SAINT JOHN PAUL THE GREAT: HIS FIVE LOVES

BIOGRAPHY

Karol Wojtyla was no stranger to tragedy, but he refused to live in despair or fear. His mother, brother, and father consecutively died while he was growing up. Many of his friends and neighbors also died prematurely from Nazi/Soviet persecution.

It’s crazy to think about all the times that Karol escaped death!

“His thirteen-year-old friend Boguslaw Banas jokingly picked up a revolver and aimed it at him, saying, ‘Hands up, or I’ll shoot!’ Not knowing the firearm was loaded, he pulled the trigger. He recalled, ‘It was pointing straight at Karol, and it’s a marvel I didn’t kill him. The bullet missed him by a hair’s breadth and broke a window’” (156).

“To avoid being killed or deported to Germany to perform forced labor, he needed an official ‘work card’ to prove he was ‘socially useful,’ meaning that he was useful to the war effort. Therefore, he began working at a quarry with some of his university classmates. Later, in 1942, the card would save his life when the Gestapo arrested him with a number of other men at a cafe in downtown Krakow. Most of the others were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where twenty-five of them were executed by a firing squad at the ‘Wall of Death.’ Karol, however, was released because of his work card” (10-11).

Working at the quarry wasn’t a walk in the park. ‘His worksite was two miles from home, and he made the half-hour trek each morning in his wooden shoes. The temperature during the bitter Polish winters sometimes dropped to 30 degrees below zero Celsious, making it necessary for Karol to coat his face with petroleum jelly in order to avoid suffering frostbite while working outside for eight hours at a time. At the job, he descended into the 60- to 90-foot hole to begin his shift laying rails and hauling crushed limestone. In his poem ‘The Quarry,’ he recalled his calloused and split-open hands, ‘drooping with the hammer’s weight,’ ‘boots ankle deep in mid,’ and his tired eyes. Because of the constant use of explosives, the work was dangerous. In the same poem, he recounted how he witnessed the death of a coworker from a dynamite blast” (11).

At around three in the afternoon of February 29, 1944, Karol was walking along the road from the Solvay plant when a military truck struck him” (26).

“His life was again spared when the SS troops stormed through Krakow on ‘Black Sunday,’ arresting more than 8,000 males and sending many of them to prison camps. Hans Frank ordered the massive roundup in the wake of the uprising in Warsaw that resulted in the death of 200,000 Poles. As the Nazis stormed through his house, Karol hid in the basement praying. He heard the footsteps of the soldiers pass the door of the basement, but they never opened it” (27).

“On May 10, 1981, Pope John Paul II celebrated Good Shepherd Sunday while preaching at a parish in Rome… Two days after his homily, he examined the facilities of the Vatican medical center and met with its staff members. After the visit, a physician asked John Paul if he would bless their new ambulance. The Holy Father did so with holy water and said, ‘I also bless the first person who will use this ambulance.’ John Paul became the recipient of his own blessing, because he was the first patient to need it” (142). In the afternoon of May13th (the next day), JP2 was meeting with thousands of pilgrims outside when someone shot him: “His assailant, Mehmet Ali Agca, was a trained twenty-three-year-old Turkish gunman who had been incarcerated for murdering a journalist. Three days before the Pope’s visit to Turkey in 1979, Agca escaped from an Istanbul prison and sent a letter to the Turkish newspaper Milliyet, stating that if the papal visit is not canceled, ‘I will without doubt kill the Pope-Chief. This is the sole motive for my escape from prison.’ Although the Istanbul daily paper printed the letter on its front page, John Paul moved ahead with his plans and safely made his apostolic pilgrimage. However, Agca was determined to follow through on his threat” (143). The Pope arrived at the hospital in critical condition. “Thankfully, a surgical room had been prepared and most of the staff was already in place because an Italian soccer player had been scheduled for an operation — which could now afford to wait” (144). “The path of the bullet missed the aorta by millimeters, which would have meant certain death” (145). “Although John Paul forgave his assailant in the ambulance moments after being shot, he wanted to meet with Agca in prison to forgive him… Agca was astonished that the Pope survived, because he knew the shot was mortal” (154).

“During his visit to Fatima in 1982, on the eve of the one-year anniversary of his assassination attempt, another attempt was made on his life, which wasn’t made public until after the Holy Father passed away in 2005. As he was walking toward the altar during a candlelight procession, a priest stabbed him with a bayonet. All papel biographies prior to 2005 state that the man “attempted” to stab the Holy Father, but none realized that he succeeded. John Paul didn’t appear to be wounded, and even turned to bless the man who attacked him, as security forces pulled the assailant away. The Holy Father finished the prayer service without others noticing his wound. After returning to his room after the event, his aides noticed the blood on his cassock. His attacker, Father Juan Maria Fernandez Krohn of Spain, was an ultraconservative who opposed the reforms that were taking place within the Church after the Second Vatican Council and thought that John Paul was conspiring with communists to destroy the Church” (155).

“Despite this second attempt on the Pope’s life, he continued for more than two decades to walk among his people, refusing to live in fear” (156).

A week before World Youth Day in 1995, the same people who had masterminded 9/11 had a three-phase plan called “Bojinka” to kill the Pope with a bomb, then plant bombs on airplanes, then crash an airplane into the US CIA headquarters. Luckily, these men accidentally started a fire in their ‘live-in bomb factory’ apartment in Dona Josefa Apartments (which was less than a block from where the Pope was scheduled to stay). When the police went to investigate the fire, they found enough evidence to catch them and stop their evil plans (157-158).

......................................

Karol was gifted in academics, theater, and even skiing!

“John Paul’s intelligence was evident during his first homily as pope — in which he spoke eleven languages!” (71).

What influenced him to be a priest (especially at a time when the Church was oppressed)?

“The heroism of his fellow Poles during the war helped him to define his vocation. Because they laid down their young lives to sacrifice everything in an effort to liberate Poland, their sacrifice was a reflection of the essence of the priesthood” (23).

“By becoming a priest, Karol wasn’t hiding from the problems of the world, but choosing to enter fully into the great battle between good and evil” (24).

“Karol was accepted into the seminary, but was warned that no one could know about it. It was too dangerous. The Nazis didn’t want more priests, and they forbade the Church to accept new candidates. Many who were found studying for the priesthood were either executed or deported to concentration camps. Numerous priests were also removed, including nearly all the priests at Karol’s parish, most of whom later died in Dachau. One was beaten and then drowned to death in feces because he refused to grind a Rosary into the ground with his foot. In fact, by the end of the Nazi occupation, one third of the Polish clergy had been murdered. More than three thousand were imprisoned in concentration camps, and because nearly half of them were interned at Dachau, it became the largest monastery in the world. The ever-present threat of deportation and death was an inescapable reality for Karol. Because Krakow was less than thirty miles from Auschwitz, one of his friends noted, ‘The stench of Auschwitz was in his nostrils’ and would never be forgotten” (25).

When the Russians fought the Nazis and won, “The Poles had swapped one tyrannical government for another” (28).

Under this new communistic rule, the Church still faced oppression. JP2 was able to help combat communism by studying its philosophy.

A friend “visited Karol and was astonished to see so many communist books by Marx and Lenin in his library. He kidded, ‘What! Did you convert to a different ideology?’ ‘My dear Stanislaw,’ Wojtyla replied, ‘if you want to understand the enemy, you have to know what he has written’” (33).

“Wojtyla understood the danger of communist thought — as well as its weaknesses — because he knew the philosophy better than the communist leaders themselves” (33).

“He knew that communism wouldn’t last, and that the government feared the Church far more than anyone in the Church feared the communists. He knew the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church, while the communist empire had been built upon sand” (48).

Soviet leaders were against religion since it prohibits them from controlling citizens. Thus, the Soviets employed many tactics to try to deceptively undermine the Church.

“During the first five years of his pontificate, the majority of Polish diplomats in Rome were actually communist spies. Even some priests — including an organizer of Pope John Paul’s first trip to Poland — were working for the communists. Many of these clergymen had been threatened, extorted, or corrupted in order to serve as moles to infiltrate Catholic organizations and undermine the Church. The secret intelligence service even attempted to recruit John Paul’s closest aides and companions, but to no avail. To prevent him from coming to one city in Poland, the communists sent bags full of forged letters to the bishop of that diocese, pretending they were from Catholics, saying, ‘We don’t want the Pope.’ It didn’t work.

In The End and the Beginning, George Weigel describes these antics in detail, reporting that the communists even tried to ‘reveal’ that the Pope had a Polish lover! The secret agents forged the handwritten diary of a deceased woman, claiming she had had a secret relationship with Cardinal Wojtyla. The strategy was to plant the diary in another priest’s house, and then have the authorities ‘discover’ it during s police raid. Unfortunately for the Soviets, after successfully planting the diary, the leader of the operation went to the bar with his comrades to celebrate and then became intoxicated and crashed his car on the way home. He was so inebriated that he bragged to the police about being a spy and divulged all the details of the ruse! The diary was uncovered and the plot was foiled” (42-43).

The Soviets tailed Karol whenever he left his house to keep a sharp eye on if he was becoming a threat (and if he had any dirt that they could expose). Karol would have to secretly switch cars to have privacy.

“The communists weren’t content with external observations. Therefore, the entire archbishop’s residence, from the bedroom to the dining room, was bugged with listening devices. The communists were rather clumsy about it, pretending to show up as random technicians who needed to work on the phone lines or electrical system. It became somewhat of a joke, as Wojtyla made sure to speak loudly when he wanted them to know something, but reserved important conversations for the nearby woods or trips to the mountains” (43-44).

The Soviets tried to restrict the number of Church-goers by forbidding new Churches to be built.

“In an act of defiance, he proceeded to celebrate Masses on the vacant lots where he wanted the churches to be built. In his eyes, the Church was already present, and it would be a matter of time before the authorities would have to concede to his point. In the rain and snow, thousands attended these outdoor Masses. This sometimes caused the communist leaders to fold, because they preferred that the churches be built so that the crowds wouldn’t be so visible to others. The sight of a bishop and his soggy flock celebrating Mass under umbrellas in a vacant lot made the government look petulant. The most notable of these occurrences was in Nowa Huta, which was an industrial town built by the regime as the model city of socialist ideals. It was supposed to be a ‘workers’ paradise,’ with a solely materialistic vision of humanity and therefore no place for religion. Rows upon rows of apartment buildings were constructed like filing cabinets. If any of the workers wanted to attend Mass, they would have to walk more than two hours to find a church. When the Soviets refused Wojtyla’s request to build anything larger than a tiny chapel for the twenty thousand parishioners, he and the Poles planted a cross in the ground and began celebrating the liturgy in the open air. Midnight Mass on Christmas was celebrated in this way every year, under the stars, often in subzero temperatures. After years of gridlock, the communists caved in and granted permission… but then proceeded to delay building permits, interfere with the acquisition of construction materials, and impose every conceivable roadblock to slow the completion of the structure. By the time it was complete a decade later, Archbishop Wojtyla had become a cardinal, and proudly consecrated the structure. Fittingly, the church was constructed to resemble Noah’s Ark, as a bastion of hope in a flood of darkness” (46-47).

After Karol became Pope, the Soviets originally tried to keep him from returning to Poland.

Because so many Polish citizens demanded to see and hear him give talks as Pope, the Soviets had no choice but to grant him a short visit. But the Soviets deceptively tried to monitor media coverage.

“Although the regime typically forbade the Church to use the media, they permitted some of the papal events to be televised, in hopes that fewer people would show up. The plan was a catastrophe, as one third of the entire nation’s population showed up to see him in person, while the rest watched on television. The communist-controlled media did all they could to restrict the camera angles to minimize the visuals of the size of the crowds. They were ordered not to show young people, but rather to focus on the religious, handicapped, and elderly. They rarely showed the Pope himself, and used tight close-up shots of him in order to conceal the multitudes that had gathered. One person remarked, ‘someone said afterwards that the Polish communist television coverage of this was like coverage of a soccer game when you showed everything except the ball.’ No one was fooled. In fact, the distorted video coverage only revealed the state’s vulnerability and fear” (65).

Pope John Paul II traveled many places to spread the gospel as effectively as possible. It’s hard to serve people if you’re locked away in a palace and don’t get to know the people you’re serving.

“He realized that it was easier for one person to come to a parish than for an entire parish to come to one bishop. These encounters afforded him the opportunity to converse with everyday parishioners, as he did as a parish priest in Poland. In his mind, it wasn’t only important for the faithful to hear him, but for him to hear them as well” (68).

Once making the trip to people, JP2 knew how to reach the hearts of the people he interacted with.

“His lectures were not alluring merely because of his intellectual abilities, but because they had been marinated in contemplation” (36).

“Young people didn’t make the trips to see him because he was simply a good man, but because he was capable of revealing to them their own capacity for goodness” (94).

.............................

JP2 didn’t believe in disrespectfully villainizing others.

“John Paul was well known for defending people who embraced other creeds. One of his Jewish friends was troubled upon hearing that a Polish church displayed a painting of Jews as ravenous animals attacking Christ as he carried his cross. A monsignor replied to the man, ‘Oh, that! I know just the painting you mean. It was horrible and disgusting! But didn’t you know? Your friend Wojtyla had it removed when he was archbishop.’

‘Removed it to where?’ he inquired. ‘A museum?’

‘Oh no,’ the monsignor said. ‘Better than that. He had it put down in the basement at the monastery, where it would be eaten by rats’” (74).

.................................

Part of the reason why JP2 became so intelligent and wise was because he took advantage of every moment.

“He was such a prolific reader that his staff referred to his room as a library with a bed in it” (70).

“There is no question that John Paul had an extraordinary work ethic. He worked between sixteen and twenty hours per day, and found television and radio to be ‘a waste of time.’ …Cardinal Franciszek Macharski remarked that on vacation, ‘If he wasn’t praying or studying, he had the feeling he was wasting time.’ This was not a matter of being a workaholic, but rather, so that everything praises God’” (54).

“He didn’t make time to enter prayer. Rather, he made time for the sake of others to come out of it” (130).

..........................

Even though JP2 loved to multi-task in his studies to absorb as much information as possible, he was fully present in every conversation he had.

“Even when people spoke to him about nonreligious matters, he exercised tremendous patience. Generał Wojciech Jaruzelski remarked that he ‘is a man who knows how to listen calmly even when he disagrees completely with what he hears…’ His journalist friend, Andre Frossard, concurred: ‘He is such a good listener that you even begin to get the impression you are saying something truly interesting’” (75).

“John Paul viewed each encounter as a divine appointment” (76).

..............................

Instead of being selfish or taking pride in his gifts, JP2 generously served others.

Back when he worked at the Solvay plant (when Poland was under Nazi rule), he sacrificed free time for others. “Because weekends were not times of rest, he likely worked for hundreds of consecutive days without interruption. Sometimes he surrendered what little rest he had: When a coworker’s wife delivered a baby, he volunteered to take over the man’s night shift even though he had already worked all day. He continued doing this so that the husband could be home with the mother and child until the wife regained her strength” (16).

“After obtaining his second doctorate, he taught theology at the Jagiellonian University for two years before its closure, secretly taught in the banned seminary in Krakow, lectured at the Catholic University of Lublin, and became the chair of its ethics department — while still in his mid-thirties! He also donated his salary to pay for the tuition of poor students” (35).

He often gave away his pillows, blankets, and shoes to people who needed them more: “Despite Wojtyla’s rapid ascent within the hierarchy — and becoming the youngest member of the College of Cardinals at the age of forty-seven — his lifestyle remained unchanged. He had always been a simple man. Coworkers at the Solvay chemical plant recalled that he would sometimes arrive at work without his coat or sweater because he met someone while walking to work who needed it more than he did” (49-50).

He got full use out of everything he owned: “Even as bishop, he wore the same pair of shoes until the soles had fallen off. He refused to buy a new pair until a cobbler insisted they were beyond repair. As bishop, those who were in charge of his wardrobe noticed that his personal clothes were tattered, but he refused to replace them. …When holes appeared in his clothes, he requested that they be patched up instead of discarded” (50).

When Cardinal Wojtyla was visiting the United States in 1976, his Polish friend (John Szostak) asked him to stop by his apartment to bless it and his family. Didn’t have time to clean. “Although the Cardinal wasn’t shocked by the mess, he was astonished at the number of toys American children owned, and couldn’t believe two children could have so many things, saying, ‘For a whole nursery, yes…’ Back in Krakow and eventually in Rome, he owned almost nothing but books” (51).

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

LOVE 1: YOUNG PEOPLE

JP2 couldn’t resist cute babies. But there was another group of people who held a special place in his heart: Young adults.

He knew that young adults were at the stage of life where they would be taking on personal responsibility for their destiny, so he wanted to help as many of them as possible get on the right track.

“In 1980, on a summer’s night in France, 50,000 teenagers gathered to spend the evening with Pope John Paul II at Parc des Princes Stadium — with another 35,000 standing outside. Although they had come to hear the Pope, he had come for the opposite reason; he wanted to listen to them…

Because he wanted to hear about their thoughts and struggles, he arranged for them to have their own microphone during the event… All the teens’ questions had been posed to him in an orderly manner until one young man interrupted the program and jumped up to the microphone, identifying himself as an atheist. He proceeded to ask the Holy Father a barrage of questions: ‘I am an atheist. I refuse to accept any belief and any dogmatism. I also mean that I do not combat anyone’s faith; but I do not understand faith… Holy Father, in whom do you believe? Why do you believe? What is it that is worth the gift of our life and what manner of being is this God that you adore?’ Before John Paul could discuss the matter with him, he ducked back into the crowd, and the evening’s schedule continued. When the event concluded and the Pope returned to Rome, the thought of that young man weighed upon his heart and he regretted that the boy’s questions were left unanswered. Like the good shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine in search of the one who is lost, John Paul wrote to the French prelate who presided over the visit, Cardinal Francois Marty, asking for him to begin a search for the young man — among the 85,000 youth who came to the stadium! Once the prelate managed to locate the boy, John Paul asked the Cardinal to deliver a personal message to him, apologizing that he had left his questions unanswered. The message included an invitation to join the Holy Father in the Vatican for lunch. The Holy See flew the young man to Rome, where he was able to sit with the Pope, sharing his struggles with the idea of believing in God. The encounter at Parc des Princes Stadium was such a memorable experience for John Paul… It became a catalyst for the idea of World Youth Days, which began six years later in Rome” (83-85).

LOVE #2: HUMAN LOVE

JP2 demonstrated how to be a thermostat and not a thermometer.

Even though many people (especially young folks) judged him for his “strict” stances on intimacy issues, JP2 stood firm in the truth. He consistently warned people about the dangers of being enslaved by self-gratification.

“Many thought the Pope was being unrealistic by expecting teenagers to practice chastity. The Pope, meanwhile, thought it was unrealistic to lead teenagers to believe they could find fulfillment outside of the will of God” (98).

LOVE #3: BLESSED SACRAMENT

“To John Paul, it is not enough for Catholics to receive the Eucharist. One also must contemplate it” (136).

“For John Paul, the question is not whether Jesus is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament, but rather whether Catholics are truly present to God in their midst!” (140).

“For John Paul, the key to rekindling Eucharistic love is to look to Mary, who was the first ‘tabernacle’ in history. In his encyclical on the Eucharist, he explained, ‘And is not the enraptured gaze of Mary as she contemplated the face of the newborn Christ and cradled him in her arms that unparalleled model of love which should inspire us every time we receive Eucharistic communion?” (141).

LOVE #4: THE VIRGIN MARY

“Within the pages of True Devotion to Mary, John Paul discovered the practice of Marian consecration. One way to understand this devotion is to imagine that praying a Hail Mary is comparable to giving the Virgin Mary a rose. Praying an entire Rosary with love and devotion is like giving her an entire bouquet” (166-167).

LOVE #5: THE CROSS

“Jesus did not die so that humans would never have to suffer, but so that they would know how to suffer. The Passion of Christ removed the threat of eternal suffering while revealing the power of temporal suffering… It does not matter if the suffering is a bloody martyrdom, a toothache, unemployment, a rebellious child, or an alcoholic spouse… The person who remains ignorant of its potential spiritual power could be compared to an illiterate person holding a winning lottery ticket. So much value, all gone to waste. What one person considers to be crushed grapes, another understands as a vintage glass of Dom Perignon” (175).

“The goal is not merely for suffering to be accepted, but for it to become victorious!” (176).

JP2 often visited the poor and sick to bless them and offer them consolation: “The poor heard him say, ‘I did not come here out of curiosity, but because I love you’… He habitually offered whatever he had, whether it was his time and attention or his financial help” (183).

“In True Devotion to Mary, Saint Louis de Montfort wrote, ‘the most faithful servants of the Blessed Virgin, being her greatest favorites, receive from her the best graces and favors from heaven, which are crosses.’ If suffering is a sign of predilection, then John Paul must have been one of our Lady’s favorites! During his pontificate, he dislocated his shoulder, broke his femur, underwent surgeries for his hip and ankle and to remove his appendix, gallstones, and an orange-sized tumor from his colon. He suffered osteoarthritis in his right knee, an intestinal disorder, the loss of hearing in both ears, Parkinson’s disease, and underwent routine colonoscopies and was given a feeding tube — and this doesn’t even include the injuries he sustained when he was struck by a Nazi truck in Poland, the mononucleosis he suffered as a bishop, or the two bullets he took during his assassination attempt! Because he spent no fewer than 164 days in the Gemelli Hospital, he started calling it Vatican III (after Saint Peter’s and Castel Gandolfo)” (191-192).

“Despite the countless physical trials, the greatest crosses carried by the Pope were not visible to others. Like any loving father, John Paul mourned deeply for the obvious division and brokenness within the family of God” (195). This included wars, abortion, scandals, etc.

Despite his suffering, JP2 tried to maintain a sense of humor.

When he dislocated his right shoulder and had to have his right arm in a sling, he “joked that he could bless just as effectively with his left hand” (196).

“He didn’t want to appear in public with his cane. But with time and abandonment came acceptance, and before long he was swinging it around at World Youth Day and pretending it was a hockey stick in St. Louis… At times, he prodded his friends or visitors with the stick, or pretended it was a rifle or a pool cue… Toward the end, he became unable to walk, and handled this transition gracefully as well. From his wheelchair, he joked, ‘Everyone else has a mobile phone. I have a mobile chair!’” (197).

“Even in his last days, he retained his lighthearted spirit. Two and a half months before his death, a Spanish bishop visited him and said that this would probably be the last time they would see each other. John Paul wisecracked, ‘Why, what’s the matter? Are you sick?’” (197).