Tag Archives: St. John Paul II

Family: Imitate Christ in Self-Giving Love

22 Thursday Oct 2020

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JPII Giving of Self

Today the Catholic Church celebrates the Memorial Feast of St. John Paul II. For John Paul II, the family plays a vital role in establishing a civilization of love and the renewal of Christian culture. Throughout his pontificate, John Paul II emphasized that a new springtime of evangelization would blossom through the family. Living abundantly through Christ’s grace, the family would change the culture and the world.

Man… cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself. (Gaudium et Spes, 24)

These words which were proclaimed by Pope Paul VI in the Vatican II encyclical Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on The Church in The Modern World)[1] became the foundation of the writings of Pope St. John Paul II on marriage and family.

In 1960, while Bishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla published Love and Responsibility. This foundational work dealt with the issue of how we can transform a sexual urge that is fundamentally selfish into something loving and unselfish.

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Take Up Your Cross

20 Sunday Sep 2020

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Christ on the Cross_Eugène Delacroix_c1835 Christ on the Cross, Eugène Delacroix, c. 1835

Last week, we commemorated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross by urging you to view your spouse as your cross, your path to sanctification. This week, we want to delve into the theology behind the exhortation.

Jesus said, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Lk 9:23).

Denying ourselves and taking up our cross entails sacrifice. It means giving up something for the sake of something better. For example, we might give up time that we would have spent taking a nap so that we can read a book to our three-year-old daughter. Or it might mean biting our tongue instead of lashing out at our spouse who has just said something hurtful.

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The Feast of the Holy Family

29 Sunday Dec 2019

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Murillo_Holy Family

The Holy Family, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, c. 1650

Each year, on the first Sunday after Christmas, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. We are invited to ponder and imitate the love of the Holy Family in our homes and families. Mary and Joseph are models of holy, faithful, obedient, and fruitful love in the rearing of the Christ Child.

St. John Paul II in his Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (On the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World), articulated God’s plan for the family as an “intimate community of life and love.”[1] The Holy Trinity is a divine community of life and love, the intimate community of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Family – Jesus, Mary and Joseph – is an earthly model of this intimate community of life and love, lived in respect, obedience and humility to God the Father and to each other.

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The Rosary: A Prayer for Peace in the Family and the World

18 Saturday May 2019

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Rosary and Bible_01

In the Catholic Church, May is a month devoted to honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary. There are many Marian devotions, the most popular and well-known is the recitation of the Most Holy Rosary, a prayer that St. John Paul II called “a compendium of the Gospel.”

At the beginning of the third millennium, “which witnesses every day in numerous parts of the world fresh scenes of bloodshed and violence,” St. John Paul II issued Rosarium Virginis Mariae, an Apostolic Letter on the Rosary.

In this letter, he urged the faithful to pray the Rosary for peace. He said the Rosary is a “means to immerse oneself in contemplation of the mystery of Christ who ‘is our peace’, since he made ‘the two of us one, and broke down the dividing wall of hostility’ (Eph 2:14).” The Pope stressed that “one cannot recite the Rosary without feeling caught up in a clear commitment to advancing peace.”[1]

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A Word of Thanks to Women

10 Friday May 2019

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Thank You Women JPII

On this Mother’s Day weekend, we want to salute all women using the beautiful words of St. John Paul II in his letter to women.

I would now like to speak directly to every woman, to reflect with her on the problems and the prospects of what it means to be a woman in our time. In particular I wish to consider the essential issue of the dignity and rights of women, as seen in the light of the word of God.

This “dialogue” really needs to begin with a word of thanks. As I wrote in my Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, the Church “desires to give thanks to the Most Holy Trinity for the ‘mystery of woman’ and for every woman-for all that constitutes the eternal measure of her feminine dignity, for the ‘great works of God’, which throughout human history have been accomplished in and through her” (No. 31).

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Love, Mercy, and Forgiveness

28 Sunday Apr 2019

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Divine Mercy Mary JPII (2)

Today, on this the last day of the Octave of Easter, the readings for the Mass focus on the mercy of God. Pope John Paul II at the canonization of St. Faustina in 2000, declared that the “Second Sunday of Easter, which from now on throughout the Church will be called ‘Divine Mercy Sunday.’”[1] The feast is based on the private revelations of St. Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun, who recommended a particular devotion to the Divine Mercy.

In his homily on the first celebration of Divine Mercy Sunday, St. John Paul II stressed that love is the foundation of mercy, both in God’s mercy to us, His creatures and in our relationships with others:

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