The Pilgrim's Way: Light In Darkness

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 second gallery: Light in Darkness. In this part of the exhibit, pilgrims learn more about John Paul II's birth, his childhood, and his vocation to the priesthood.

Born Karol Wojtyła on May 18, 1920, the great saint was born in Wadowice, Poland to a strong Catholic family. From an early age, Karol was well-formed in the faith, and this faith became a light for him during the darker times in his life.

It didn’t take long for this light to be confronted by great darkness. Karol was born close to the end of WWI, and he reached adulthood in Nazi-occupied Poland. Following the defeat of the Nazi’s, he lived in a Poland ruled by the totalitarian and atheistic Soviet Union. Karol also confronted dark times on a personal level. His mother passed away when he was very young, and he lost all of his family by age 20.

The Pilgrim's Way: Beginning

Here at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine, we are devoted to building and preserving a place of encounter with Christ. We invite visitors to participate in liturgical prayer, in the veneration of Saint John Paul II’s relics, and ultimately in the universal call to holiness. According to Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, this Shrine is “a gift of the Knights of Columbus to the Church as a dedicated place of conversion, communion, and solidarity that advances the new evangelization now and in the future.”  

One way we do this is through our permanent exhibit, A Gift of Love: The Life of Saint John Paul II. Through this exhibit, we invite pilgrims to immerse themselves in the life, papacy, and teachings of John Paul II. We have already seen pilgrims walk away with hearts changed by this display of the late Holy Father’s saintly life, and each day it inspires in us a call to live as Christ’s disciples, just as John Paul II did.

As we prepare for the feast of St. John Paul II, we invite you to join us here on Open Wide the Doors as we explore this exhibit in depth. 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.

All Are Called To Holiness

Over the past few weeks, we've been exploring the themes of our permanent exhibit here on Open Wide the Doors. We joined Saint John Paul II on a pilgrimage of faith and love, as the narrator says in the video above.

We discovered that, during his younger years, St. John Paul II shone as a light in the darkness of his times. In the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, he pointed the Church away from her fears and back to Jesus. We saw that he gave himself entirely to the Blessed Mother, and that he shared her love for the human person. He followed in the footsteps of Jesus, making of gift of himself—the ultimate gift of love—to the entire world.

St. John Paul II lived a life of profound holiness, and as the late Holy Father said, we are all called to live this way. We are called “to accept and reciprocate the immense gifts which [God] bestowed” upon us.  We are offered the grace to live a saintly life! We just have to accept this grace and let it live through us.

We hope pilgrims walk away from the Saint John Paul II National Shrine inspired to do just that. This is why our final gallery, which is pictured above, calls visitors to reflect on the lives of some of the saints beatified and canonized by the late Holy Father. These holy men and women came from all walks of life, but they each lived out the call to holiness, and they are each praying for us now. We are all made to be saints, and hopefully our exhibit reminds pilgrims of this.

Thank you for joining us as we explored the themes of our permanent exhibit, A Gift of Love: The Life of Saint John Paul II. We hope that you will prayerfully consider a pilgrimage to see these themes come to life yourself.

Saint John Paul II, Pray for Us!

A Great Gift

The Church has received the Eucharist from Christ her Lord not as one gift – however precious – among so many others, but as the gift par excellence, for it is the gift of himself, of his person in his sacred humanity, as well as the gift of his saving work.

Saint John Paul II wrote these words in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, which was issued on Holy Thursday of 2003. In this, his final encyclical, he reflected upon the greatness of the gift of the Eucharist.

Nourished by the Father’s daily bread, St. John Paul II made immense sacrifices until his death in 2005. Through the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s disease, old wounds from the assassination attempt, multiple surgeries, and the loss of his voice, he continued to make a gift of himself to his flock, for “he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).

The Mysteries of Light

Those who take time to pray a Rosary today, will most likely meditate upon the Luminous Mysteries pictured in the icons above. Saint John Paul II called them the “Mysteries of Light.”

In his 2002 Apostolic Letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, the late Holy Father introduced these mysteries in order to give the Rosary “fresh life and to enkindle renewed interest in the Rosary's place within Christian spirituality as a true doorway to the depths of the Heart of Christ, ocean of joy and of light, of suffering and of glory.”

The truth that Christ is the “light of the world” (John 8:12) emerges during His public ministry, and so St. John Paul II suggested that we meditate upon five specific moments—Christ’s Baptism in the Jordan, His “self-manifestation at the wedding of Cana,” His proclamation of the Kingdom of God, His Transfiguration, and His institution of the Eucharist—with Mary’s help.

“Each of these mysteries is a revelation of the Kingdom now present in the very person of Jesus,” the sainted pontiff wrote. They guide us back to the light of Christ’s life and they illuminate the message He gave and still gives: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

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.

Faith And Forgiveness

Saint John Paul II had a very special place in his heart for the Blessed Mother. His papal motto was “Totus tuus,” or “I belong entirely to you,” and he placed an “M” beside the Cross on his coat of arms, because he wanted to dedicate his entire pontificate to her. 

On May 13, 1981, during an open-air audience in Saint Peter’s Square, an attempt was made on the late Hoy Father’s life. While it was a traumatic event, it was one that affirmed his devotion to Mary.

St. John Paul II attributed his survival and recovery to her, famously saying that, “[o]ne finger fired and another directed the bullet.” It was the feast of Our Lady of Fatima that day, and one year later he visited Fatima in order to place one of the bullets found inside of him in the Blessed Mother’s crown.

Through Mary’s prayers, John Paul II also received the grace to forgive the man who shot him. After experiencing the chilling moment of the assassination attempt, shown in the picture above, visitors to our exhibit journey on to one of our most moving galleries, in which they are called to reflect upon the time when the sainted pontiff visited and forgave Mehmet Ali Ağca.

Please join us here in the coming weeks as we continue to explore the themes of our permanent exhibit. As you learn more, prayerfully consider a pilgrimage to see these themes come to life yourself.

St. John Paul II, Pray for Us!

Renewal

In this gallery of our new exhibit, we have an exact replica of the Holy Doors in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Brothers and sisters, do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power. Help the Pope and all those who wish to serve Christ and with Christ's power to serve the human person and the whole of mankind. Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. To his saving power open the boundaries of States, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development. Do not be afraid. Christ knows “what is in man.” He alone knows it.

-Saint John Paul II, Homily for Inauguration of Pontificate

As he took the Chair of Saint Peter, Saint John Paul II asked all seekers, all faithful, and all doubters to listen to the words of St. Peter: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16). 

As the new Successor of Peter, John Paul II challenged all present to renew their faith in Jesus, who alone has the words of eternal life. As light comes out of the darkness, John Paul II rose out of communist Poland in order to point the entire Church beyond their fears and back to Jesus.

As visitors to our exhibit walk through the doors pictured above, we pray that they heed St. John Paul II’s call to cast all fears aside and open wide their hearts to Christ.

Please join us here in the coming weeks as we continue to explore the themes of our permanent exhibit. As you learn more, prayerfully consider a pilgrimage to see these themes come to life yourself.

St. John Paul II, Pray for Us!