Pope John Paul II will be beatified on May 1. Millions will descend on Rome to witness the historic beatification, led by Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter’s Square. Millions more will watch the ceremony on EWTN and other television stations around the world.
It’s rare these days that a person is beatified so soon after death, though John Paul himself made an exception for another high-profile servant of God, waiving the rule for Mother Teresa of Calcutta that five years pass after her death before the beatification process could begin.
There is much to say about Karol Wojtyla, the Polish priest who became John Paul II in 1978 and led the Church into the third millennium. The Register is preparing special coverage of the beatification in Rome and lining up interviews with experts to discuss John Paul’s legacy — in Church affairs, in Christian education, in life and family matters, in the New Evangelization and in world history at the end of the 20th century.
But it’s important to remember that a person is not beatified for being famous or charismatic or influential in politics. Beatification and canonization are a recognition of a person’s holiness, of his faithful response to God’s call, of a life lived according to the beatitudes, of his perseverance to the Lord’s command, “Be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect.”
As a priest and as a missionary pope, John Paul also was concerned about the holiness of God’s people. As the successor of St. Peter, he beatified and canonized more people than any previous pope — and a wider variety of people: not only priests and religious, but laypeople, family people, mothers, fathers, single people, people who worked out their salvation right where they were in the world, in whatever state of life. He did so because he realized that ordinary people needed good examples they could follow.
So, what about you? Did Pope John Paul II influence your life in any way? Was he a major influence in your spiritual life? Did anything he said, wrote or did provide a step (perhaps even the first step) on your path to holiness? Did he awaken a religious sense in you? Did he convince you of the importance of striving to be a saint, in whatever station in life God has called you?
As part of our coverage of this historic beatification, we’d like to know. Sure, it’s easy for our reporters to interview experts, philosophers, theologians, Church historians and political analysts on JPII’s legacy. But we also want to hear what he did for simple, everyday Christians.
How did John Paul impact your life? E-mail us at editor@ewtn.com. Also feel free to describe that in the blog post’s combox online. Give concrete examples. Tell your story.
And thanks.
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First of all did you folks at at the Register not get the news that came out of the Vatican’s own pilgrim site downgraded the numbers of people who are estimated to come May 1. It has been downgraded from 2.5 million (estimates are from April 2005) to now 300.000. As far as his influence on me it was minimal I remember his election and I greatly admired his mastery of many foreign languages. I also admired his intense Marian Devotion mostly the Holy Rosary. I was upset and cried when he first died, but I did not follow up on the events that followed including his funeral Mass. I really did not then and still do not now like the cult of personality that seems to follow him around even now. Too be honest with you I think his greatest gift to us was Pope Benedict XVI.
My fight was the cold war. I trained and practiced with my comrades in the US military to hold Europe for the 2 weeks needed for reinforcements to come from the United States. The equation was a simple one: We will hold, barely, then when reinforcements arrive, the Soviets will nuke us. It was a grim reality, but one I was ready to face b/c I was also studying Communism and my faith. So I was ready and expecting to give my life to fight this evil.
I believe that Pope John Paul II may have saved my very life, and probably those of millions of people.
The likelihood of the Communist system falling in my lifetime seemed so remote that I have since attributed it to the work and prayers of this man and the intercession of Our Lady. In other words, I believe that God Himself granted a miracle to the world, in part, because of this Pope.
He inspired in me a deeper love of my faith and a new devotion to our Savior, Jesus Christ, through our Blessed Mother and, in particular, Our Lady of Fatima.
Mostly, Pope John Paul II showed me something I had never seen before. He showed a very deep and extraordinary love of all people. I KNEW that he loved and prayed for me. I watched him bear his sufferings with Christ-like passion. This was a real, live, human example of how to follow Christ right to the cross, and his example still inspires in me a desire to do likewise with my own sufferings.
In 1980, our family had stopped attending any church. While I was “raised Catholic”, I had no idea who was Pope at that time & Rome seemed very far away from my everyday reality. One night I had a dream in which a man in white (who I later recognized as JPII) was walking with me on my left hand side & talking to me as we walked along a rather barren countryside.While we walked we turned a corner & I looked back over my shoulder & saw a long long long line of people following us. Then, as we walked between two boulders that were alot taller than we were, a huge snake of some description fell from one of the boulders around the back of my shoulders. While still talking and without missing a beat, the Man in White reached over & flicked the reptile off of shoulders like it was a fly.
I remember the dream like it happened last night. Over the years, I’ve become convinced that, by instituting the Feast of Divine Mercy, JPII made the Mercy of God accessible to me & to millions of other post-abortive parents who, without it, would be crushed by the guilt of snake of abortion. I know this will never be considered as a miracle by the Church but it totally is to me.
He was a man of so many contrasts. It was exciting to see how young he was when he first became pope, he was athletic. Then when he died I thought he should have retired earlier so that the Church wasn’t seen as being leaderless. There was his personal piety. I loved some of his books and writings. He brought the papacy to the world through his global evangelization efforts. Who could forget when he came to Toronto for World Youth Day. He fought communism but then it appeared that he ruled the Vatican with an iron fist. He silenced theologians and women. I can still recall when he said the idea of women priests was no longer to be discussed. What was he thinking, how out of touch could he have been and yet he would say how much he loved and respected women. How could he have been so wrong or misled by Marcial Maciel Degollado and the Legionnaires of Christ?
I struggle to think that this holy man will be a saint and yet he was the pope during the sexual abuse crisis. My heart goes out to the abuse victims and all of the good priests who have had to endure the pain this crisis brought to our Church. Will they be able to watch the beatification of John Paul? Could the Church not have waited longer for all of us to heal? What was the rush?
Regards,
Patrick J. Sheahan.
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