A Way For The Church

As he took the Chair of Saint Peter, Saint John Paul II challenged all people to open wide their hearts to Christ, for it is His “perfect love” that “casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). It is His love that gives man life. In his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, the late Holy Father wrote:

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.

St. John Paul II taught us much about this love that man cannot live without, and we remember this in our permanent exhibit: A Gift of Love: The Life of Saint John Paul II.

The sainted pontiff showed us this love by visiting his people. Early in his papacy, he made pilgrimages of love to the faithful in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and other places throughout the world.

Sport As Culture Of Love

As an adventurous lover of sports, Saint John Paul II believed that athletics could positively contribute to a person’s formation, as well as fraternity among peoples. In an article on The Sports Digest, Professors Karen Joisten and Norbert Müller review a number of the late Holy Father’s reflections on sports.

They note his warnings about the negative extremes that many athletes can go to, but they mostly highlight John Paul II’s thoughts on the great good that sports can do. According to his teachings:

… sport can be a medium of virtue formation and education, which does not only apply to sport. Since athletes who are entirely committed to the game have made these values their second nature, the latter are like hair and skin to them. In this way, there is a chance that the "virtues of sports training," as John Paul II stated in his message at the opening of the Barcelona Olympic Games, "such as self-control, perseverance, respect for others, desire for top performance, fairness, sense of sacrifice, modesty and team work" will significantly determine the behavior of the individual and the community "in order to make our lives more brotherly fair and amicable."

If sport realizes its educational vocation on an individual level by contributing "to the holistic development of a person" (the Pope’s address to the Council of the International Ski Federation on 6 December 1983), it can realize its educational vocation on the level of the community at the same time. Therefore, it can substantially contribute to our harmonious coexistence in this world. On an international level, as John Paul II expressed in his audience for members of the IOC in 1982, it can "contribute significantly to progress and brotherhood among people as well as to the spreading of peace." If sport becomes a "culture of love," it will offer a universal language that transcends the frontiers between cultures, countries and nations, and it will therefore allow for a "sincere and open dialogue."

As the World Cup continues, let us pray with Pope Francis for the intercession of Saint John Paul II, that sports may become a "culture of love" in this world. 

Made For Loving Encounter

 

Ever since the beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis’s witness and teachings have constantly pointed the faithful towards the importance of encounter. We are called to encounter Christ, and we are called to encounter one another.

This vocation to encounter is not new in the Catholic tradition. In fact it builds off of what Blessed John Paul II taught us about the dignity of the human person, made for relationship with God and with one another.

The human person is made for love. In his Familiaris Consortio, John Paul II wrote:

God is love and in Himself He lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in His own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion. Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.

Being made in the image and likeness of God means being made in the image and likeness of the Trinity. The person bears the imprint of the Trinity, which means that he or she bears the vocation to love and be loved by God and others.

I Believe In God

Our profession of faith begins with God, for God is the First and the Last, the beginning and the end of everything (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 198).

Everything we believe, and in fact, everything that we are depends on God. He is one, without limit, and Lord over heaven and earth. The people of Israel tell us this about God in the Hebrew Scriptures, and they knew because He mercifully chose to reveal His own name to them:

To disclose one’s name is to make oneself known to others; in a way it is to hand oneself over by becoming accessible, capable of being known more intimately and addressed personally (203).

God revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush as YHWH, or “I AM WHO AM.”  This name reveals everything about God, but at the same time, it reveals almost nothing. It is “mysterious just as God is mystery. It is at once a name revealed and something like the refusal of a name, and hence it better expresses God as what he is—infinitely above everything that we can understand or say…” (206).

The name indicates that God is hidden, yet very much present at the same time.

Whoever Loves God

Beloved, we love God because
he first loved us.
If anyone says, “I love God,”
but hates his brother, he is a liar;
for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen
cannot love God whom he has not seen.
This is the commandment we have from him:
Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God,
and everyone who loves the Father
loves also the one begotten by him.
In this way we know that we love the children of God
when we love God and obey his commandments.
For the love of God is this,
that we keep his commandments.
And his commandments are not burdensome,
for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world.
And the victory that conquers the world is our faith.

                -1 Jn 4:19-5:4