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.
