St. John Paul II And Pastoral Ministry As A Gift

For many, St. John Paul II is a model pastor for our age.  So many priests of our day have looked up to him in admiration.  Some have discovered their vocation, in part, thanks to his influence.  Then there’s the JPII generation or JPII Catholics.  And his canonization confirms this devotion to the man the crowds greeted with a “JPII, we love you!”  It’s natural to wonder, How did he become such a great and beloved pastor? Of course, many things came together to make it happen.  I just want to focus on one.  It’s something that gives us a window into the soul of Karol Wojtyla as he was a young man preparing for the priesthood, and it can help all of us develop a pastoral heart,  the heart of the Good Shepherd. John Paul II wrote a “Meditation on Givenness” in 1994, which was published a year after his death.  In it, he recounts his state of soul as he prepared for the priesthood.  He goes on at some length as he says, “I was aware that my vocation to the priesthood would put many people in my path, and that God would entrust each one of them in some special way to me: giving them to me and tasking me with them.  It was then that the great need of Marian entrustment was born within me—that need which is encapsulated in the call: Totus Tuus. “These words, first and foremost, are not so much a declaration, as a plea that I do not succumb to any desire, however subtly camouflaged.  They are a prayer that I remain pure, and thus transparent to God and to men.  I pray that my vision, hearing, and intellect remain pure.  Totus Tuus: they all should be at the service of revealing the beauty God has given to man…Totus Tuus.  All yours. Yes.  We must ourselves be a total gift, a disinterested, sincere gift in order to recognize, in every man, the gift that he is, to thank the Giver for the gift of the human person” (Communio 2014, p 882). Part of this is rather surprising.  We all know how important the Totus Tuus Marian consecration was to JP II.  But what’s striking here is what he identifies as the most pressing reason for him to make this total entrustment to our Lady.  He wants to be sure in ministry that he truly receives others as a gift.  He wants to receive those he ministers to adequately as the gift that they truly are, placed in his path by God. Again in his words, “I was aware that my vocation to the priesthood would put many people in my path, and that God would entrust each one of them in some special way to me: giving them to me and tasking me with them.  It was then that the great need of Marian entrustment was born within me—that need which is encapsulated in the call: Totus Tuus.” them.  It was then that the great need of Marian entrustment was born within me—that need which is encapsulated in the call: Totus Tuus.” So that’s some insight into the soul of Karol Wojtyla as he was preparing for the priesthood.  His heart was being formed after the Good Shepherd’s own heart: to receive the people he ministered to as a gift given to him by God.  And it showed in his demeanor as pastor, did it not?  In his deep joy and steady enthusiasm. The pastoral ministry was not so much an obligation to be carried out, though it is that too.  It’s not so much heroic virtue in the service of others, though that too is called for.  It’s not so much sacrificial altruism, though selfless sacrifice is part of it.  On the deepest level, for JPII, the pastoral ministry was the receiving of “the other” as a gift, receiving the people he ministered to as a gift he was then tasked with.  As he says, God “giving them to me and tasking me with them.” And it’s not so far-fetched.  I have a friend who just finished a degree and has begun teaching.  In a casual email, he wrote these words to me, “I am grateful for the students. They are truly a gift. And I thank God I can feel the gift they are.”  That’s nice, huh?  Now, shortly after this, the same friend was telling me how much work it is.  Teaching is hard work.  But that doesn’t negate his earlier words about the gift. So that’s the call of JPII’s pastoral heart: to see the students of the class you teach as a gift God has entrusted you with.  To see the people of the parish you’re assigned to as a gift.  To see the person knocking at your door as a gift God is giving you and tasking you with.  That’s what was in the heart of JPII, a model pastor. In the end, part of God’s overflowing goodness is the “dignity of secondary causality”: to give us a share in His work, through our ministering to others.  It’s part of God’s overflowing goodness.  And as our Gospel tells us, the Lord himself girds himself and ministers to us—hopefully on the Last Day but even now, every day, in the Eucharist. 

*St. John Paul II Warned Us!* by Dan Lynch

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.

The Pope and Pelosi

 

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