On this celebration of the Pope’s silver jubilee anniversary, along with many other, I want to give my thanks and appreciation to the great Pope. I believe the papal name of John Paul is very accurate indeed. That he has the great missionary zeal of St. Paul along with the deep contemplative and theological understanding of St. John. Like St. Paul, attempts were made to murder him. Like St. John he will live out his life to the end giving himself to the Church. St. John benefited from the presence of Mary, who was given as his mother; The Pope whose motto is Totus Tuus, has also availed himself of Christ’s mother to the benefit of himself and us.
This man is a living exegesis of this passage from Colossians 1:24
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the divine office which was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now made manifest to his saints.
At the beginning of this year I predicted that the Pope yet again would not be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and so was not surprised . It would be nice to see the world acknowledge the truth of the achievements of Pope John Paul II. But since the Nobel Prize committee does not know what peace truly is, it is not surprising that they would not recognize someone that promotes it. We now take the collapse of the Soviet Union as just past history. The cold war long forgotten. The steel curtain and the Berlin wall gone. Yet too few have honored this man in his part in bringing this about, but his reward will not come from us and it will not perish.
The spiritual gifts he has brought to the Church are equally outstanding. From the Catholic Catechism of the Catholic Church to his untiring efforts to heal the wounds of the Orthodox schism he has totally given of himself. From his embrace of the man who tried to assassinate him to the joyful embrace of children, he has truly been a representative of Christ on Earth.
2 comments
Amen.
Excellent analysis!