6 Days Until Canonization

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. 

-Blessed John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis

On this Easter Monday, we continue our novena by remembering all of those who do not believe in God and those who do not yet know Jesus. Let us pray our chaplet, bringing these souls to Jesus and immersing them in the ocean of His mercy. 

7 Days Until Canonization

Christ came to bring joy: joy to children, joy to parents, joy to families and to friends, joy to workers and to scholars, joy to the sick and to the elderly, joy to all humanity. In a true sense, joy is the keynote of the Christian message and the recurring motif of the Gospels. Recall the first words of the angel to Mary: “Rejoice, O full of grace, the Lord is with you" (Lk 1: 28). And at the birth of Jesus, the angels announced to the shepherds: "Listen, I bring you news of great joy, joy to be shared by all people” (Lk 2: 10). Years later as Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a colt, “the whole group of disciples joyfully began to praise God at the top of their voices. ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord’!” (Lk 19: 37-38). We are told that some Pharisees in the crowd complained, saying: “Master, stop your disciples.” But Jesus answered:  “I tell you, if they were silent, the very stones would cry out” (Lk 19 :39-40).

Are not those words of Jesus still true today? If we are silent about the joy that comes from knowing Jesus, the very stones of our cities will cry out! For we are an Easter people and “Alleluia” is our song.

-Blessed John Paul II, 1979

On this Easter Sunday, we continue our novena by remembering all devout and faithful souls. Let us pray our chaplet, bringing these souls to Jesus and immersing them in the ocean of His mercy. 

8 Days Until Canonization

We pray to you for our
brothers and sisters who have
answered "yes" to your
call to the priesthood,
to the consecrated life and
to the missions.

May their lives be renewed day by
day, to become a living Gospel.

Merciful and holy Lord,
continue to send new laborers
into the harvest of your Kingdom!

Assist those whom you call
to follow you in our day;
contemplating your face,
may they respond with joy
to the wondrous mission
that you entrust to them
for the good of your People
and of all men and women.

                 -Blessed John Paul II, 2004

Today, we continue our novena by remembering the souls of priests and religious. Let us pray our chaplet, bringing these souls to Jesus and immersing them in the ocean of His mercy. 

9 Days Until Canonization

Good Friday is a day of mystery in the Church. We mourn on this day, yet we know that the sadness in Christ’s suffering leads to great joy. We remember Christ’s trials, yet we do so in anticipation of his glorious Resurrection. We fast and abstain, yet we do so knowing that the feasting will come soon. This is the mystery of Christ’s mercy, which seems to shine most beautifully when humanity is at its worst.

Today we are nine days away from Divine Mercy Sunday, and we embark on a period of time in which Jesus asks us to pray a novena to His Divine Mercy for all souls. This devotion to Jesus’s Divine Mercy is something that Blessed John Paul II promoted during his pontificate, and he officially declared the Second Sunday of Easter to be “Divine Mercy Sunday” throughout the Church. He providentially passed away during the vigil of this feast, and next Sunday we will celebrate the Divine Mercy of the Lord with his canonization.

Because of his devotion to Jesus’s Divine Mercy, we at the Shrine decided that it would be appropriate to prepare for Blessed John Paul II’s canonization by praying the Divine Mercy Novena Jesus shared with St. Faustina Kowalska. For the next 9 days, we will pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet, offering up our prayers for the different souls that Jesus instructed us to remember.

So for Day 1, we begin by reflecting: 

Christ - the very fulfillment of the messianic prophecy - by becoming the incarnation of the love that is manifested with particular force with regard to the suffering, the unfortunate and sinners, makes present and thus more fully reveals the Father, who is God “rich in mercy.”

-Blessed John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia

Today, we begin our novena by remembering all of mankind, especially all sinners. Let us pray our chaplet, bringing these souls to Jesus and immersing them in the ocean of His mercy. 

Fifth Sorrowful Mystery: The Crucifixion

And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.

-Luke 23: 33-34a, 44-46. 

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “‘Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures’ (1 Cor 15:3)” (CCC, 619).

While meditating on Christ’s crucifixion as we enter into this Holy Triduum, say one Our Father, 10 Hail Mary’s, and a Glory Be. Let us conclude by reciting the Hail Holy Queen and by making a Sign of the Cross:

Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.  To you we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To you we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.  Turn then, O most gracious advocate, your eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus. O clement! O loving! O sweet Virgin Mary! 

Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Blessed John Paul II, Pray for Us!

For The Good Of Man

Our times have great need of an act of witness openly expressing the desire to bring nations and regimes closer together, as an indispensable condition for peace in the world. Our times demand that we should not lock ourselves into the rigid boundaries of systems, but seek all that is necessary for the good of man, who must find everywhere the awareness and certainty of his authentic citizenship. 

-Blessed John Paul II, 1979

Check out this Catholic News Agency article for the story of Blessed John Paul II’s role in the fall of the Soviet Union.

Blessed John Paul II, as we countdown to your canonization, please pray for peace and unity in our world! 

In The Places Where God Pitched His Tent

We are less than two weeks away from the canonization of Blessed John Paul II, and only a few months away from opening the exhibit of his life and legacy at the Blessed John Paul II Shrine. As we prepare here, especially during this Holy Week, we thought it would be appropriate to reflect upon one of the most important moments in the late Holy Father’s papacy: his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Blessed John Paul II’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land was a key part of the Jubilee Year celebrations in 2000. It was also part of a bigger desire of his to visit the “‘places’ in which God has chosen to ‘pitch his tent’ among us”:

I have a strong desire to go personally to pray in the most important places which, from the Old to the New Testament, have seen God's interventions, which culminate in the mysteries of the Incarnation and of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ.

This desire was fulfilled in March of that year, when John Paul II made this pilgrimage for the entire Church.

His pilgrimage began symbolically with honoring Abraham in Rome, and it continued on to Mount Sinai where the Holy Father meditated upon those moments in the Old Testament linking the Church with the ancient people of the Covenant. There he spoke of “the Law of life and freedom,” and how, through “revealing himself on the Mountain and giving his Law, God revealed man to man himself.”