centesimus Annus, he wrote:

Christian anthropology…is really a chapter of theology, and for this reason, the Church's social doctrine, by its concern for man and by its interest in him and in the way he conducts himself in the world, “belongs to the field ... of theology and particularly of moral theology.” The theological dimension is needed both for interpreting and solving present-day problems in human society. 

Social issues crop up at the economic and political level when we lose sight of the dignity of the human person, John Paul II warned us. Now Pope Francis is echoing his cry.

Saint John Paul II, please pray for us, that we might be free of the sin of reducing the human person to something less than what he is worth!

Human Life Is Sacred

In [God’s] hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.

-Job 12:10

Every human life is sacred. Blessed John Paul II often reminded us of this, and that is why our final Year of Faith reflection is on the dignity of the human person. 

The topic of human life is covered in the Catechism of the Catholic Church under the Fifth Commandment, you shall not kill. The section begins with:

‘Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstances claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being’ (as quoted in CCC, 2258).

Scripture tells us that all human life is to be protected and respected from the first moment of existence until natural death. This is because “the human person has been willed for its own sake in the image and likeness of the living and holy God” (2319).

A Place At The Table

Last weekend, Archbishop of Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl preached to a number of disabled communities in attendance at the Archdiocese’s fourth annual White Mass. In his homily, he said:

Just as all of us are created by God as we are, and all of us have a place at the table of the Lord through baptism, so those with special needs bring their own particular gifts to the Church and to our celebration today…

Each of us is in need of the other, and each of us is enriched by the others, and we depend upon and are complemented by others.

As Blessed John Paul II often taught us, the human person is a sacred and necessary part of God’s creation. Cardinal Wuerl echoed this truth, saying that each one of us, with our abilities and disabilities, has a place at the table of the Lord and a place in one another’s lives.

A Victory Like That Of Christ Himself

During this week of the feast of St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe, let us reflect on Blessed John Paul II’s words at Brezezinka Concentration Camp:

"This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith" (1 Jn 5:4).

These words from the Letter of Saint John come to my mind and enter my heart as I find myself in this place in which a special victory was won through faith; through the faith that gives rise to love of God and of one's neighbor, the unique love, the supreme love that is ready to "lay down (one's) life for (one's) friends" (Jn 15:13; cf. 10:11). A victory, therefore, through love enlivened by faith to the extreme point of the final definitive witness.

This victory through faith and love was won in this place by a man whose first name is Maximilian Mary. Surname: Kolbe. Profession (as registered in the books of the concentration camp): Catholic priest. Vocation: a son of Saint Francis. Birth: a son of simple, hardworking devout parents, who were weavers near Lódz. By God's grace and the Church's judgment: Blessed.

The victory through faith and love was won by him in this place, which was built for the negation of faith—faith in God and faith in man—and to trample radically not only on love but on all signs of human dignity, of humanity. A place built on hatred and on contempt for man in the name of a crazed ideology. A place built on cruelty. On the entrance gate which still exists, is placed the inscription "Arbeit macht frei", which has a sardonic sound, since its meaning was radically contradicted by what took place within.

In this site of the terrible slaughter that brought death to four million people of different nations, Father Maximilian voluntarily offered himself for death in the starvation bunker for a brother, and so won a spiritual victory like that of Christ himself. This brother still lives today in the land of Poland.

St. Maximilian Kolbe, Pray for Us!

Embracing Our Elder Brothers

In an Op-Ed with the Los Angeles Times, Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein of the Simon Wiesenthal Center join their Catholic friends in praying that people of all faiths find inspiration in Blessed John XXIII and Blessed John Paul II.

These great men deserve admiration and respect, Cooper and Adlerstein say, due to their efforts towards breaking down the centuries old barrier between the Christian and Jewish people.

Of our beloved patron, they write:

As a young man in Poland under Hitler, Karol Wojtyla was witness to hell on Earth. He personally rescued a starving 13-year-old Jewish girl at a rail station, feeding and caring for her.

During the Middle Ages, Jews in Rome's Great Synagogue were forced to listen to harangues against their faith delivered by apostate Jews. John Paul II delivered a different message when he attended that synagogue, the first pope to visit a Jewish house of worship, embracing Rome's Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff and calling Jews the "elder brothers" of Christians.

He continued walking on new ground. He visited Jerusalem and the Western Wall, praying there for forgiveness for the way Christians had mistreated Jews for almost 2,000 years. He walked in pilgrimage to the blood-drenched killing grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau. He organized a papal concert in memory of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. He established full diplomatic relations with Israel, accepting a revivified Jewish nation.

Even before he was Pope, Blessed John Paul II was saintly in his recognition of the dignity of every human person. He carried that with him to the papacy, and now we the faithful ask for his intercession, that we may do the same.