The thorough work of analysis performed on his body of written work has made it possible to identify as underlying inspirations and motifs a number of essential traits of John Paul II’s spiritual—and human—profile. Here is an enlightening summary:
A constant awareness of the presence of God and a wholehearted love of God.
A fascination with the mystery of the human person (particularly the paths of its ripening and maturing through love) and an intransigent solicitude for its salvation.
A strong sense of justice and a sensitivity toward the needs of those to whom a wrong has been done from a social point of view and of those who are in danger (the unborn, the poor, the young, the sick).
Openness to dialogue with everyone, a willingness to take into consideration all sincere criticism and every precious contribution from others, always joined with the firm determination to announce and defend the truth: the whole truth, the unabridged truth, even when it is inconvenient and provokes opposition.
Respect for the diversity of vocations within the Church and the resulting necessity for collaboration, both with clergy and laity.
An authentic piety, firmly rooted in the Holy Scriptures and explored theologically in depth; a Trinitarian devotion, which finds its harmonious completion in Marian devotion and in the veneration of the saints.
A sincere love of the Church, confirmed both by his scrupulousness in understanding and studying its teachings (in particular, the teachings of the Second Vatican Council) and by diligent service to the local church of Cracow, with a simultaneous openness to assuming tasks and duties in the Universal Church.
An incomparable industriousness.
An intellectual honesty that was expressed in a sober and rigorous approach to all questions and an effort to present his own position clearly.
An elevated cultural level, which found expression in his style of speaking and writing.
It is in any case worth remembering that John Paul II always maintained a strong sense of humility with regard to his own publications. He obviously received countless declarations of admiration, compliments, and signs of appreciation. But he accepted them purely in the context of his mission as pontiff and not personally. One of the witnesses for the process recalled that, after the publication of the book The Poetry of Pope John Paul II, he heard him say wryly, “If I weren’t pope, no one would be interested in these books!”
ILLUMINATING THE PATH WITH THE FIRE OF PRAYER
The life of Karol Wojtyła was an impressive synthesis of prayer and action. It was from prayer that he derived the fertility and effectiveness of his actions. Those who were his confidants noted that John Paul II was well aware that “the pope’s first responsibility toward the Church and toward the world is to pray” and that “from prayer he derived the capacity of speaking the truth without fear, since one who is alone before God has no fear of men.”
In all the difficult situations of his ministry, or in particularly critical historical moments, John Paul II relied upon prayer to clarify the right path to take. When his colleagues, as they themselves have admitted, were summoned to offer possible solutions to a problem and confessed that they had no ideas, John Paul II, serene and confident, frequently comforted them with the exhortation: “We’ll find something when we’ve prayed some more.” It was not uncommon for him to gather the people who lived in the papal apartments and go with them to the chapel to pray. Once, when the circumstances were particularly dire, the pope began reciting aloud the Miserere.
When martial law was declared in Poland during the night of December 12–13, 1981, Pope Wojtyła summoned a number of Polish monsignors so they might share what they knew. One of them recalled, “We were all emotionally involved, news reports weren’t getting through, we were wondering what might happen next. At the end of the dinner, as we were leaving the dining room, the Holy Father, with the greatest of tranquility, told us, ‘We must pray greatly and wait for a sign from God.’ Then, as was his custom, he withdrew into the chapel to pray.”
He did the same thing before appointing a bishop to a diocese that was experiencing difficulties or that was particularly challenging. Just a few months before his death, he had to choose the archbishop of a major city: it was a difficult decision, because there were conflicting views in the Congregation for Bishops. The pope listened to all the information and opinions that were presented to him, and then concluded, “I will celebrate Mass for this intention, and then I will decide between the two candidates in question.”
One evening, during the period of the preparation of the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, which was published on March 25, 1995, a very lively discussion broke out at the dinner table, with various diners eagerly defending their points of view. The pontiff listened for almost two hours with great patience and comprehension and, at the end, said, “Very well, now you all go home and I will pray. Tomorrow I will give you my answer.”
Not reserved for exceptional cases, prayer constituted the essential fountainhead from which John Paul II drew his spiritual energy in everyday life. His priestly ministry was nourished by a continuous and extraordinary contact with God, of which his preparation for the celebration of the Mass was always a part.
He began preparing for the morning services the night before, reciting in Latin the preparatory prayers. When he woke during the night, he would remember the intention for which he was to celebrate the Mass (every Wednesday, for instance, it was in support of the diocese of Rome). “When the Holy Father came to the sacristy,” one of the masters of ceremonies recalled, “he would kneel or else, in the final years of his pontificate, he would sit in his chair and pray silently. The prayer would last for ten, fifteen, or even twenty minutes, and it seemed as if the pope were not present among us. At a certain point he would raise his right hand, and we would approach him to begin dressing him in absolute silence. I am convinced that John Paul II, before addressing people, addressed—or perhaps I should say, spoke with—God. Before representing him, he would ask permission to be God’s living image in the presence of men. The same thing happened after he celebrated Mass: as soon as he took off his sacred vestments, he knelt in the sacristy and prayed.” One witness recalled, “He was kneeling in his private chapel in an attitude of prayer. From time to time he read something from a sheet of paper that he had before him and then he rested his forehead on his hands: it was evident that he was praying with great intensity for the intention written on that sheet of paper. Then he read something else on the same sheet of paper and resumed the attitude of prayer, and so on until he had finished, whereupon he stood up to put on his vestments.”
“I am not moved during the Mass,” John Paul II confided to a friend one day, “I make it happen. And I am deeply moved, both before and after.” Many priests and bishops who have had the opportunity to concelebrate Mass with him have realized how true that is. “His Mass was a time of true encounter with Christ immolated and resurrected on the altar. He always celebrated with great devotion and attention. After the liturgy of the Word, he engaged in a lengthy meditation, during which there was absolute silence. The Holy Father looked at no one, he was profoundly concentrating, and the same thing happened after the Communion at the end of the Eucharistic celebration. The adoration, which lasted for a long time, never seemed particularly wearisome to anyone: one had the sensation of an otherwordly experience.” And another witness summarized, “I came to the conclusion that he had an extraordinary perception of the Eucharistic mystery that he was celebrating. Above all, I was struck by the way he recited the Eucharistic prayer after the consecration: it was as if he were carrying on his shoulders the entire Church and the world.” Indeed, a Muslim ambassador to the Holy See, during his farewell visit, told a friend in the Vatican, “Your Excellency, what struck me most during the three years that I have spent with you is not so much your geopolitical vision of the world, but rather having seen the pope pray in public ceremonies.”
A UTILITY CLOSET AS A CHAPEL
“I am convinced that John Paul II was favored by a special grace of prayer, which allowed him to penetrate the mysteries of faith in a way that was not accessible to ordinary people,” a person close to him declared. “So many times I saw his face, after contemplation and adoration, visibly changed and happy. During prayer he seemed to be in continual conversation with God, like Moses who spoke with God face to face. During prayer, Wojtyła did not notice anything that happened around him. He seemed to lose all sense of time, to the extent that his secretary at a certain point would have to shake him out of this extraordinary state of concentration because other commitments awaited him.”
In contact with God, John Paul II immersed himself in a privileged dimension, practically casting off the shackles of the perception of reality. It was a mystical estrangement described by, among others, a childhood friend. One day in the early 1970s he observed that Wojtyła, young as he was, already possessed an impressive set of credentials. “Then, in all seriousness, I said that the Lord Jesus at the age of thirty-three had already ‘solved’ the problem of the redemption of the world. He replied, ‘That was him!’ and then immersed himself in prayer. The prayer lasted for a long time, it grew cold, and I said that it was time to go, but I had to wake him from that state. I have witnessed other similar situations. His was a direct conversation with God, a state of contemplation.”
Even in the period when Father Karol was serving in the parish of Niegowić, the villagers noted that their young priest spent many nights before the Most Holy Sacrament, and they soon began to spy affectionately on his vigils. Often they saw him lying on the bare floor, no matter how cold it was. A Polish friend who worked in Rome was obliged to install a wooden platform over the chilly marble floor in the private chapel of the pope’s Vatican apartment because Wojtyła spent hours at a time lying on the floor, his arms spread wide in the sign of the cross. Cardinal Pedro Rubiano, archbishop of Cali, was also a witness to this unusual behavior. One evening, during a pastoral visitation of Colombia, the pope said that he was tired and wished to withdraw and rest. A short while later, the cardinal went into the chapel to make sure everything was in order for the following day and found John Paul II lying there on the floor in prayer.
Certainly, logistical obstacles were never enough to discourage the pontiff when he felt within him the urgency of prayer, as is shown by several episodes of a gentle extravagance.
In May 1992, prior to the celebration of Mass at the Pordenone Fair, the pope went to the bathroom, but time passed without him returning to the space prepared as a sacristy. Concerned, one of his colleagues went to make sure everything was all right, and through the half-open door he saw John Paul II in the washroom, kneeling in prayer before a sink. Another witness, while he was at Castel Gandolfo, walked by accident into a utility closet and found the pope there rapt in prayer.
Anyone who accompanied him on a walk or a hike knew perfectly well that, once they reached their destination, they could chat for a few minutes and then he needed to be alone. Wojtyła would find a private place and meditate, contemplating nature and the greatness of God. When he went privately to the shrine of Our Lady of Mentorella, he had his driver drop him off five miles away, and then he walked up to the sanctuary, in silence, praying and meditating.
The adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament constituted for him a moment of total escape from everyday cares and an abandonment into the hands of the Lord. In Cracow, he often went to the Church of St. Joseph on Poselska Street, where a perpetual adoration is held. In the Vatican, whenever he walked by the chapel in his private apartment, he made a point of entering and pausing before the Eucharist.
During a pastoral journey, a nuncio had placed a painting by Botticelli in the chapel. At dinner, he asked the pope whether it pleased him. John Paul II replied that he had entered the chapel for the tabernacle and that no work of art, in any museum on earth, could mean more to him than that. Knowing the pope as he did, Monsignor Dino Monduzzi, when he was prefect of the papal household, always warned the organizers of papal visits not to arrange for the Holy Father to pass within view of a place where the Eucharist was kept because he was certain to enter—and spend a fair amount of time—throwing the entire day’s program thoroughly out of joint.
One particularly moving event was the last celebration of Corpus Domini presided over by the Holy Father, in 2004. The pope was no longer able to walk, and his chair was fastened to the floor of the automobile that was to be used in the procession. In front of him, on the prie-dieu, the monstrance with the Most Blessed Sacrament was on display. Shortly after the departure, John Paul II spoke to a cerimoniere, or master of liturgical ceremonies, asking for help in kneeling. Very diplomatically, the cerimoniere explained that it would be too risky because the rough road made the vehicle fairly unstable. A few minutes later, the pope repeated, “I want to kneel,” to which the cerimoniere suggested waiting for a place where the road surface was in better shape. A few moments later, however, Wojtyła exclaimed with great determination, practically shouting, “But Jesus is here. Please.” It was not possible to deny him, and the two cerimonieri practically held him up mainly by force on the prie-dieu. Unable to support himself with his legs, the pope attempted to hold himself up by gripping the edge of the prie-dieu, but he had to be quickly settled back into his chair. It was a great display of faith: even if the body no longer responded, the will remained extremely strong.
WITH A HEART DEVOTED TO HIS HOMELAND
Prayer, an intimate dialogue with God, was for Karol Wojtyła an essential form of nourishment also in the way the rituals punctuated the days. The prayers began at five in the morning, when he went to his chapel and prayed until six. Then he returned to his bedroom for meditation before reentering the chapel at seven for Mass. The morning Act of Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus constituted a vital moment of prayer for him: on a slip of now yellowed paper, which he had folded into the shape of a scapular and carried with him everywhere, John Paul II had written in his own hand in minute letters a prayer that ended with the words “Totus tuus, Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.” At noon came the Angelus, which on Sundays he recited together with the faithful from the window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, and the day ended with Compline. “He did not recite them mechanically,” one nun in his entourage commented, “it was evident that he was seeking in those prayers the model and the strength to perform his duties.”
The young Karol had been initiated into a love of prayer by his father, a solid, emotional point of reference for him and a guide to wisdom and spirituality during the first twenty years of his life. His father inspired in him his profound devotion to the Holy Spirit, a devotion that was reiterated daily through a prayer—only recently discovered—to which he remained faithful until the last days of his life: “Holy Spirit, I ask of you the gift of Wisdom for a better understanding of you and of your divine perfection. I ask of you the gift of Intellect for a better understanding of the essence of the mysteries of the holy faith. Give me the gift of Knowledge so that I may know how to orient my life in accordance with the principles of faith. Give me the gift of Counsel so that in all things I can seek counsel from you and can always find it in you. Give me the gift of Strength so that no fear or earthly motivations can take me away from you. Give me the gift of Piety so that I can always serve your majesty with filial love. Give me the gift of the Fear of God so that no fear or earthly motivations can take me away from you.”
His father’s influence was soon joined by that of the tailor Jan Tyranowski, who brought to his faith a vivid mystical impulse and familiarized him with the writings of St. John of the Cross and St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort. Karol Wojtyła always felt a deep and immense sense of gratitude toward him, and once he became pope, that gratitude led him to ask a friend who was a Polish priest to begin laying the groundwork for a cause for canonization, which actually began in 1997.
His devotion had roots that were deeply sunk in Polish popular religiosity, and he remained fait
hful to those roots even as his own theological training and preparation deepened.
Over the course of the year, following the liturgical cycle, John Paul II was fond of returning to the traditions of his youth, such as the Christmas Kolędy hymns, or on Lenten Sundays the services dedicated to the Passion of Jesus with the cycle of eighteenth-century hymns called the Gorzkie żale (Bitter Lamentations). In the month of May, there was a Marian religious service every evening with the performance of the Lauretan litanies, while in the month of June the litanies of the Sacred Heart were sung. When the daily Mass was celebrated in Polish, it was always accompanied by chants or songs tied to the feast day or the period of the liturgical year. Those who took part pointed out that “the Holy Father knew by heart and would sing many many verses, while the others had to use their hymnals to keep up with him.”
A special wave of emotion swept over him whenever he recited the Litany of the Polish Nation and the Prayer for the Fatherland by Father Piotr Skarga, with the invocations “Queen of Poland, Virgin of Jasna Góra, Virgin of Kalwaria, Virgin of Myślenice, Virgin of Rychwald, Virgin of Ostra Brama, Mother of all the Polish sanctuaries, pray for us. Mother, give strength to all those who defend life, who are at the service of life in spite of challenges, who pray for life to be respected, Mother of Sublime Love, Mother of Life and Our Hope, intercede for us.”
TAKING INSPIRATION FROM THE SAINTS FOR THE PRACTICE OF VIRTUES
Prayer and the daily practices of devotion were not neglected by the Holy Father even during his apostolic voyages. After long days of celebrations and meetings, when he returned to the nunciature, he asked his secretary for the breviary—if he had not been able to recite it already during a period of travel—and immediately went to the chapel. And if a major liturgical festivity prevented him from honoring the saint of the day, he never failed to do so at his first opportunity. He fostered a particular veneration for the saints. Every morning, when he emerged from the refectory after breakfast, he would walk through the sacristy and kiss all the relics kept on a table next to the altar. Alongside a fragment of the True Cross of Jesus, there were displayed bodily remains of St. Peter, St. Stanisław, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Jadwiga, Queen of Poland, and many other blessed and saints. Toward the end of his life, when he was confined to a wheelchair, he continued to have his assistants take him to venerate these relics.
Why He Is a Saint Page 13