TWENTY QUOTES FROM ST. JOHN PAUL THE GREAT

On April 2nd 2005, St. John Paul the Great died shy of his 85th birthday. The Catholic Church was at a loss for words on the death of this holy and courageous pope. He was a pilgrim pope who led the Catholic church into the new millennium. He stood up to communism, the culture of death, and reignited a fire among the youth in the church.

As the church remembers this beloved son, here are twenty quotes to ponder on the 20th anniversary of his death.

“The future starts today, not tomorrow.”

“Have no fear of moving into the unknown. Simply step out fearlessly knowing that I am with you, therefore no harm can befall you; all is very, very well. Do this in complete faith and confidence.”

“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and Alleluia is our song.”

“The Eucharist is a never-ending source of missionary and apostolic dynamism for the Christian family.”

“Wherever people are suffering, make it your task to serve them.”

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you.”

“The saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult moments in the Church’s history.”

“There is nothing more man needs than Divine Mercy – that love which is benevolent, which is compassionate, which raises man above his weakness to the infinite heights to the holiness of God.”

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth..." 

“A nation that kills its people has no hope”

“As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live.”

“We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.”

“Only in Christ can men and women find answers to the ultimate questions that trouble them. Only in Christ can they fully understand their dignity as persons created and loved by God. Jesus Christ is ‘the only Son from the Father…full of grace and truth.'”

“Love between man and woman cannot be built without sacrifices and self-denial.”

“From the paradox of the Cross springs the answer to our most worrying questions. Christ suffers for us. He takes upon himself the sufferings of everyone and redeems them. Christ suffers with us, enabling us to share our pain with him.  United to the suffering of Christ, human suffering becomes a means of salvation.”

"Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch."

“We are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the “culture of death” and the “culture of life”. We find ourselves not only faced with but necessarily in the midst of this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life.”

“It is Jesus you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.”

“Remember that you are never alone, Christ is with you on your journey every day of your lives! He has called you and chosen you to live in the freedom of the children of God. Turn to him in prayer and in love. Ask him to grant you the courage and strength to live in this freedom always. Walk with him who is “the Way, the Truth and the Life”!

“Let us remember the past with gratitude, live the present with enthusiasm, and look forward to the future with confidence.”