Miracles and More

Floribeth Mora Diaz, accompanied by her husband, Edwin, places the relic of St. John Paul II on a small table after presenting it to Pope 

Francis during the canonization Mass for Sts. John XXIII and John Paul II in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican April 27, 2014 (CNS).

The Knights of Columbus have dedicated a page of their website to the history of their relationship with Saint John Paul II. Full of historical, biographical, and inspirational material, this page is worth taking a look at!

One notable article featured on the page is about the miracle that paved the way for St. John Paul II’s canonization. It says:

The miracle for canonization involved a Costa Rican woman, Floribeth Mora, who was suffering from a potentially fatal aneurysm. Mora said that she received an inexplicable healing after she invoked John Paul II’s intercession. According to Mora, she was watching a broadcast of the 2011 beatification ceremony for John Paul II and contemplating the pope’s image on a magazine when she heard a voice telling her not to be afraid and to get up. She recalled that shortly after, she felt better and renewed in spirit. When doctors later examined her, they could not offer an explanation for her healing. 

For more, read the full-length article here.

St. John Paul II, Pray for Us!

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 Moral Witness For The World

As we show in our permanent exhibit, Saint John Paul II served as a moral witness to leaders throughout the world. 

Last week, papal biographer George Weigel lectured on the pontificate of Saint John Paul II and the wisdom his legacy offers statesmen today.

There are several lessons we can learn from the late pontiff’s “moral witness” and his “steady determination to make decisions about situations and personalities without fear and without seeking favor,” Weigel said.

For more, see the report over at the National Catholic Register. Let us ask St. John Paul II to pray for our statesmen, that they might be prudent and fearless leaders in today’s world.

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).

Strive For Peace

Strive for peace with everyone,

and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

See to it that no one be deprived of the grace of God,

that no bitter root spring up and cause trouble,

through which many may become defiled.

-Hebrews 12: 14-15

A Total Offering

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Presentation, when Mary and Joseph took Jesus up to Jerusalem so that He could be “consecrated to the Lord” (Luke 2:23). So it is fitting that Saint John Paul II started the tradition of celebrating the World Day of Consecrated Life on this feast.

In his message for the first celebration in 1997, the late Holy Father noted three different reasons for establishing a World Day of Consecrated Life. The first purpose is to thank the Lord for the gift of consecrated life, which enriches the Christian community in many ways. The second is to “promote a knowledge of and esteem for the consecrated life by the entire People of God,” and in this way draw men and women to discern a call to the consecrated life.

The third is for consecrated persons themselves, so that they might be affirmed in their vocation. This is important, for, as St. John Paul II says:

…there is great urgency that the consecrated life show itself ever more “full of joy and of the Holy Spirit,” that it forge ahead dynamically in the paths of mission, that it be backed up by the strength of lived witness, because “modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses” (Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Nuntiandi 41).

Consecrated men and women offer everything to the Lord, and that is why we celebrate them on this feast. The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple is “an eloquent icon of the total offering of one’s life,” John Paul II writes, for it is at this moment that the “cause and model of all consecration in the Church” is offered up.

In this Year of Consecrated Life, let us pray for those men and women who have set out to live perfect charity through poverty, chastity, and obedience.