The Spirituality of Saint John Paul II (Rebroadcast)

In our meditation of the week: Fr. Peter Armenio reflects on the spirituality of St. John Paul II, whose feast day is celebrated October 22nd. St. John Paul II rooted his papacy in the Eucharist and devotion to Mary, inspiring holiness in people of all backgrounds from across the globe. There are many aspects we can learn from the papacy of St. John Paul II, but most importantly he taught us: how to pray, how to love, and how to serve.

As Pope Benedict XVI wrote: “Everyone knows John Paul II: his face, his characteristic way of moving and speaking; his immersion in prayer and his spontaneous cheerfulness. Many of his words have become indelibly engraved in our memories, starting with the passionate cry with which he introduced himself to the people at the beginning of his pontificate: ‘Open wide the doors to Christ, and be not afraid of him!’ An entire pontificate is condensed in words like these. It is as though he would like to open the doors for Christ everywhere and wishes to open up to people the gate that leads to true life, to true love.”

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins, and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. 

As we focus our attention on Jesus Christ present with us, we ask him humbly to help us see him and contemplate him in his saints. What is a saint, but an individual who can sincerely repeat with St Paul—not in this life, it may be a bit presumptuous, but the Church can recognize this, that's what a canonization is—that that person can say “It is no longer I that live, but Christ, who lives in me.” That is what a saint is. It's an individual who has allowed the Holy Spirit to work in such a way that there has been a radical transformation. That man or woman, preserving his or her own personality and character, traits, and even defects, has become a vessel of clay with the fullness of Christ, has made Christ present through their many conversions and transformations. And the saint on occasion of John Paul, or St. John Paul's commemoration or feast day, October 22nd, we want to contemplate Christ in him. I personally feel that it's rather easy to see Christ in such an extraordinary individual. I recall, though it's almost a half a century ago, being a young man preparing for the priesthood in my early 20s, when he was elected. That was preceded by, obviously, the death of Paul VI, now Blessed Paul VI, and preceded by a pope that lasted 33 days, John Paul I. And I recall being very moved and impressed by John Paul I. In fact, John Paul I prayed at the mortal remains of St. Josemaria, who was not officially St. Josemaria at the time. He went to his burial place called the crypt underneath the Prelatic Church of Opus Dei called Our Lady of the Peace, or Our Lady of Peace. When he passed away, we were crestfallen. He was a great storyteller and cheerful and very close to God. 

On October 16, 1978, I remember this vividly as well because I was watching the news to see if a pope was elected. If I'm not mistaken, the smoke that was billowing out of the chimney in the Sistine Chapel was not exactly white. It was gray. But the newscaster said, “We have a pope.” And I rushed over to St. Peter's Square, and the square was packed. It was about 68 degrees, dark, there was jubilant agitation, because at first the rumors circulating through that square was that he was Archbishop or Cardinal from an obscure diocese of Italy. And then the other rumor was that he was a foreigner. That was accurate. And at the end of this long waiting period in St. Peter's Square, we hear that he came from a communist country. He was announced as Karol Wojtyla from Krakow. I shamefully have to admit, I never heard of Krakow. And he really came across with that name Wojtyla as obscure. He obviously, as we all know, was from Poland. But the more famous cardinal did not get elected, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, who was a victim of terrible persecution by first the Nazis and then Stalinist communism, and struggled tremendously over the years, marking the Cold War to secure some freedom for the Church in Poland. So, we were kind of surprised that the 58 year old cardinal got elected. 

And for our personal prayer, we could use this very simple anecdote after his election, obviously, reporters made a beeline to the senior cardinal, Cardinal Wyszyński, asking him about this new and relatively young pope, and Wyszyński said that he could not give a justified summary in a couple of minutes, but he could take a shortcut. This is not verbatim, but more or less, this encapsulates what he reported about the new pope. He said, “If I could say anything about him, of all the possible things to include,” he emphasized, “he's a man who spends a lot of time in front of the Blessed Sacrament. He's a man who kneels before the Blessed Sacrament. His talks, his reflections, the direction he gives all come out of this kneeling in front of the Blessed Sacrament. That's where he would write his pastoral letters. That's where he'd write his homilies.” Shortly after this election, a fellow American who was studying at the North American College who had special ins to serve Mass, do readings at Papal Masses, and he informed me that one of the evenings, there was a lot of consternation in the papal apartment because they could not find the Holy Father in his room. Obviously, he wasn't running around Rome, because those apartments are heavily guarded by Swiss Guard, and he could only go out with an entourage. Anyway, they finally looked in the chapel, and he was prostrate, face down in front of the tabernacle. And in that particular evening, he spent the whole night in prayer. The situation, the Church, was the theme of that prayer. Some priests, he had papers of priests who wanted to be laicized, and he had those papers in his hand. So, we tell our Lord, well, Lord, as we contemplate you and your saints, help us be men and women who sit or kneel before the tabernacle. And sometimes our knee jerk reaction is “I have a lot on my plate. I'm very busy.” But he revealed to us, and we have this through personal experience as well, when we are generous with the Lord, especially generous with prayer, somehow the Lord multiplies our time. That was certainly the case with St. John Paul. What he did was superhuman. And he attests to the fact that nothing's impossible with God. He made 120 pastoral trips, many during his debilitating years of suffering with Parkinson’s. He oversaw the revision of the Code of Canon Law. He approved and oversaw a new catechism, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He beatified scores of blesseds and canonized scores of saints. When bishops from different countries, diocese, parts of their respective country, he would see them in a meeting, he would get together with them, one on one. He would have pranzo, which is another word for midday dinner, with groups of bishops. He was constantly giving of himself, and at that time before he declared five more mysteries of the Rosary, the Luminous Mysteries, he would manage to pray three parts of the Rosary. I recall going to the top of the dome of St. Peter's Square. I was younger, so I was able to do those kinds of things. And I looked down and, in a court, in one of those papal courtyards, I saw a man in white pacing, and I made out that he was saying the Rosary. You could see, you could make out a rosary, not very clear, but you could see it. You could see that he was obviously doing that. And in audiences or big functions, if he wasn't speaking, I remember, in particular seeing on TV, attending a concert and he had a rosary in his hand. I would say that if there's anything we want to imitate in this very extraordinary saint and providential individual who has shaped the Church or has contributed to shaping the Church of the 20th, 21st century, it's St. John Paul. 

And one of his many claims to fame is his protracted prayer. Definitely was a mystic. I'm not saying that we should all prostrate ourselves before our local Blessed Sacrament in an Adoration Chapel and spend all night in prayer unless we are moved to do that and have the grace. We have to work the next day and we have to take care of our health. But he had that mystical grace to do that. And if someone didn't have the heads up, he or she could have been a little startled at his daily Mass. People would come to his daily Mass, and he would be praying for a while before Mass, probably maybe an hour, half hour, he'd be so deeply immersed that he would groan, and those were not groanings of pain, but his groaning of deep, mystical conversation with our Lord and when he'd say Mass, he was in another world, completely immersed in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and completely immersed in prayer after Mass. He had such love for the Blessed Sacrament that there's a humorous anecdote that he was always behind schedule. One of the reasons was that his organizers didn't foresee that he would pop into churches and chapels and spend extra time there and throw off the schedule more than it was thrown off to begin with. And so, using those experiences that he would spend time in prayer that was unanticipated, as it was heading towards an auditorium in a seminary, all the rooms along the hallway on the right and the left were locked, because one of those rooms was a chapel, a Blessed Sacrament chapel. And what he doesn't know won't hurt, and they would have some kind of chance of doing things according to schedule. And I don't know, just for simplicity's sake, he passed by maybe 10-15 rooms and out of the blue, he tried to enter one of the rooms to his right, and the door was locked. And he asked, “Can you please open the door?” And they threw up their hands in frustration, opened the door, and there he, there was the Blessed Sacrament. And he said with humor, “So you tried to fool me, but you didn't.” And he enters in, and again, the schedule is thrown off. 

That could be one of my takeaways. The New Evangelization, as he's shown us, he coined that phrase, must be rooted in the Blessed Sacrament and the mass. And we know this factually, and we ask the Lord, Lord, help me desire this. Increase my faith in the Blessed Sacrament. Increase my trust in the Blessed Sacrament and my love for the Blessed Sacrament. Help me see the direct correlation between my union with you in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, contemplating Jesus, your life, your words, and being a light of the world with a small L. The light of the world with a capital L is Jesus himself. But he does call his disciples light of the world. And to be a light, we want to struggle against lukewarmness. On some level, amid our weaknesses and sins, we want people to see that it’s Christ that is growing, it's not attributed to us. We have chosen freely to come before the Blessed Sacrament and let those transforming rays of the Son of God, sacramentally present, change us, transform us. 

The Gospel of St. John in the Last Supper event includes our Lord's New Commandment, which condenses every teaching in a phrase, “Love, as I have loved.” Love as Jesus has loved, love with his heart. And the poor Holy Father was trying to figure out why so many people were weeping in his presence. And he turned to his secretary, asking, “Why are so many young people crying?” Secretary said, “Because of you.” “Why?” And the Secretary said, “Well, they were experiencing that you are the Vicar of Christ.” And I would obviously agree with that, but I would have to say much more than that. It includes that, obviously, that they saw Christ in his eyes. I remember World Youth Day. I was a World Youth Day Director in Denver, Colorado, and a young lady who represented one of the dioceses of this country was sitting next to a friend of mine who representing another diocese in this country, because the pope was going to say Mass for youth representatives of every diocese of the country in the Cathedral of Denver. And in his inimitable way, and this was going to take a long time, he was going to exchange a few words with each delegate. And this particular person was disgruntled over his positions, his moral position regarding marriage, life, those kinds of current issues that are still very much on the forefront. And her beef was that he's imposing an arcane morality or spirituality on the American public, and he comes from a whole different culture, a whole different experience, and he's definitely two generations older than all these young people. And she was going to challenge him with her disagreement with his teaching. And he was making his rounds, stopping to talk to each delegate. It's a lot of delegates, and finally, it was her turn. And she experienced or went through a spiritual meltdown, began to sob and ran to the pope, threw her arms around him, and said that she loved him, and the pope helped her calm down and appreciated everything she did. Gave the girl a rosary, blessed her, I think traced the cross on her forehead. And a reporter cornered her and said, “What happened here?” And she said, well she had issues and had deep disagreements with current teachings of the Church, and specifically current teachings of John Paul, but looking at him and seeing so much love in his eyes and love for her, her objections fizzled, and she admitted that her positions have changed, and she is faithful to his teachings and the teachings of the Church. This, these kinds of encounters where a lot of times they were simple encounters, they didn't involve such emotional agitation. But what was common, I've heard a number of stories that when you were in front of him, I'm thinking about an individual, you were the, you were as if you were the most important person in the world, and he had all the time in the world for you, and he would hang on every word you said. He was eminently interested in what you had to say. And you felt understood. And this was a common experience, that you felt that you were very close friends all your life. You felt loved, you felt understood, but it was a very natural experience. People would say, “Well, when I for the first half a second, I was nervous, because that's the Holy Father. But that nervousness dissipated rather quickly because of his humanity.” And in one of his memoirs, he stated that any time someone approached him, he would see Christ in that person asking for his help, asking for his love. Even his first day on the job, much to the consternation of the Romans, his brother Polish cardinal, who couldn't make it to the conclave because he got a stroke first day of the job, the Holy Father visited him. Now we need to reconstruct the situation. In 1978, maybe it's still the case, after your midday dinner would probably end at maybe 2:30, 3 o'clock, you would take your siesta. So, everything's closed. Churches are closed, stores are closed, for this siesta after pranzo. So, from one to six, everything's closed. Well, the pope didn't have that custom, and so an entourage had to be mustered spontaneously so he could go to this hospital to visit his buddy. And he said the Rosary, and then addressed many of the sick people there, telling them that their illness and their suffering was the strength of the Church that a major role to play in evangelization by winning graces for people to come to the Kingdom. 

Lastly, and briefly, his last years, he reflected Christ but a certain aspect of Christ's life, Christ's crucified life. Amid tremendous pain, breathing problems, muscles didn't work, his smile wasn't there. It was interior because of the Parkinson's and his prayer even increased during those times. And the background of his spirituality, of his pastoral work, was the Mother of Jesus. Even his coat of arms was, in modern parlance they would say, it looks funky, doesn't have the traditional cross swords, or lily flowers, or bears or lions, deer, just a big M and a cross with the motto “I'm all yours”, addressing the Blessed Mother. That devotion to her was always there. And lastly, we learn that she's the shortcut to Jesus, the shortcut to the belief and love and trust in the Blessed Sacrament. And in short, the shortcut to our sanctity. We pray to you, St. John Paul, that we renew our desire to pray so that that interior life, in the words or the idea of St. Josemaria be a spillover, an overflow of my love for Jesus. Mary, make these sentiments a reality. 

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations which you have communicated to me in this meditation. I ask your help to put them into effect. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.