DO NOT APPLAUD, BUT FOLLOW
LIDIA DUDKIEWICZ, The Editor-in-Chief of ‘Niedziela’
Once I heard from a friend of Karol Wojtyła, remembering their school years, the following opinion: ‘John Paul II is Lolek from Wadowice who grew up even to Heaven’. This saint gigantic man of prayer tied the Heaven with the Earth, which is proven by constant audience meetings at his grave in Vatican. In the year of canonization of the Holy Father, the Papal Day attributable to 12 October, is celebrated under the motto: ‘John Paul II - be the saints!’. There appear words here said in Stary Sącz, during a papal pilgrimage: ‘Saints do not pass away. They live and are calling us for holiness’.
There are various roads of holiness, like there are our various life roads of vocation: not only the church, but also home, work, school, street – are places of sanctification. Saints are among us. Angels are among us and have particular faces. Pope Francis notes that holiness does not have to be based on doing unusual things, but on allowing God act in us, simply – in our everyday life. An excellent space in aiming at holiness is the family. In reference to debates of the synod devoted to the family and taking place in Vatican, pope Francis emphasized that in the Gospel there is everything which is an answer to the deepest needs of the man. And because the Holy Father is very clear, on the day of the synod inauguration, 5 October this year, gifted believers gathered at the gates of the synod with the book of the Holy Scripture, encouraging them to read it in their families.
During the canonization of John Paul II, Pope Francis called him the pope of families. He had raised many people full of holiness, and who had realized their vocation in their families, to the dignity of altars. The example is St. Joanna Beretta Molla, an Italian doctor. The pope of families used to say: ‘Saints do not demand applauses from us, but our following them’. Surely St. John Paul II will ‘speak’ at the current synod. For, he had courage to defend the family from ‘a mad attempt of writing an anti-Book of the Genesis, aimed against the Creator’, as it was expressed by cardinal Angelo Comastri. The Polish Pope left us the treasury of thoughts about theology of the body in reference to the unusual sanctuary, which is the family full of love between spouses, whose fruit are their children. Archbishop Wacław Depo, at the hour of the Jasna Góra Appeal prayer, on the day of the synod beginning reminded, that it was just John Paul II who added the calling to the Loreto Litany: ‘Queen of families – pray for us’.
On the occasion of the Papal Day, we should wish one another the holy life of John Paul II to become the measure of holiness of our life.
AA
„Niedziela” 41/2014