The 5 Great Loves of John Paul II

In a private revelation of Our Blessed Lord to St. Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938), there is related a prophecy which has been frequently interpreted as a reference to the papacy of Pope St. John Paul II. Speaking of the experience, St. Faustina relates that, “As I was praying for Poland, I heard the words: ‘I bear a special love for Poland, and if she will be obedient to My will, I will exalt her in might and holiness. From her will come forth the spark that will prepare the world for My final coming.”’[1]

While these words provide little insight as to the imminence of Christ’s Second Coming, they certainly ring true in context of John Paul II’s life and vocation as one of the greatest Popes in the history of the Church. Even a brief examination of his life reveals a unique depth of holiness and divine charity; traits that came to define his twenty-seven year papacy, and that found their fullest expression in his outpouring of sacrifice and service for the Christian community across the globe.

As with every spark, however bright it may be, some preexisting conditions must be met before it can be ignited. To understand the nature of a fire, we must first understand the conditions that created it. For to truly understand the life and vocation of John Paul II, it must be understood, “from the inside.”[2]

The best way to arrive at this understanding is first to understand the five great loves of John Paul II’s life as these are the defining factors that shaped his contribution to the New Evangelization. As such, they are the guideposts for mapping out an accurate representation of his identify and mission.

Pope John Paul II truly believed that young people are the future of the Church and of the world. As such, they held a place of special importance within his ministry and his heart. He understood that these are the people to be evangelized first, for these are the people who need it most and who are the most receptive to the Gospel message. Countless millions of young people would gather to hear him speak, for as Jason Evert notes his popular novel, Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves, “Young people yearn for meaning, truth, love, and freedom, and they get themselves into no small amount of trouble attempting to unravel these mysteries of life … John Paul knew what the youth wanted because he knew them.”[3]

His early years as a clandestine actor in Nazi Germany helped him to form deeply human connections with his peers who were also enduring the hardships of oppression and persecution by an antihuman regime. The horror of watching his friends and loved ones die at the hands of such a regime did not embitter him but rather deepened his conviction that all life is precious, especially the life of the young.

This however, does not mean that John Paul II somehow overlooked the evangelization of the elderly or indeed of anyone in or outside of the Church, for as George Weigel explains in his biography of John Paul II, Witness to Hope:

“To those who ask, ‘Who, then, is to be evangelized?’ John Paul II has a direct answer: everyone. That evangelization takes different forms. One is the pastoral care of the evangelized people of the Church. Another is the ‘new evangelization of those who have fallen away from the Christian faith or who were poorly instructed.”[4]

The New Evangelization therefore is primarily represented by a spreading of the Gospel to those who are already members of the Church, while traditional evangelization is understood to be a spreading of the Gospel to those who have not yet received it. In his evangelization of young people, John Paul II teaches us that the Gospel is more than a mere contract to be signed and forgotten. Rather, it is living relationship with Our Redeemer which must be continually enriched and renewed.

Pope John Paul II writes in Crossing the Threshold of Hope that, “As a young priest, I learned to love human love.”[5] Like his great love of youth, his love of human love springs from his witness and endurance of countless tragedies which shamelessly violated it. His deep and authentic connection to real people in the most difficult trials and hardships fostered within him a penetrating appreciation for the dignity of human life and love. This understanding strengthened his uncompromising, authentic, and loving[6] approach to counseling married couples, for he recognized the danger inherent even within marriage of degrading the dignity of another person when human love is not properly expressed. In his own words:

“The essential reason for choosing a person must be personal, not merely sexual. Life will determine the value of a choice and the value and true magnitude of love. It is put to the test most severely when the sensual and emotional reactions themselves grow weaker, and sexual values a such lose their effect. Nothing then remains except the value of the person, and the inner truth about the love of those connected comes to light.”[7]

John Paul II was keenly aware of the primary reason that most marriages fail within the first five years, and he states it explicitly here. His great challenge to young people and to married couples therefore is to love with the mind and heart of Christ, which is by nature sacrificial. He teaches us that for evangelization to be effective, it must never compromise on principles that so powerfully affect the state and wellbeing of a human soul. Furthermore, he teaches us that these principles can be presented in a way that appeals to our natural human desire for love, happiness, and truth. There is no need to water down the truth in order for it to be accepted, nor to pummel our listeners with its often stark reality. It suffices that we set the truth free, knowing that the human heart will instinctively be drawn to it.

John Paul II recognizes the Eucharist as the source of the New Evangelization and its power while summarizing his own immense devotion to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament in his encyclical, Ecclesia De Eucharistia, where he says that:

“Every commitment to holiness, every activity aimed at carrying out the Church's mission, every work of pastoral planning, must draw the strength it needs from the Eucharistic mystery and in turn be directed to that mystery as its culmination. In the Eucharist we have Jesus, we have his redemptive sacrifice, we have his resurrection, we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, we have adoration, obedience and love of the Father. Were we to disregard the Eucharist, how could we overcome our own deficiency?”[8]

There was nothing that John Paul II believed he or the Church could accomplish without the grace of the Eucharist to empower and sustain him. Thus, he bore an unparalleled devotion to and love for Our Eucharistic Lord, taking great pains to visit the Blessed Sacrament in nearly every chapel he came across. His visits to the Blessed Sacrament were so long and so frequent that his personnel would often try to misdirect him away from the chapel so that he would not be late for his appointments or appearances. He was quick to discover their schemes however, as he possessed such a powerful attraction to Our Lord that he could sense where the Eucharist was, even behind closed doors, and would simply wave a disappointed finger at his deceivers before entering the chapel anyway.

He would rise at 5am each morning, a time when most people are asleep, and spend several hours before the Blessed Sacrament in Adoration. His love of Adoration was so great that even the communist agents who spied on him during his early priesthood noted that he would spend at least six hours in prayer each day. Of his devotion to the Eucharist, John Paul II himself explains that, “The Eucharist is the secret of my day. It gives strength and meaning to all my activities of service to the Church and to the world.”[9]

By his love of the Eucharist, John Paul II teaches us that the New Evangelization must be rooted within the Blessed Sacrament as its source and its model. No effort of service for the Church or the good of souls will bear any fruit if it is disconnected from an authentic love and emulation of Our Lord. We are therefore called to deepen our relationship with Him at every moment of our lives so that we may be empowered to bring His light and love into the world.

Second only to John Paul II’s love of the Eucharist was his love for the Mother of the Eucharist. Of this fact, Jason Evert relates that John Paul II was born on:

“The evening of May 18^th 1920, [while] parishioners of the Church of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary gathered to sing evening prayer. Across the street, thirty-six year old Emilia Wojtyla was in labor at home and noticed the sound of hymns in honor of the Virgin Mary emanating from the church. She asked her midwife to open the window in order for the songs to be heard. Amidst the sacred music, she delivered a son, Karol Jozef.[10]

The praising of Our Lady, an act which came to define the birth of John Paul II, would later come to define his entire life, from his childhood devotion to Mary to his arduous adult years slaving in the quarries of Nazi Germany to his clandestine priesthood under the watch of communist spies to his hugely successful archbishopric and ultimately to his world-renowned and game-changing papacy. Every aspect of his life and mission was characterized by and emboldened with Mary’s spirituality of faith, humility, and complete surrender to the will of God, which John Paul II expressed as, “My weakness, His mercy, My yes.”[11]

He fully understood the providential significance that Mary was to play in the coming of the third millennium, as he alludes in his encyclical Redemptoris Mater:

“Following the example of Mary, who kept and pondered in her heart everything relating to her divine Son (cf. Lk. 2:19, 51), the Church is committed to preserving the word of God and investigating its riches with discernment and prudence, in order to bear faithful witness to it before all mankind in every age.”[12]

As it was through Mary that the world received Christ physically, so it is through Mary that the world will receive Him spiritually. John Paul II’s profound understanding of this reality prompted him to pray the entire rosary each day as well as consecrate his life and papacy to her maternal care and protection. In a similar fashion, he consecrated the whole Church and world to her Immaculate Heart so that she might lead, love, and protect everyone as she did him during his lonely childhood years after his earthly mother passed away.

His devotion to Mary teaches us that we must evangelize like Mary. We must remain open for the providence of God to act in our lives in ways that we might not immediately expect, as she herself was when she uttered her “fiat” at the time of the Incarnation, thus ushering in, “the salvific design of the Most Holy Trinity, the mystery of the Incarnation [which] constitutes the superabundant fulfillment of the promise made by God to man after original sin.”[13] In doing so, we may truly become vessels of Christ’s divine grace which can then go forth and carry that grace to everyone in need.

Perhaps none of his five great loves more profoundly penetrated his life and being than his love of the cross, for the cross was truly with him from the first moment of his life until the very last, such that his entire life may be described as an ongoing crucifixion. In spite of his many terrible trials, he never became embittered by the suffering he was forced to endure, for he intimately understood the value of redemptive suffering and appreciated the vast wealth of benefits to be reaped from its patience endurance. He succinctly expresses the true significance of the cross in his encyclical, Salvifici Doloris, which says that:

“This is the meaning of suffering, which is truly supernatural and at the same time human. It is supernatural because it is rooted in the divine mystery of the Redemption of the world, and it is likewise deeply human, because in it the person discovers himself, his own humanity, his own dignity, his own mission.”[14]

Human suffering, united to the suffering of Christ, is therefore bound up within the New Evangelization itself, for it was the cross that brought about the Redemption of mankind in the first place. Thus, by his patient endurance of his constant pains and hardships, from losing all of his loved ones by the time he was 27 to growing up under two oppressive regimes to bearing the rigors of his austere religious vocation to surviving two assassination attempts to contracting Parkinson’s disease and dying a painful death, John Paul II’s life became an uninterrupted example of the New Evangelization put into practice. He attests that evangelization is more than merely the speaking of truths or the touting of theoretical principles. It is rather a witness to the love of Christ; a witness that bears its testimony most effectively through a life of suffering in union with Christ, which ultimately leads to Resurrection with Christ.

If we may glean one certainty from the prophecy of St. Faustina, it is that Pope St. John Paul II was not merely a spark but more like a flaming torch that set the whole world ablaze with renewed faith, hope, and love. As a young person myself, I am strongly impacted by the life and legacy of John Paul II, such that I find myself called to participate within the great work of the New Evangelization.

To whatever vocation I am ultimately called, I must bring the same uncompromising, authentic, and loving[15] approach to sharing the message of the Gospel with my colleagues, family, and friends. I must learn from the life and witness of John Paul II by integrating an immense love of the Eucharist, of the cross, and of Mary into my vocation. In so doing, I will be enabled to take up the great commission of Our Blessed Lord to His Apostles to make disciples of all nations, that I may one day help to bring about it fulfillment. Contained within this great commission is the call to strengthen and renew members of those nations who have already been baptized. A task which stands before all of us as immense as it is rewarding.

[1] Kowalska, St Faustina. The Diary of St. Faustina, 1732

[2] Weigel, George. Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II.

[3] Evert, Jason. Saint John Paul II: His Five Loves, 95

[4] Weigel, George. Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, 635

[5] Paul, John. Crossing the Threshold of Hope

[6] Evert, Jason. Saint John Paul II: His Five Loves, 93-97

[7] Ibid, 105

[8] Paul, John, II. "Ecclesia De Eucharistia." 60

[9] Evert, Jason. Saint John Paul II: His Five Loves, 140

[10] Evert, Jason. Saint John Paul II: His Five Loves, 3

[11] Ibid, n.p.

[12] Paul, John, II. "Redemptoris Mater” 43

[13] Ibid, 11

[14] Paul, John, II. "Salvifici Doloris, 31

[15] Evert, Jason. Saint John Paul II: His Five Loves