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[Published in the journal Faith & Reason, Spring 2006]
The Human Person is Worthy of Love:
Pope John Paul II’s Answer
to the Culture of Death
JOHN JANARO
Last year, the Servant of God Pope John Paul II brought to
completion the tremendous witness of his life in his serene and
exemplary suffering and death on April 2, 2005. It seemed as if all
humanity watched his final days with awe and fascination. Not
only those who were devoted to him, but also those who did not
understand him could not help being struck by the power and
beauty of one who manifested so profoundly the face of Jesus
Christ—a power and beauty that were exceptionally radiant in the
utmost weakness of what the world calls “death.” John Paul II
died as he had lived—pouring himself out in love and solidarity
with the suffering of others, thereby proclaiming in his own body
that Jesus Christ has transformed death itself into the definitive
moment of total, self-giving love. Already the Christian people are
acclaiming him “John Paul the Great.” The election of his closest
collaborator, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict XVI and
the joyful first year of Benedict’s pontificate may well be the fruits
of John Paul II’s final sacrifice, and the continuing solicitude for
the pilgrim Church that he now carries out as a member of the
Church Triumphant. Indeed, Pope Benedict—by his immediate
opening of the formal process for the beatification and
canonization of his predecessor, as well as by many other
statements and gestures—has indicated that the teaching and
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witness of John Paul II remain a fundamental reference point for
the Church in our time.
The third longest reigning Pope in history, John Paul II carried
out his mission as the Vicar of Christ throughout his long
pontificate with firm perseverance in the midst of many trials,
always remaining focused on deepening the renewal of the Church
and her mission throughout the world. He has left a vastindeed,
unprecedentedlegacy, from which the Christian people still have
a much to learn. Throughout his ministry as successor of St. Peter,
John Paul II was keenly aware that the “Petrine ministry” informed
not only his formal exercise of the papal magisterium, but also his
entire vocation as “universal bishop,” as Servus Servorum Dei
(“Servant of the Servants of God”). He saw his pontificate as
charged with responsibility for ecclesial unity within the Church
(among his brother bishops, and among local churches of widely
diverse peoples, customs, and historical traditions). He was also a
tireless protagonist for the unity of all Christians, and for mutual
understanding and respect between Christian people and followers
of other religions (even while clearly reaffirming that Jesus Christ
is the only means of salvation).
Perhaps more than anything else, Pope John Paul II lived
intensely the Petrine ministry as an Apostle. In both his extensive
teaching documents and his daily preaching, the Pope bore witness
to Jesus Christ, the good news of our salvation, and the mysteries
of the Faith. He also pondered the depths of God’s wisdom and
love, and taught us about the dignity of the human person, the
sanctity of human life, the value of human work, and the awesome
beauty of human love—particularly that unique, expressive gesture
of human love that God established by creating the human being as
“male” and “female.” With an energy that only grace can give,
John Paul II continually exhorted us, corrected us, challenged us to
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grow in faith, instructed us on how to pray, and invited us to pray
with him in the face of the violence of this world. And he
diagnosed the sickness of our times, setting before us healing
remedies that will not simply restore a previous state of health, but
will instill a new vitalitya renewed life for society and culture.
There are so many ways to consider the papacy of John Paul II,
but it is this last point that constitutes the theme of this essay. John
Paul II’s vivid analysis of what he called the culture of death, and
the Christian response to it which he proposed, deserve special
attention. The Pope has done much more than coin phrases in his
use of the terms “culture of life” and “culture of death.” Rather,
behind these terms lay his own tremendous effort to proclaim the
Gospel in a secularized world. His teaching and preaching sought
not only to identify the many errors of our time, so as to protect the
Christian people from them and from the false ideologies that give
rise to them. He sought also to set forth in its many facets the
splendor of the Truth revealed in Christ Jesus, so as to provide a
profound and ongoing catechesis and to give spiritual formation to
the people of God. John Paul II’s teachingalways rich in
meditation on the mystery of God and His love for us, and the
mystery of man created in the image of God and called to share in
His gloryforms the minds, hearts, consciences, and even the
sensibility of those who are attentive to it. Above all, John Paul II
was a spiritual father, a master in the ways of prayer, whose
teaching and preaching offer the Christian heart an introduction
into a contemplative wisdoma way of loving God in the midst of
the world, and of looking at all of reality in its truth, of seeing and
loving and suffering all things in the mystery of God’s love. This
contemplative prayer of love and sacrificefinding its source of
life always in the Church and nourished by the sacraments (above
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all by Jesus Himself in the Eucharist)is the heart of the new
evangelization that John Paul II called for, and that continues to be
the focus of his successor Pope Benedict XVI. Indeed,
evangelization is not only the mandate and the very inner dynamic
of the Gospel. It is also the only hope for man, and the impetus of
the “new evangelization” is the hope for man at the beginning of
the third millennium. It is the hope that glimmers on the horizon
of a day already full of anxiety, confusion, and violence.
The dramatic events that swept over Western civilization in the
twentieth century gave rise to a situation in which not only were
great evils perpetrated, but also the very substance of the good was
perverted in numerous societies in the developed world. This
phenomenon gave rise to what could rightly be called an “anti-
culture,” which did not simply ignore, but which militantly
attacked the very dignity of the human person, the sanctity of his
life, his intrinsic value founded upon his being created by God, and
the corresponding objectivity of the moral order as God’s design—
the expression of His wisdom and love—for the created person.
This militant “anti-personalism” was a secularism in the most
fundamentally negative sense of this term: it defined human
beings, individually and socially, as independent of God, both in
their origin and in their destiny. Human beings and human society
were measured entirely by the purposes of the world of space and
time. The most obvious example of this “secularist anti-culture”
was the brutal horror of the totalitarian Communist state. John Paul
II, the Polish Pope, lived an intense and personal relationship with
God in the midst of the ravages of Communism, and the openly
violent atheist and materialist dictatorships that tormented the
peoples of Eastern Europe for 50 years. It is not surprising,
therefore, that he was able to recognize the more subtle ideology of
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“practical atheism” that dominates with ever greater virulence what
was once called the “free world.”
In Western Europe and North America, the atheistic disease
mutated, although it began from the same virus: the exclusion of
transcendence from the life of the human person. Here, however,
the accent has been placed on moral autonomy and various
positions allied to it. Indeed, what John Paul II called the culture
of death has taken a distinctive form in the secularized “liberal”
West and its cultural expressions. These expressions while
seldom openly violent—are a seductive and ultimately suffocating
attack on the higher purposes of human existence.
Thus, John Paul II understood the “culture of death” not merely
as a particular, limited influence that perpetrates violence in
society. By using the term “culture,” he recognized that liberal
secularism has constructed a whole, pervasive social context
within which human persons are “formed” (in this case, mal-
formed). But the “culture of death” is not a true human culture;
rather it is an invasive force, a social cancer that attacks and
destroys the interiority of the person. As we have already noted,
this is one of the reasons why the reflection and spiritual richness
of John Paul II’s teaching and preaching are so important and so
necessary for our time. He sought, among other things, to build up
the interiority of the person and to set forth both the liberating truth
and the radiant beauty of the Gospel in contrast to the powerful
but shallow illusions of the culture of death. It is worthwhile to
examine this fundamental point, after which we will touch on some
of the key themes that John Paul II developed during his
pontificate, noting especially the way in which he presents these
themes: as counter-points to the deceptions of the culture of death,
that will strengthen the hearts of those who believe and offer
something “new” to those who are seeking the truth.
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The “liberal” Western world in the late twentieth century became
increasingly open and radical in its assertion of the moral
autonomy and self-sufficiency of the human person. Moreover, a
false image of man became more and more pervasive; it was as if it
were being imposed by a slow yet irresistible force. Indeed,
militant liberal Western secularism possessed weapons of subtle
yet extraordinary power: the arsenal of the various instruments of
the mass media, all of which are capable of penetrating the senses
and imaginations of people, surrounding them with impressions
that correspond to the liberal secularist ideology. This ideology, in
sum, entails [a] The marginalization (if not outright denial) of God;
[b] objective morality denied in favor of a pseudo-autonomous
self-determination, subjectivism, and relativism; and finally [c] the
purposes of human life conceived and aggressively presented in
radically egocentric terms, so that the ideal of personal fulfillment
is said to consist in the pursuit of merely human and indeed
animalistic satisfactions.
At present, the rapidly accelerating phenomenon of
globalization, along with the recent collapse of ideological
Communism, have opened the way for an ever increasing and
more powerful exportation of liberal secular culture through the
amazingly refined technology of the mass media, so that there are
few places in the world that are untouched by it at the beginning of
the third millennium.
In fact, of course, the secularist ideology is a lie in more ways
than the most obvious point of its denial of God and objective
moral law. By cutting the human person off from God and casting
him upon his own (usually meager) resources, the modern
consumerist Western world of freedom and autonomy actually
places a multitude of people in a condition of interior slavery to the
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powerful of this world. The “powerful,” here, are not always easy
to identify. They are the ones in positions that enable them to
shape the various mass media or other cultural influences, creating
the pervasive impression that it is necessary to possess certain
things and adopt certain attitudes in order to achieve human
fulfillment. And, of course, they are also those who can marshal
the political, social, or economic forces necessary to produce these
things and cultivate these attitudes in society.
The psychological slavery that results from these subtle forces
constantly working on the senses, imaginations, and opinions of
people is a tragic fact of our time. Usually without even realizing
it, many human persons in this culture allow a precious
realitytheir own self-image, their sense of self-worth, the inner
truth about who they areto be defined, imposed upon them, and
manipulated by forces that have sold out the dignity of the human
person for money, vanity, disoriented pleasure, power, or some
unearthly mayhem.
Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the degeneration of
sexual morality and of the whole ethos of the family that took
place over the course of the last century. We are told that human
sexuality has been “liberated”—but in fact this “liberation” has
been a raw repudiation of the heart and soul of human sexuality
(even if perhaps it was not fully understood or valued in the past).
The ideology of “sexual freedom” contradicts that which
constitutes the awesome dignity of conjugal love: the bodily
“ritual” in which a man and a woman enter into the mystery of
creation itself through the openness of their interpersonal union.
Sexual liberation promised to make us more aware of sexual love,
but in fact the sexual revolution has in the end robbed us of the
sense of mystery that ought to belong to this most intimate center
of our personality and its capacity to become a gift. Mystery and
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modesty—signs of reverence for the dignity of the human
person—have been replaced by a gigantic preoccupation with a
mere thing: sex. It has become a thing we practice, read about,
take supplements or prescription drugs to improve, and endlessly,
endlessly talk about. The culture tells us (incessantly) that it is a
terribly important thing for a satisfying life; yet it also insists that
“sex” is something that we “have,” and therefore (in spite of all the
talk about love), it is something that is ultimately external to the
person. Moreover, because it is a “thing” (a psychosomatic thing),
it should be considered a toola “technique”to be used to fulfill
our needs and desires. This means, of course, that it can, and
should, be manipulated and controlled so as to produce good
results and contribute to our satisfaction.
And what is the essential purpose of this thing we call “sex”?
According to the secularist ideology, its only real significance is to
produce an experience. We are enthralled by the intensity of this
experience, and the culture tells us that it is a wonderful thing to
share with someone else, someone we love, or like, or someone we
want to please or have fun with. Aside from its dazzling power, it
is essentially the same kind of experience as many other things that
two people might do together to please one another: thus it has
become normal for a “date” between two single adults to consist in
several mutually pleasing eventsa nice dinner, a film or a play,
coffee and discussion afterward, and then the bedroom. If things
go well enough, the following morning may include breakfast.
Thus we get a sense of the secularized West’s increasingly
dominant “ideal” of human sexuality. Many will protest with great
earnestness that modern sexual freedom allows people to express
esteem and appreciation for each other, through a natural and
joyful bodily expression. Indeed, we are told that the capacity to
enjoy the sexual experience, and to “perform” so as to produce it
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with maximum satisfaction for our sexual partner, is an essential
feature of human maturityof being a kind, loving, and wise
adult, a man or woman come to full stature.
As we have already noted, however, the culture of death’s
ideology of sexual licensein spite of the deceptive use of
“personal” and humanistic languagehas in fact degraded a
mystery of life-long, covenanted love expressed before God and
touching the fountains of creation itself, into a mere psycho-
sensual “thing-experience” that we “make,” “have,” and measure
or rate on a human scale, as we would a musical performance or a
sporting event. At best, it is an experience people share when they
are truly fond of one another. Yet even here, under its veneer of
tenderness, generosity, and affection, it is really selfish and
shallow. Self indulgent “sex” gnaws away at that original ecstasy
of human love, in which the lover is enraptured by an other person
whom he cannot reduce to any measure of his own, whom he can
only affirm in joy and wonder and reverence: “you are beautiful,
my love.” The culture of death demands the desecration of human
love by casual “sex,” and the most glorious of created joys is
stolen from the human heart and replaced withat bestmutual
(and often only temporary) emotional comfort.
This self-indulgence is something that we might be inclined to
view as merely pathetic, except for the fact that it plays with the
mystery of lovenot only human love, but also Divine love, for it
is through this mystery that God calls a new human person into
being. When we reflect on the awesome reality of spousal love
and procreation, it becomes tragically clear that all this human
posturing about “sexual liberation” is a sham. Nevertheless,
people in our time have sought to perpetuate the illusion of
“freedom” by using artificial devices that seek to separate sexual
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expression from God’s creative love. But the contraceptives fail,
and new human persons are created by God and loved by Him.
For the culture of the affluent, liberal West, this fact constituted a
decisive moment in history. Would there be love for these new,
poor, defenseless human persons in need, or would there be
marginalization, willful ignorance, or even destruction, bloodshed?
To save our “freedom,” to preserve our lifestyle, to protect our
choices, we began to shed innocent blood. Torrents of innocent
blood. With the abomination of “legal abortion”—the horror of
murder sanctioned by law and even celebrated as a “human
right”—liberal secularism entered a new, ugly, monstrous phase.
Indeed, as the vision of Western secular man has become
increasingly perverse, the means required to meet its satisfactions
have become increasingly violent: thus it is that life itself—that
fundamental, sacred gift of God our Creator; the mysterious,
unrepeatable image of God that is particular to each and every
human person He creates—has become a commodity; a reality no
longer sacred, an object that can be destroyed, or “produced” by
human engineering to satisfy human desires, and manipulated for
human whims.
The spiritual death entailed by liberal secular culture’s
separation of the human person from God is now “incarnate” in a
terrible mockery: that same culture justifies the shedding of
innocent human blood; that same culturewhich claims to exalt
the dignity of the human personinsists that some human persons
have the right to destroy other human persons; that same culture
provides vast sums of money, training, and propaganda in an effort
to impose the “right” to this deadly “choice” all over the world,
especially among the poor. Here the culture of death shows its
face most clearly.
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Indeed, the world is far too much dominated by the selfishness
of the culture of death, with its lust and its hunger for worldly
riches and worldly prestigeall promoted by the mass media’s
celebration of the false ideal that one’s identity consists in
“having” rather than “being.” Thus all kinds of political, social,
and economic violence accompany the production of things
demanded by so many inflamed human whims and urges. In such
a world, it is inevitable that innocent human life will be destroyed
when it interferes with our projects, that the defenseless will
become objects of “useful” experimentation, that there will be all
manner of injustice in human relationships, that the poor will be
oppressed and afflicted, and that much suffering will be inflicted
on the weak by greedy and rapacious men.
This is the “culture” that John Paul II so accurately and
succinctly termed the Culture of Death. Here in America itself, on
World Youth Day 1993 in Denver, Colorado, he spoke with great
fervor about the affliction of our time in what was to become a
central theme in the teaching of the second half of his pontificate.1
He identified the “culture of death,” as we have noted above, as
more than just a pervasive presence of evil, but a systematic
justification of evil, a ‘calling evil good’ and a proposal of evil as a
way of life. “A ‘culture of death,’” the Pope said in his homily that
morning at Cherry Creek State Park, “seeks to impose itself on our
desire to live and to live to the full. There are those who reject the
light of life, preferring the ‘fruitless works of darkness.’ Their
harvest is injustice, discrimination, exploitation, deceit, violence.”
After pointing out that every age suffers these evils, the Pope went
on to stress that “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.”
The Pope then proceeded, on American soil, to link genocide and
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ethnic cleansing to abortion and euthanasia—as they are so linked
in the eyes of God.
John Paul II also noted that the culture of death is essentially
dependent on moral relativism. What is particularly interesting is
the term he used to refer to this relativism in his homily: he called
it “confusion.” Moreover, he identified one of the key
consequences of moral relativism (in contrast to its “empty
promises”). He stated, “Vast sectors of society are confused about
what is right and what is wrong”—this is, of course, an objective
description of the effect of the ideology of moral relativism being
imposed upon several generations of people as it has been in the
secularized West. What we have in our culture is not, in fact,
moral liberation. We do not have the freedom to choose for
ourselves what is right and what is wrong. Even if many people
claim that they possess this freedom, this is not in fact the case.
This could be perceived even on the sociological level today. One
can only speculate, but it is not unreasonable to surmise that a
genuine, unbiased sociological study of behavior patterns in
modern culture would reveal an overwhelming pattern of
conformity by multitudes of people. We do not really live in an
age that “celebrates diversity;” rather we live in a time where the
masses of people—on a scale unparalleled in human history—
appear to be more and more the same. In fact, the rule of our times
is a subtle but clearly recognizable homogenization; people are
shaping themselves according to the standards, styles, and opinions
set by cultural elites and the various groups that control the
powerful instruments that shape the face of modern secularism in
the popular imagination. Although there are accidental differences
among various groups, the core vision—the common profile of
“self-centeredness” and the corresponding commitment to the
culture of death and its propagation—is consistent. Thus,
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returning to the Pope’s words at World Youth Day, moral
relativism—moral confusion—in fact puts people “at the mercy of
those with the power to ‘create’ opinion and impose it on others.”
Moral relativism does not produce autonomous freethinking
individuals who “question authority.” Rather, it produces a slavish
conformity of the multitude of people, who gladly abandon their
reason for animalistic satisfaction and an ethos shaped by the
dominant mentality, an ethos that they can’t even begin to
question.
What can be done in the face of this oppressive slavery, with all
of its lies and diverse forms of violence? Only the appearance of
something new, striking, wonderful—something that surprises the
hearts of men and women and breaks through the categories of the
culture of death—can awaken once again that vital question that
turns man’s soul toward God. John Paul II’s response to the
culture of death is clear and direct: Evangelization. It is the
Gospel. The culture of life—we must remember—is the culture of
the resurrection.
Those of us who were present at World Youth Day in 1993 will
never forget the powerful, uncompromising, counter cultural
witness that John Paul II gave in those days: it seemed as if many
in America opened their arms and their agendas to welcome him
but also to manipulate him (often unconsciously and with all
sincerity, but simply limited in their vision). The Pope, however,
strode ten feet above everyone like a giant, preaching the Gospel,
correcting us forcefully but with a compelling beauty that struck us
with a vision we had never seen before, and above all loving us,
embracing us with his welcome—because wherever he went, he
radiated the mystery of the Church, he shone a light on the
presence of the Church in every place, and bore witness to Him
who is the Head of the Church. Indeed we might say that one of
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John Paul II’s most powerful contributions to the New
Evangelization and its corresponding culture of life was his own
monumental personal witness, spanning decades and continents
and stages of life, from youthful vitality to the blood he shed for
the faith in St. Peter’s square to the years of tireless preaching and
teaching in Rome and all over the world, to his elder years, his
struggles with illness, his tenacity, his courage in letting the world
see his human frailty, and—finally—the simplicity and trust with
which he surrendered himself to God in death. John Paul II
showed us what it means to be man. He showed this, above all, by
being a man of prayer, a humble man, a man who loved Jesus
Christ, a man who drew all his strength from Jesus Christ, whose
entire existence spoke the name of Jesus—consequently a man
who gave and gave, who loved with a humanity and a tenderness
and a vast paternal concern, day after day, in a way that no human
power can possibly explain. Such was the witness of “John Paul
the Great”—a witness to the Divine and human greatness of Jesus
Christ.
John Paul II knew the power of the Gospel, and that the culture
of life is in its fullest sense the flourishing of the evangelium vitae,
the Gospel of life, to cite the title of his great encyclical. Although
it is certainly true and vitally important to stress that fundamental
moral truths regarding the dignity of the human person and the
sanctity of human life can be known by human reason even
without the light of faith, nevertheless the pontificate of John Paul
II was driven since its inception by an urgent desire that each and
every person come to know and love Jesus Christ and possess the
fullness of the truth for which the human person was made. Thus
it is not surprising that at World Youth Day in Denver, John Paul II
framed his description of the culture of death in evangelical
terms—indeed, the culture of death is not fully understood unless it
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is seen to be an attack on God’s design for the supernatural destiny
of man. Thus the culture of death imposes itself upon the desire
“to live and to live to the full” (see John 10:10, where Jesus
describes the life He has come to bring, which is not just any kind
of life, but “eternal life”). The perpetrators of the culture of death
“reject the light of life” and “prefer the darkness” which is not
simply the physical darkness brought about by the death of the
body, but that ultimate darkness: the unfathomably dark “death” in
which man alienates himself from God (see John 1:4-5; 3:19-20).
Throughout his pontificate, John Paul followed the lead of the
Second Vatican Council on a particular point that must be both
preached and manifested in a living Christian witness.
Contemporary man eventually must face at some level of
experience the alienation and the broken promises of the culture of
death, which in the end cause nothing but blindness and pain. It is
even true for persons of particular integrity and dedication to truth,
who appreciate the more hopeful elements of scientific and
technical progress, which have brought undeniable blessings to
human existence in this world. There are many dedicated and
perceptive people in our time who are trying to improve human
life, but who also perceive (often mournfully) that these
“improvements” in themselves lack a clear orientation to man’s
ultimate purpose. This is the great weakness of secularist culture:
it cannot satisfy the human heart. The human heart is made for
God. And God has revealed Himself and given Himself to man in
Jesus Christ. Thus John Paul II repeated again and again the text
from Gaudium et Spes 22: “It is only in the mystery of the Word
made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear.”
In a reflection during the Jubilee year, John Paul II frankly
admitted that “these words are especially dear to me and I wanted
to propose them again in the fundamental passages of my
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Magisterium.” Jesus Christ, God made man, fulfills the
restlessness of the human heart and its search for meaning even as
He elevates man to the unimaginable dignity of a participation in
the divine life. Thus the Gospel is not only the revelation of the
mystery of God (it is, of course, fundamentally and primarily this).
The Gospel is also the revelation of the truth about man. Thus the
Church preaches a message that “is a fruitful synthesis of the
human being’s expectation and of God’s response to him.”2
Beginning with his first encyclical Redemptor Hominis, John
Paul II preached Jesus Christ to all the world with a particular
fervor owing to his conviction of the human person’s need for
Christ—indeed the “right” of each and every human person to
know the full truth about Jesus Christ, who is the reason why they
were created and who loves them. He spoke of the importance of
“the great mission of revealing Christ to the world, helping each
person to find himself in Christ . . . helping everyone to get to
know ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ’ (Eph. 3:8) since these
riches are for every individual and are everybody’s property.”3
A culture of life that “lives to the full” begins with the preaching
of the Gospel. It is enriched and solidified by catechesis,
reflection, and the cultivation of a more profound awareness of
Christian realities. For Christians living in the midst of the culture
of death, this deepening of awareness involves a more concrete
sense of the human dimension of God’s redeeming love. John Paul
II, in presenting Christian doctrine and morals in light of the whole
truth about manthe “mystery of man”desired to bear witness
to the whole world that Jesus Christ is the only answer to the
search for meaning and the yearning for love that God has
fashioned in the depths of every human heart. Only Jesus can
answer the question, “Who am I?” Moreover, John Paul II desired
to form the Christian people more profoundly in an awareness of
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this truth, so that the glory of Christ would be more concretely
perceived in faith and love as the real, superabundant,
unimaginable answer to every human misery, every human cry of
anguish, every authentic human desire for something more than the
limits of this world can give. In sum, we must become more
deeply aware in faith and love of this reality: that the glory of
Christ is the answer to the mystery of the human heart—my own
heart, and the heart of every person I meet. John Paul II wanted to
teach us how to pray, how to contemplate, how to draw strength
from the Eucharist and the sacraments, andeach according to his
own vocationhow to go forth into the world with a faith that
lives on the concrete, day to day level with conviction that Jesus
Christ really is the meaning of the universe, the meaning of
history, the meaning of today, this day. To seek, to live, to bear
witness to this Truth: these are the most essential things we can do
to “build” a “culture of life,” because He is “the Life” (John 14:6).
It is impossible to summarize in this short space even the key
teachings that comprise the great Christian vision of John Paul II.
Therefore we will look at a few important texts by way of
introduction. Among the many important documents from the
early phase of John Paul II’s pontificate, three encyclicals stand
out with a particular prominence. The “Trinitarian encyclicals”—
Redemptor Hominis (Jesus Christ the Son of God); Dives in
Misericordia (Mercy, focused on the Father); and Dominum et
Vivificantem (the Holy Spirit)—are among the most unique
documents in the whole history of the papacy. Their purpose is not
to make authoritative pronouncements on specific doctrinal points,
nor to correct particular errors. Rather, they are rich doctrinal
meditations. They are not easy to understand, and people are often
dissuaded from reading them because of their dense and
demanding style. Yet they are fundamentally important to the
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papacy of John Paul II. In these texts, he invites us to “reflect” on
a “mystery” by presenting “considerations”drawn from the light
of revealed truththat he hopes will “bring this mystery closer to
everyone.”4 He offers extensive reflections whose “main purpose
is to develop in the Church [an] awareness”5a deeper
penetration into the mystery of the Trinity revealed by Christ, and
a deeper sense of the Church’s identity and mission in light of the
profound developments of the Second Vatican Council: “the many-
faceted enrichment of the Church’s consciousness resulting from
the Council….”6
It would be a mistake to conclude from the approach that John
Paul II uses here that he was writing merely personal reflections,
and did not intend to act as the Vicar of Christ when he wrote and
published these texts. Rather, in these encyclicals, he exercises in
a powerful way his office as universal shepherd of souls; he fulfills
Christ’s mandate, “feed my sheep.” Their doctrinal teaching,
while not new, is profound; it proposes afresh and shows
forthoften in beautiful and striking waysthe unity and
interrelatedness of the whole patrimony of the Faith. But the
Trinitarian encyclicals are particularly focused on what we referred
to above as catechesis and spiritual formation. What John Paul II
set out to do in these early encyclicals, and what he continued to do
in many texts and homilies throughout the whole of his pontificate,
was to preach the fundamental mysteries of Christianity—centered
around the Mystery of the Triune God—in a way that would form,
deepen, and strengthen the faith of believers. His method of
teaching invites the faithful to a workan attentiveness in which
they will deepen their appreciation of the mysteries and recognize
their interrelatedness. Those who study the encyclicals will be led
to a more profound interiorization of their faith and a deeper spirit
Janaro, John Paul II
19
of prayer (especially mental prayer and prayerful reading). This
was perhaps John Paul II’s greatest hope in presenting these
masterful texts, and it shows the importance of the “mystical
quality” of so much of his papal teaching. The Trinitarian
encyclicals were in fact the fruits of John Paul II’s own rich prayer
life, the sharing of his own contemplative wisdom in the form of
preachinga preaching he carried out as Bishop of Rome and
successor of St. Peter, thus offering nourishment to the whole of
Christ’s flock. This work is one of his great contributions to the
history of Christianity and its theological tradition: the patrimony
of reflective teaching that forms the contemplative core of his
whole pontificate. At the center of his whole magisterium was this
magnificent work of preaching, faith, and adoration of the mystery
of the Trinity. In addition to the rich pedagogical value of its
content, the structure of John Paul II’s teaching stands as a model
for the life of the Christian person.
It would be unfortunate if one were to ignore the contemplative
center of John Paul’s II’s teaching, and concentrate exclusively on
certain later encyclicals and documents in which he, it is
sometimes said, deals more “concretely” with “issues,” resolving
or clarifying particular points of faith and morals (e.g. the
landmark encyclicals Veritatis Splendor [1993], dealing with the
proper principles of moral reasoning; Evangelium Vitae [1995],
which condemns anew offenses against the sanctity of human life;
or Fides et Ratio [1998], in which John Paul II re-proposes with
brilliance and lucidity the proper relationship between faith and
reason). It should be noted, among other things, that the crucially
important instruction and corrections given in these documents and
others were received with a ready assent by so many of the faithful
precisely because these faithful came to adulthood during the first
generation of John Paul II’s pontificate. This was the generation
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whose ecclesial sense had been nourished by the wisdom, the
reflection, the deepening of awareness, that John Paul II had made
available to them during their seminary years, novitiate, or the
years in which their faith matured as lay people committed to
serving Christ in the married or consecrated states. Above all,
however, it must be stressed that these more recent encyclicals
themselves cannot be fully understood unless one keeps in mind
the contemplative and meditative aspects of John Paul II’s
magisterium. Rarely can a teaching document of his be summed
up in a simple series of propositions. There are always aspects of
preaching, dwelling on the mystery, and glorifying God. Thus, for
example, the entire second chapter of Evangelium Vitae is devoted
to a meditation on “the Christian Message Concerning Life,” that
culminates at the Cross: “this glorious tree . . . is revealed as the
center, meaning and goal of all history and of every human life.”7
The Cross is not shame for Jesus; rather “on the Cross his glory is
made manifest”8 because he gives his life out of love for the Father
and for us; thus Jesus “attains on the Cross the heights of love.”9
Here too, “Jesus proclaims that life finds its center, its meaning
and its fulfillment when it is given up.”10 Reflections such as these
must not be passed over as we seek to understand John Paul II’s
reaffirmation of the Church’s teaching on abortion, euthanasia, and
other violations of the sanctity of human life. In these reflections
we find the radical foundation for what the Church teaches, and the
concrete source of strength to walk in that teaching. I must go to
the Cross to find the “center, meaning and goal” of every human
life, of my life, and of that (perhaps difficult) life that
circumstances may require me to respect and revere in a particular
situation.
As we noted above, one crucial reason why John Paul II
proposed for us such reflections is that we need nourishment in
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21
light of the pervasive influence of the culture of death. He knew
that the culture of death makes use of powerful forces of attraction
to confuse and trick the human person, making evil appear good in
a way that is very difficult to resist. In particular, Christ’s
teachings regarding the moral life are very difficult to follow in the
grip of an environment that systematically attacks the moral ideal
and wages war against it by means of a kaleidoscope of sensations
and suggestions that cannot all be avoided voluntarily.
Faced with this attack, it becomes essential to develop an
interior lifeand here we refer specifically to strong and well
nourished inner virtues of faith, hope, and charity that become
principles for perceiving and judging reality according to the mind
of Christ, which is to say according to the way things really are,
rather than according to the systematic illusion bought and sold in
the secular marketplace. This requires of course a solid catechesis
in Catholic doctrine, but it also involves a formation of the whole
realm of human perception. As John Paul II himself indicated, in
the moral realm, the splendor of the truth is crucial to the
development of virtue. Not even original sin has effaced that
precious light and the powerweakened but not lostthat
enlightens the heart of man: “How do I distinguish good from evil?
The answer is only possible thanks to the splendor of the truth
which shines forth deep within the human spirit.”11 The culture of
death has done much to lead the heart astray with false lights while
obscuring the truth, even as that culture remains bound by the
terms of the human conscience: justice, right, freedom, good,
happiness, love, honesty, giving. It is all the more important,
therefore, that the Church allow God’s revelation to manifest itself:
“The light of God’s face shines in all its beauty on the countenance
of Jesus Christ, ‘the image of the invisible God’ [Col. 1:15], the
‘reflection of God’s glory’ [Heb. 1:3], ‘full of grace and truth’ [Jn.
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1:14].”12 The Church, moreover, must be faithful to her mission to
preach Christ’s truth and to manifest His glory: “Jesus Christ, the
‘light of the nations,’ shines upon the face of his Church, which he
sends forth to the whole world to proclaim the Gospel to every
creature.”13
In a paradoxical way the culture of death has awakened
Christians to an important truth: in order to follow Christ, it is not
enough to have a merely exterior understanding of “do this, don’t
do that....” I need the grace of the Holy Spirit, the life of God
within me, the power that comes from the infused virtues of faith,
hope and love and the gifts of the Spirit. It is all too easy to forget
that our vocation is not just to be “good people”; we are called to
be adopted sons of the Father in Jesus Christthrough Baptism,
we have been incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ and
made co-heirs with Him to the Kingdom of God. We have been
given the capacity to live a “supernatural” life of friendship with
God, a “participation” in the life of God. The Fathers of the
Church did not hesitate to call this life of grace “deification” (see
the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1997-1999). If we
persevere, we will inherit eternal glory. John Paul II did not
neglect to remind Christians of the dignity of their calling, as well
as the riches of grace and mercy that accompany and make
possible the arduous journey of the Christian life.
Indeed, Christianity might not seem like such “good news” if it
were nothing more than what the news reports from the culture of
death present it to be: a series of cold, inflexible moral demands,
often aimedso it seemsat the uncompromising suppression of
forceful impulses over which we feel we have little or no control.
The culture of death would have us think that Christianity is
nothing but self-condemnation. People instinctively defend
themselves against this: “I have always felt this way . . . I didn’t
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choose it. And the Church says I am evil, a bad person!” So it
goes. People hear only that they must go to the top of a huge
mountain. What they don’t hear is that they are going to be given
wings and taught to fly. It is not John Paul II, however, who is
hiding this truth from them. When Veritatis Splendor was
promulgated, people wrangled about exceptionless moral norms
and Vatican inflexibility, but one thing that especially needed to be
heard (but wasn’t) was John Paul II’s teaching about mercy and the
grace of the Holy Spirit. Calling upon Mary (as he did at the
conclusion of every teaching document), under her title as “Mother
of Mercy,” he pointed out with great simplicity that all the
strenuous intellectual efforts to evade the reality of sin by the
labyrinthine reasonings of moral revisionism are the unnecessary
labors of one who is weary and burdened. Sin is not the last word
in the history of the universe. God has revealed and communicated
His mercy to the world. “No human sin can erase the mercy of
God, or prevent him from unleashing all his triumphant power, if
we only call upon him”14 (118:2). This mercy is the heart of God’s
redeeming love, and it “reaches its fullness in the gift of the
Spirit”God’s people have been saved by His mercy, and are now
sustained and empowered in their journey toward Him by His
mercy, because without Him we can do nothing. Yet “no matter
how many and great the obstacles put in his way by human frailty
and sin, the Spirit, who renews the face of the earth (cf. Ps.
104:30), makes possible the miracle of the perfect accomplishment
of the good. This renewal, which gives the ability to do what is
good, noble, beautiful, pleasing to God and in conformity with his
will, is in some way the flowering of the gift of mercy, which
offers liberation from the slavery of evil and gives the strength to
sin no more. Through the gift of new life, Jesus makes us sharers
in his love and leads us to the Father in the Spirit.”15
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John Paul II expresses the same basic truth in the context of the
Christian person’s relationship with Jesus Christ in the next
paragraph, and here he responds specifically to those who say that
Christian morality is too difficult. Man has often raised this charge
against Christianity, particularly the man of today’s secular culture.
Some Christians, in repudiating this charge, might be tempted to
do nothing more than turn and accuse secular man of being
morally depraved (the danger here being the perennial “temptation
of the Pharisee”—to assert one’s own moral superiority based on
pride). We would do well to take St. Paul’s advice that anyone
who thinks he stands should take heed lest he fall. John Paul II
rejects the charge raised by the culture of death (that Christian
morality is too difficult), but he does so for a more beautiful and
more secure reason: “This is untrue [that Christian morality is too
demanding and impossible to practice], since Christian morality
consists, in the simplicity of the Gospel, in following Jesus Christ,
in abandoning oneself to him, in letting oneself be transformed by
his grace and renewed by his mercy, gifts which come to us in the
living communion of his Church.”16 He is not being simplistic
here; he knows well that life involves complex situations and
requires moral reasoning. What he is expressing here is simply the
heart of the matter. He has faith. He believes in the Gospel.
“Abide in me and you will bear fruit,” Jesus says. The heart of the
matter is simple, even if it unfolds within the complexity of the
circumstances of life. Indeed, John Paul II insists that
abandonment to Christ is the opposite of running away from
reality; adherence to Him will “lead to a more genuine
understanding of reality, inasmuch as following Christ will
gradually bring out the distinctive character of authentic Christian
morality, while providing the vital energy needed to carry it out.”17
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Here we see John Paul II teaching one of the most important
themes that we need to reflect upon in any age: the mystery of
grace. And, as we noted earlier, it is particularly important for us
to take time to dwell upon the radiance, the glory that is the proper
characteristic of the truth, which John Paul II labored to present for
us in his ministry of preaching and teaching as successor of St.
Peter. It is not easy to receive the grace of God that transforms our
minds and hearts, and opens them to the glory of God shining on
the face of Christ. Thus it is not surprising that it is sometimes
difficult to appreciate the real depth of John Paul II’s teaching.
Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit—in giving us the gift of this
extraordinary Pope—has clearly called us to do a corresponding
work, for the sake of strengthening our faith and love.18
Indeed, John Paul II has given Christians (and anyone seeking
the truth about human love) an especially important body of
teaching that challenges the culture of death at its very heart. His
teaching on the mystery of man and woman and the dignity of
spousal love has presented chastity as a concrete ideal for the
coming generation, and as a great and authentic liberating force in
the lives of so many who had been slaves to the ideology of sexual
license, who had been tricked by its lies, suffered its degradation,
and been oppressed by its secret, vicious cruelty. John Paul II’s
“Theology of the Body” has truly presented a challenge to the
dominant images of sexuality marketed by the culture of death. He
has thus succeeded in presenting an alternative image of spousal
love. The Pope lacked the powerful instruments of the mass
media; what he had, however, was reality, and also something that
no amount of sensual trickery can ever conjure: the noble vision of
genuine human beauty. Not only did John Paul II contribute to the
development of doctrine in the area of sexual morality and
conjugal love; he re-proposed the Church’s teaching—Christ’s
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teaching—as if drawn anew from the spring of living waters, fresh,
awash with beauty, full of the invitation to a true freedom. It is
surprising, new, full of nobility, worthy, arduous, but young hearts
are prepared to sacrifice for it. And for those no longer young it
bears the promise of a deep and personal healing, and the
rediscovery of a purity of heart that many thought they had lost
forever.
John Paul II’s profound teaching on the mystery of man and
woman has had a lasting impact throughout the Church. The Lord
used him to generate a new mentality regarding how this mystery
is perceived and understood. Terminology that was previously
used only by a few philosophers is now found in marriage prep
programs, adult education programs, and catechisms all over the
world. Sometimes, the “Theology of the Body” is not very well
understood; in particular, there is the problem of people stressing
only the beautiful phrases about sexuality and self-giving love
without giving enough attention to the Pope’s realism about the
Fall of man, and the difficulties of living the ideal of spousal love
even for Christians, who must pray, cooperate with the healing
grace of Christ, and work at it.
Having said this, we need to appreciate as best we can in this
brief space the magnificent contribution John Paul II has made in
his teaching on marriage. On the one hand, of course, he has really
said nothing new at all. It is simply the teaching of the Gospel.
Indeed, as John Paul II presents it, it is the teaching of the first
chapters of Genesis. It is also the teaching of the Church, although
up until now it had been largely implicit. The sacrament of
Matrimony certainly suggests everything by its very nature. It is
the underlying truth of the central points (as opposed to incidental
matters) taught by the great patristic and medieval doctors
(Augustine, John Chrysostom, Aquinas). And it was emerging
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gradually but unmistakably in the magisterium of the papacy in the
twentieth century. But it was John Paul II who put together all the
pieces into a grand picture. What was on the picture?
First let us try to put it simply: John Paul II declared once and
for all that being a man or being a woman was intrinsic to being a
human person. This means that “gender” is a way of loving, of
giving one’s self as a person and receiving another person lovingly
as a gifta woman to a man, a man to a woman. Moreover, in
this unique mystery of mutual self-giving love by which a man and
a woman become “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24), their love opens
itself up to the Mystery of God Himself, for man and woman are
gifts to each other not only by virtue of their own self-donation,
but also and more fundamentally by virtue of God, who created the
man and the woman for each other and gave them to each other “in
the beginning,” and who creates and sustains the being of every
man and woman. As gifts from God to each other, a husband and
wife freely give themselves to each other and to God in love. And
God also loves. Should He so choose in the unbounded
sovereignty of a new act of His creative love, He will entrust a
child to the woman and the man, but always He bestows in return
His creative and sustaining embrace to the man and the woman,
His love that gives them existence and allows them to experience
love and joy.
Clearly, even a brief summary of these points requires a more
expanded development. God created the human being as a bodily
person, with masculinity and femininity being two complimentary
expressions of human personhood. In the original plan of God, the
man and the woman were created for the sake of mutual self-
giving love; their bodies were “signs,” transparent to the intimate,
“secret” core of their personal identities, which were to be given
and receivedthrough the bodily and interpersonal conjugal
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union. In this union, the man and the woman were each total gift
one to the other, and were each totally receptive one to the other.
The conjugal act was designed to signify and communicate this
mutual love in its masculine and feminine modes, andof
courseit was above all designed in such a way that this very act
of self-giving love by the two human persons, male and female,
would be a mutual gift to God the Creator in which their bodily
persons would place themselveswithin the very ecstasy of their
loveat the disposition of God’s creative freedom in bringing a
new human person into the world.19 The Fall of the human race,
however, introduced opacity and disorder into the relationship
between man and woman, and lust and shame clouded their
conjugal relationship so that man and woman are constantly
tempted to view each other as objects to use for self-satisfaction
rather than persons to be loved in gift and appreciative receptivity.
It has become more difficult too for the man and the woman to
view their self-giving love within the context of the mystery of
creation, i.e. as an act of adoration and receptivity before God’s
creative design, which they are called to serve by their love. Sin,
indeed, has led to many perversions in human sexuality, leading it
far away from its great and sacred purpose.
Much of the original dignity of the mystery of the body,
however, is accessible to us in Christ, though it is not an easy ideal.
It calls for a great work of cooperation with the grace of the
redemption and the healing power of the Holy Spirit, the
cultivation of the virtues of chastity and modesty, and the living
out of a vocational commitment of self-giving love. In marriage,
the conjugal life is consecrated by a sacrament and becomes a sign
of the mystery of the love between Christ and the Church.
Christian spouses are sanctified by their mutual love and by family
life (about which John Paul II has also taught us much, to the great
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enrichment of the ideal of the Christian family). The higher way
of consecrated life is the royal road; celibates and virgins
participate here and now, by their very form of life, in the mystery
of the resurrection. They have freely taken their bodily capacity to
give themselves to another human person and have abandoned it to
Christ. In handing it over to Him, they become “His” in a wholly
unique sense, and He accomplishes great things through them as
long as they “remain in Him.”
These few words on John Paul II’s teaching regarding the
mystery of man and woman, spousal love, and chastity barely
scratch the surface of an extensive body of reflections that include
not only the Wednesday “Catecheses” (i.e. the weekly General
Audiences, from September 5, 1979 to November 28, 1984)20 but
also the great Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (1981).21
Especially with this body of teaching, the “work” of which we
spoke earlier is crucial. Only a profound and personal appreciation
and interiorization of these truths—one that penetrates the whole
of our personality—will enable us to be truly free in the face of the
lies that the culture of death daily broadcasts about human
sexuality; and only with such freedom will we be able to bear
witness to the evangelical truth and beauty of chastity.
We have covered much ground in these pages, and we have
glimpsed some of the ways in which John Paul II, like a white
knight armed only with his long silver cross, has done battle with
the culture of death. Now the knight has passed on to his eternal
reward, yet his heart and mind and words remain to help us in our
daily struggle to live and bear witness to a Christian and human
life. We cannot fail to speak of this knight without mentioning the
Lady whom he loved and honored with every breath of his life.
The Mother of God was much more that a motif for concluding
Papal encyclicals. Her maternal presence was the secret strength
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30
that gave such intensity to John Paul II’s gaze and such
attentiveness and tenderness to his love. Near the close of his
pontificate, John Paul II gave us a teaching about Mary that we
have only begun to understand in its full significance. His
apostolic letter on the Rosary needs to be read and pondered and
put into practice. He has done much more here besides instituting
the “luminous mysteries.” He has given us a catechesis of prayer,
a method of entering more deeply into the Rosary, of living the
Rosary as a personal reality, an encounter with Mary and Jesus, a
dwelling with the Lord in the Heart of Mary, a vital formation in
the mysteries of Jesus given from the heart of His Mother.
Here John Paul II shared with us his own experience, what he
himself learned in the “school of Mary.” It is Mary, undoubtedly,
who enabled him to perceive so astutely the truth about the human
person, and especially the mystery of the womanwhat John Paul
II called the “genius” of the feminine. Perhaps more than anything
else, it is Mary who was the source and inspiration for a teaching
that John Paul II often repeated, a teaching that can be expressed
very simply, but which is a great mysterya mystery that Mary
understands in a unique way and opens up to those who desire to
learn from her. It is, ultimately, the most important teaching of
John Paul II’s entire pontificate, and the most profound refutation
of all the denials and presumptions and secret misery of the culture
of death.
It can be expressed in a few simple words: Each and every
human person is loved by God. “Yes, yes, of course,” we say. But
in the school of Mary’s heart, in the school of Mary’s maternal
tenderness, John Paul II entered into the deep mystery of the real
concreteness of this love.
Each human person is loved by God. In his first encyclical,
John Paul II emphasized that it is precisely Mary’s maternal
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mediation that brings the grace of Redemption close to the life of
each person: “The special characteristic of the motherly love that
the Mother of God inserts in the mystery of the Redemption and
the life of the Church finds expression in its exceptional closeness
to man and all that happens to him. It is in this that the mystery of
the Mother consists.” Mary is the Mother of each and every
human person, and is concretely concerned with everything that
happens to each and every human person. This “unique profundity
and range of action” possessed by the Mother of God in glory is, of
course, part of the mystery of her role as Mediatrix. God’s love in
Christ “comes close to each of us through this Mother.”22 Already
in Redemptor Hominis, it is clear that John Paul II also understood
that the Church is calledthrough union with Maryto follow her
on this path of love: “The Church, which looks to [Mary] with
altogether special love and hope, wishes to make this mystery her
own in an ever deeper manner. For in this the Church also
recognizes the way for her daily life, which is each person.”23
Further on he states that through Mary’s maternal presence, the
Church “acquires the certainty and, one could say, the experience
of being close to man, to each person.”24
Clearly the Church does not possess Mary’s personal capacity to
love directly every single person consciously and interiorly, in
every moment of his or her life (this, as we noted above, is the
unique and wonderful intimate power of Mary’s maternal Heart,
which corresponds to her unique mission as Mediatrix of all
graces). Nevertheless, entrusting herself to this exalted Mother
and attending to her example, the Pilgrim Church seeks to embrace
each person by means of the evangelical mission entrusted to the
Church and the vast resourcesspiritual and temporalgiven to
her by Jesus and sustained by the Holy Spirit. Thus the Church
carries out her mission of love through the communion of the
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32
faithful (sign and instrument of God’s love for the whole human
race), through the missionary impetus to bring Christ’s love to all
the world, through the sacraments and above all the offering of the
Eucharist, through prayer and solidarity, through the openness of
an inclusive love which continually seeks out those who are lost,
andof coursethrough the practice of the works of mercy. It
should be noted, moreover, that in the mystical life of the Church,
any act, no matter how humble or hidden, canby being joined to
Christ as an offering of loveopen up to embrace the entire world,
mysteriously touching and changing the lives of persons known
only to the Providence of God. Thus the simplicity of obedience,
prayer, and sacrifice are the great hidden resources of love in the
Church.
Because the Church is Christ’s Mystical Body, her capacity to
love cannot be measured in sociological terms. Love of neighbor,
therefore, must never be reduced to activism. Nevertheless, it is a
commandment that is fundamental for the life of every believer,
which means that it is a principle of actionindeed a reflection of
the mystery of God Himself. The Blessed Virgin shows us how
profoundly rooted this truth is in the heart of the Church. There is
a striking point in the last citation above from Redemptor Hominis,
where John Paul II refers to the fact that, through Mary, the Church
acquires a kind of experience of closeness to the human person, to
“each” person, an experience of that particular love, solidarity, and
tenderness that Mary presents to the Church as the ideal, the way to
follow, the manner in which a truly ecclesial heart ought to
perceive the world.
It is, therefore, the vocation of each one of us to enter into this
profound mystery of love. And this is exactly what John Paul II
asked us to pray for in his general prayer intention for June of
2004. Once again, it was a matter of a deeper understanding, a
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more profound awareness. The Prayer Intention was as follows:
That all Christians may be constantly more aware of their personal
and community responsibility to bear witness to God’s love for
humanity and for every man and woman.
Let us follow John Paul II in this response to the culture of
death. At first glance, it seems to take our breath away. There are,
after all, six billion people in the world. How can I have a
“responsibility” to bear witness to God’s love for all of them?
How can I love them all? They are a vast multitude. But we must
look carefully at the focus of the prayer intention. What are we
supposed to pray for? To become more aware. . . . Love begins
with understanding. This mysterious Love that God has for
personsthe Love that He wants us to share with Himis not
bounded by the limitations of this world, or our own limitations. It
begins with God’s grace and our interior openness and trust, and
grows when we abandon ourselves to Himwhen we are drawn
by the supernatural beauty of God’s great wisdom, when the
clouds of our narrowness begin to part and reality unfolds before
us and we begin to see things with spiritual sight, which means that
we see things as they actually are, the real world, created and
sustained by God, redeemed by Jesus, loved by Mary. It is the
world of this person and this person and this person; it is the world
of the next person who comes up to you. This is the world where
love begins to be possible.
And what happens to the culture of death in front of gratuitous
love? It is powerless. Because Love forgave its killers and rose
from the dead. A year after his blood poured out scarlet on his
white robe and on the stones of St. Peter’s square, the Pope of love
walked into the prison cell of the man who tried to execute him
and embraced him in his large arms and loved him. The culture of
death has no categories to explain such love. And yet the world
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stood in awe. Why? Because the culture of death is a lie. And
deep down, the human personas long as he is still alivehas
something in him that knows it is a lie, or that at least can be
roused (by grace) from a deep slumber to the recognition that it is a
lie. Love gives witness to the truth, and thereby exposes the lie.
Love opens up the tomb. It raises the dead. “Love never ends” (1
Cor. 13:8). Love is the heart of the new life that God offers us
through His Son Jesus in the Holy Spirit. It is also the hope, the
only hope, of the society in which we live.
Pope John Paul II has taught us this, and much more.
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Notes
1 The observations and impressions about World Youth Day 1993 that
appear in this text are the author’s own. The quotations from the Pope’s
homily at Cherry Creek State Park are cited from Tad Szulc, Pope John
Paul II: The Biography (New York: Scribner, 1995), 422.
2 Address to the Conference Studying the Implementation of the Second
Vatican Council, Sunday, 27 February 2000. Section 8.
3 Encyclical Redemptor Hominis (March 4, 1979), 11:5. Citations from
ecclesiastical documents are given according to the standardized section
numbers that are consistent in all editions and translations. Whenever
useful (e.g. in the case of a lengthy document), the section number will
be followed by a colon, after which we will cite the paragraph number
(within the section) from which the citation has been taken. Thus, this
quotation appears in section 11 of Redemptor Hominis, in the fifth
paragraph. 4 Encyclical Dives in Misericordia (November 30, 1980), 1:3, 2:6–8. 5 Encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem (May 18, 1986), 2:6. Emphasis
mine.
6 Dives in Misericordia, 1:4.
7 Encyclical Evangelium Vitae (March 25, 1995), 50:2.
8 Evangelium Vitae, 50:3.
9 Ibid., 51:5.
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36
10 Ibid., 51:6.
11 Encyclical Veritatis Splendor (August 6, 1993), 2:1.
12 Ibid., 2:2.
13 Ibid., 2:4.
14 Ibid., 118:2.
15 Ibid., 118:2, emphasis mine.
16 Ibid., 119.
17 Ibid., 119, emphasis mine.
18 The present Holy Father, Benedict XVI, often speaks of the profound
impact of John Paul II and its continuing relevance. In fact, the beauty of
Christ and the joy of the Christian life have been key themes in the
teaching of Pope Benedict. He has also emphasized the spiritual
enrichment that comes from dwelling on the Christian mystery.
19 Indeed, the Pope even talks about the conjugal act being, according to
the original plan of God prior to the Fall, the “primordial
sacrament”the instrument through which God’s grace would have been
transmitted from generation to generation. Because of the Fall, what the
conjugal act should have transmitted is absent. As a result, whenever a
new human person is conceived, he receives a human nature from his
parents that lacks something that it ought to have had according to the
original design of God. Thus “original sin” is passed on by generation.
The redemption restores the sacramental character of marriage, now
however according to a different orderthe order of love that has its
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37
definitive form in the cross and resurrection. Grace is therefore
communicated not through conjugal love, but by Baptism into the death
and resurrection of Christ. See the General Audiences of October 6, 13,
and 20, 1982.
20 An English translation of the entire catechesis on the Theology of the
Body (as originally delivered in public addresses from 1979 to 1984 and
printed in the Vatican periodical L’Osservatore Romano accompanied by
the Pope’s own footnotes) has been published in a single volume by the
Daughters of St. Paul: The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the
Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997). This volume
also includes the Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem (“On the Dignity
and Vocation of Women,” August 15, 1988) and the Encyclical
Evangelium Vitae (1995). 21 This document was written at the conclusion of the 1980 world synod
of bishops, who met with the Pope to consider “The Role of the Christian
Family.”
22 Redemptor Hominis, 22:4-5, emphasis mine.
23 Redemptor Hominis, 22:4, emphasis mine.
24 Redemptor Hominis, 22:5, emphasis mine.
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