HOMILY FOR 22 OCT SAINT POPE JOHN PAUL II

 

HOMILY FOR 22 OCTOBER 2022 FEAST OF SAINT POPE JOHN PAUL II OR SAINT POPE JOHN PAUL DE GREAT (POPE OF THE FAMILY AND POPE OF MERCY)

 Isaiah 52:7-10 Psalm 96:1-3,7-8,10 John 21:15-17

CELEBRATING THE GRACE OF GOD 

Saint Paul tells us that we are the work of art of God; created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it. But what is the good life? The man in the parable thought that the good life consisted in having plenty of good things accumulated for a life of luxury and comfort: Take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time, he says to himself. 

But we are made for something greater than material wealth and earthly pleasures. St Paul says: God loved us with so much love that he was generous with his mercy: when we were dead through our sins, he brought us to life with Christ and raised us up with him and gave us a place with him in heaven. For we are made for life with Christ, for friendship with God, for an eternal relationship of love with God who is love. God made us; and we belong to him. God knows what we need to live the good life, and he came in the person of Jesus Christ to teach us the way to the truly good life. Everything that we do in this life therefore, all our work, our leisure, the good things we enjoy, the friendships we have, and the things we read and do and say, all these are directed to our growth in love for God and for one another. 

Let us turn to Christ, then, who is Love made Man, and learn from him how to love. We receive mercy and grace from Jesus: mercy for the many times we fail to love, for mercy consists in God allowing us time and opportunity in which to repent and turn to him and so to change our lives for the better. The mercy of God allows us fresh chances each day to live the good life in Christ. For, if we turn to Jesus and open our hearts to him, then he gives us his grace, which is necessary for the good life, for it is grace of God that makes us good. 

Jesus, who is infinitely rich in grace, therefore, has the treasure, the true riches that we need. He is the one with whom we enter into a living and life-giving relationship of love with God. So it is only through his grace, and only together with him that we shall be able to be made rich in the sight of God.

Hence, Saint John Paul II said at the start of his Pontificate in 1978: Do not be afraid. Christ knows what is in man. He alone knows it. So often today man does not know what is within him, in the depths of his mind and heart. So often he is uncertain about the meaning of his life on this earth. He is assailed by doubt, a doubt which turns into despair. We ask you therefore, we beg you with humility and trust, let Christ speak to man. He alone has words of life, yes, of eternal life. 

Now, let us turn to the value he placed on the family. In the book Gift and Mystery, John Paul II speaks of the profound influence that his family had on him during his childhood. He speaks about his own family as his first seminary: The preparation for the priesthood, received in the seminary, was in a certain way preceded by that which was offered to me with the life and example of my parents in the family. He presents deeper detail about his relationship with his father, whom he considered as his most influential religious educator, by his teaching and example: My gratitude goes especially to my father, who became a widower at a young age. [] After her death [of his mother] and upon the death of my brother, I was left alone with my father, a deeply religious man. I daily observed his life, which was austere [] after he remained a widower; his life became a constant prayer. Sometimes I would wake up at night and find my father on his knees, just as I always saw him on his knees in the parish church. Between us there was no talk of vocation to the priesthood, but his example was for me in some way the first seminary, a kind of domestic seminary (Gift and Mystery).

This witness upon the young Karol Wojtyla is highly suggestive. Who could have said to his Father that his son would one day be nothing less than St. John Paul II, the Great Pope, a man of such transcendental influence upon the Church and the world? By virtue of their ministry of educating, parents are, through the witness of their lives, the first heralds of the Gospel for their children. Furthermore, by praying with their children, by reading the word of God with them and by introducing them deeply through Christian initiation into the Body of Christ; both the Eucharistic and the ecclesial Body, they become fully parents, in that they are begetters not only of bodily life but also of the life that through the Spirits renewal flows from the Cross and Resurrection of Christ (Fmiliaris Consortio, FC 39).

St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of the family as a type of spiritual womb (S. Th. II-II, q. 10, a. 12). Explaining that normally, it is in the heart of the family where divine dispositions are received and Christian values are absorbed.  This is where these values are acquired, as if by osmosis, by means of the good examples that are observed, even more so than what is heard, as John Paul II expressed related to his own father.

In Familiaris Consortio the Holy Father even says that the Christian family not only forms children of God but that it is the first and most excellent seminary: The family must educate the children for life in such a way that each one may fully perform his or her role according to the vocation received from God. Indeed, the family that is open to transcendent values []  and is aware of its daily sharing in the mystery of the glorious Cross of Christ, becomes the primary and most excellent seed-bed of vocations to a life of consecration (FC 53).

These are weighty and highly relevant words. In the middle of the crass materialism in which we are living in the society today, where the existence of God is often denied and opposed to in a systematic way, families have a role similar to a greenhouse, in which plants are protected from the cold. Following the Council, John Paul II called the family the domestic Church, where virtues are learned and the negative influences of the world are neutralized.

In this spiritual uterus, All members of the family, each according to his or her own gift, have the grace and responsibility of building, day by day, the communion of persons where there is an educational exchange between parents and children, in which each gives and receives. By means of love, respect and obedience towards their parents (FC 21).

St. John Paul II was born Karol J. Wojtyla in Wadowice, Poland, located just outside of Krakow, on May 18, 1920. The second of two sons born to Karol Wojtyla and Emilia Kaczorowska, young Karol had a difficult childhood. He lost his mother when he was nine years old, and his elder brother passed away when Karol was 12. He was then raised by his father, who passed along a sense of self-discipline and strong Catholic faith. He lost his father in 1941, prior to his entering into the priesthood.

Before hearing his vocational call, Karol studied drama and the arts at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. However, just one year later in 1939, the Nazi occupation of Krakow forced the university to close. Karol made ends meet and avoided deportation by working in a quarry and later a chemical factory throughout the war.

He decided to follow his vocational call to the priesthood and began courses in 1942 at an underground seminary in Krakow, run by the archbishop at the time. He later said this about discerning his vocational calling: How does one explain the ways of God? Yet, I know that, at a certain point in my life, I became convinced that Christ was saying to me what he had said to thousands before me: Come, follow me! There was a clear sense that what I heard in my heart was no human voice, nor was it just an idea of my own. Christ was calling me to serve him as a priest Nothing means more to me or gives me greater joy than to celebrate Mass each day and to serve Gods people in the Church.

During the war, he witnessed countless horrors, including the deportation and murder of priests who spoke out against the Nazi regime. He later recalled that the examples set by these priests showed him the real meaning of the priesthood. His was ordained a priest on November 1, 1946, once World War II had ended and the seminary had reopened.

As a priest, Karol focused heavily on intellectual studies, earning his first doctorate with a thesis on the theology of St. John of the Cross. He later earned a second doctorate focused on Christian ethics. Karol was also a chaplain for university students and later a professor of moral philosophy and social ethics. He became the spiritual leader and mentor of a group of young adults, whom he often joined on kayaking or camping trips. He moved through the hierarchy of the Church with a fierce commitment to the power of Christianity and moral ethics to lift up the vulnerable; all while living and working in a communist Poland where freedom of speech and religion were not easy to come by. He remained dedicated to the laity and youth, working with them on a personal level to deepen relationships with God.

Karol Wojtyła was elected pope on October 16, 1978, and took the name Pope John Paul II. The feast day of Pope John Paul II marks his installation Mass on October 22, 1978. In his homily, he called for Catholics to “Be not afraid!” He began a rigorous travel schedule to visit and reinvigorate as many countries and communities as he could, as well as spread a message of courageous nonviolent protests for religious freedom and human rights. St. John Paul II urged us all to Open wide the doors to Christ as the year 2000 approached, and the third Christian millennium began. His papacy was a long preparation for and encouragement for the Church to be renewed in its mission to bring Christ to the world of today.

Until his last years, he maintained that same rigorous schedule to spread the good news, lift up the vulnerable and offer blessings. When asked to slow down to protect his health, he responded simply:

Si crollo, crollo. which translates to If I collapse, I collapse.

Pope John Paul II was canonized in 2014 after two miracles were attributed to him. Sister Marie Simon-Pierre Normand prayed to Pope John Paul II to overcome her battle with Parkinsons disease (which the late pope had also suffered from), and Floribeth Mora Diaz was cured of a brain aneurysm after praying to him.

To celebrate the life and legacy of this modern-day saint, let October 22 be a day of prayer and passion for the Lord. Thus we turn to the Lord now in prayer, in offering this sacrifice of the Mass, and we open our hearts to the saving grace of Christ freely given to us in the Eucharist. May St John Paul II pray for us. 

O DIVINE WORD, WHO TOOK FLESH FOR HUMAN SAKE, REDEEM US IN OUR SITUATION

© Rev Fr Utazi Prince Marie Benignus