The Pilgrim's Way: A Great Gift

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 eighth gallery: A Great Gift. This gallery covers the end of St. John Paul II’s life, and it invites pilgrims to reflect on two themes in his teachings: the gift of the Eucharist and the renewal of the priesthood.

The Eucharist is the greatest of gifts, for through it the Incarnation is made present to all mankind. It is the gift of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. Connected with this, is the gift of the priesthood. Priests give up everything for the Gospel, and so the priesthood is a form of union with Christ's sacrificial gift of Himself to the Church and to the world.

One With Those Who Suffer

Today the Church remembers the Last Supper of the Lord, and she prepares to embark with Him on the road to Calvary. As Saint John Paul II wrote in his 1991 Message for Lent, it is today that we should become more aware of the intense suffering that Christ experienced:

As Lent draws to its culmination on Holy Thursday, the Liturgy recalls the institution of the Eucharist, the memorial of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. This Sacrament, in which the Church celebrates the depth of her faith, should lead us to become ever more profoundly aware of the poverty, suffering and persecution which Christ endured.

Not only should we allow this awareness to develop into deep gratitude, but we should also allow it to draw us into deep solidarity with the suffering poor, for the “Son of God, who became poor out of love for us, became one with those who suffer.”

As we find our converted selves completely dependent upon God and His will for us, John Paul II challenges us to see the completely dependent Christ in the poor:

As we look at Jesus Christ, the Good Samaritan, we cannot forget that from the poverty of the manger to the total abandonment of the Cross, he chose to become one with the “least.” Christ teaches us detachment from riches, trust in God and readiness to share. He urges us to look at our brothers and sisters who are poor and suffering from the point of view of one who – in poverty – knows what it is to be totally dependent upon God and to stand in absolute need of him.

Perhaps an encounter with the poor today will help us all to enter more deeply into the mystery of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. John Paul II was able to do this during his last Lent on earth, for he found himself poor and suffering on death’s doorstep. He died ten years ago today, in fact, and so we ask him to pray for us all, that we may relieve Christ’s suffering in the poor.

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).

Light In Darkness

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

-1 John:5

The first part of our new exhibit, A Gift of Love: The Life of Saint John Paul II, can be surprising for some of our visitors. Saint John Paul II was a great lover of humanity, even though, as our exhibit shows, he experienced humanity at some of its darkest hours.

As a child, John Paul II was known as Karol Wojtyła. Born in Wadowice, Poland in 1920, young Karol lost both of his parents and his two siblings by the time he was 21. Amidst the losses he suffered, Karol grew up in a world in which his faith, his culture, and his freedom were all under attack. The Nazis occupied his country until he reached adulthood. Once they were defeated, the Soviet Union took over.

Throughout this time, Wojtyła flourished. Studious, athletic, and artistic, he did not allow outside forces to quell the love inside of him.  Sustained by his family, friends, and faith, he instead lived as a light to others. The shadows of the 20^th century did not keep him from his vocation to the priesthood, they did not keep him from nourishing his flock in Poland, nor did they keep him from bringing his love for the human person to the Second Vatican Council.

A Journey Of Gift

Today the Church embarks on the liturgical season of Lent.  In his last Lenten message, Blessed John Paul II wrote that during Lent, “a spiritual journey is outlined for us that prepares us to relive the Great Mystery of the Death and Resurrection of Christ.”

During his last Lent here on earth, the late Holy Father experienced this journey in a unique way. As his health failed, he suffered much like Christ did in preparation for death. The debilitating effects of Parkinson’s disease, the wounds from the assassination attempt, multiple surgeries, and the loss of his voice humbled him before the world and before God.

Even as he aged and became more vulnerable due to sickness, Blessed John Paul II never hid himself from the world. As he wrote in his final message for Lent, “reaching old age is a sign of the Most High’s gracious benevolence.” Longevity is a “special divine gift.”

He continued:

If growing old, with its inevitable conditions, is accepted serenely in the light of faith, it can become an invaluable opportunity for better comprehending the Mystery of the Cross, which gives full sense to human existence.

Jesus Shines Through Human Weakness

May God bless and comfort all who suffer.

And may Jesus Christ,

the Savior of the world and healer of the sick,

make His light shine through human weakness

as a beacon for us and for all mankind.

-Blessed John Paul II, May 31, 1982

Praying For Oklahoma

This week at the Shrine, we are praying for all of those who are suffering in Oklahoma, that they might be able to find peace in a time of great turmoil.

Earlier this week, Cardinal Dolan said, “May the words of Jesus, 'Behold I am with you always,' and who calmed the storms, bring hope and comfort at this sensitive moment…May all those affected by such pain feel the strength God offers them and the compassion of all who stand with them, be it in their hometown or miles away.”

We join Cardinal Dolan in this prayer, asking especially for the intercession of the Blessed Mother on behalf of all of those in need of God’s gentle care. 

Making Sense of the Senseless

Fr. James Martin, S.J. published a heartfelt reflection on the tragic school shooting in Newtown last week.  He writes,

Jesus understands what sorrow is. Jesus understands pain. Jesus, I believe, weeps with us. Our God is not an intellectual abstraction or a philosophical theory, ours is a God who has lived a human life. This helps me during times of sadness. Jesus is with us in our pain, not standing far off.

 “The God who weeps with us also promises us eternal life,” Fr. Martin wrote. Let us remember this as we continue to pray for the children, their families, and the gunman 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. 

A Witness to Suffering

In his keynote address at “The Boundaries of the Human” conference in Rome two weeks ago, Cardinal Raymond Burke spoke about Blessed John Paul II and how his life and teachings provide a model for Christian suffering.

Blessed John Paul II lost his mother at a young age, and her passing was followed by the deaths of both his father and his dearest brother. He lost the people who were closest to him, and he also experienced the degradation of Polish culture and freedom during periods of Nazi occupation and Communism.

Blessed John Paul II is extraordinary…His own life is a testimony to suffering embraced in order to love more.

Despite experiencing such darkness early in his life, Blessed John Paul II emerged as a joyful disciple of Christ, full of a deep love for all of humanity. This carried him through his pontificate, which held its own burdens. As he recovered from an attempt on his life, Blessed John Paul II responded with a smiling forgiveness.  And when he reached old age, he courageously faced the world even though sickness and death were upon him.

Blessed John Paul II fully embraced his afflictions, and he gave the Church a beautiful gift through his witness to suffering.

In an Apostolic Letter written after his recovery from the 1981 assassination attempt, Blessed John Paul II addressed the Christian meaning of human suffering. He wrote that through suffering, man shares in the redemptive power of the Passion and death of Christ. Suffering is love, and in it man finds his vocation: 

Suffering as it were contains a special call to the virtue which man must exercise on his own part. And this is the virtue of perseverance in bearing whatever disturbs and causes harm. In doing this, the individual unleashes hope, which maintains in him the conviction that suffering will not get the better of him, that it will not deprive him of his dignity as a human being, a dignity linked to awareness of the meaning of life.

Suffering works to “unleash love in the human person,” Blessed John Paul II wrote, and when Christians suffer, they do so in union with the Church. They are united with the Blessed Mother, and saints like Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Ignatius of Loyola and all of those who have been sanctified through their suffering.

Let’s follow Blessed John Paul II’s example and embrace our crosses during this penitential season of Lent, as we meditate upon Christ’s Passion and anticipate His resurrection.