October 22 is the Memorial of St. John Paul II. Our Apostolates promote devotion to him since he inaugurated the New Evangelization and named Our Lady of Guadalupe as the Star of Evangelization.
St. John Paul II credited Our Lady of Guadalupe as his guide. He said, “Ever since I went on pilgrimage for the first time to the splendid Shrine of Guadalupe on January 29, 1979, she has guided my steps in these almost twenty five years of service as Bishop of Rome and universal pastor of the Church. I wish to invoke her, the sure way to encounter Christ, and who was the first evangelizer of America, as the ‘Star of Evangelization,’ entrusting to her the ecclesial work of all her sons and daughters of America.”
Let us not forget St. John Paul II’s warning to America. I led a procession carrying the Missionary Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe many miles to his World Youth Day Mass at Cherry Creek State Park in Denver, Colorado in 1993.
He preached during his homily,
Death battles against Life: a "culture of death" seeks to impose itself on our desire to live, and live to the full. . . . In our own century, as at no other time in history, the "culture of death" has assumed a social and institutional form of legality to justify the most horrible crimes against humanity: genocide, "final solutions", "ethnic cleansings", and the massive "taking of lives of human beings even before they are born, or before they reach the natural point of death." . . .
Woe to you if you do not succeed in defending life. . . . in order to create a civilization of true justice and love.
Biblical “woes” were warnings of terrible afflictions and chastisements. Jesus Himself warned of a “woe” of the destruction of Jerusalem. He said, “Woe to pregnant women and nursing mothers in those days, for a terrible calamity will come upon the earth and a wrathful judgment upon this people. They will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken as captives to all the Gentiles; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” (Luke 21:23-24).
He wept over Jerusalem and gave this prophetic warning because the people failed to repent and to recognize the day of His visitation.
His prophetic warning was fulfilled in the year 70 A.D. when the Roman General Titus destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple and killed tens of thousands of people, resulting in the dispersion of the Jews throughout the world.
We need to heed the warning of St. John Paul II to “succeed in defending life” lest we suffer from a “Great Storm” from the dark cloud that overshadows us filled with the potential chastisements of untold terror, violence and war, the use of nuclear weapons by rogue regimes, persecution of Christians, economic devastation and the pandemic of COVID-19.
We need to hope and pray for the New Era of Peace prophesied by Our Lady of Fatima and St. John Paul II.
Our Lady told Father Stefano Gobbi of the Marian Movement of Priests in 1995, “It is precisely through the sacrifice of [Pope John Paul II] this, the first of my beloved sons, that divine justice will be espoused to a great mercy. After the time of the trial, which will be one of purification for all the earth, there will spring up upon the world the New Era foretold and announced by him; and thus, in these final times, he invites you all to cross the bright thresholds of hope.”
Using almost the same exact language several years later, Pope John Paul II wrote, “Now is the time of the New Evangelization to lead the People of God in America to cross the threshold of the third millennium with renewed hope.” (Apostolic Exhortation, The Church in America).
Later he announced the New Era that Our Lady prophesied would be announced by him. He wrote,
At the dawn of the new Millennium, we wish to propose once more the message of hope which comes from the stable of Bethlehem: God loves all men and women on earth and gives them the hope of a new era, an era of peace.
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