It’s truly amazing what happens to the human heart when Jesus gets a hold of it, and you let Him have it. Today we celebrate the feast of St. John Paul II, a man who gave over his heart to Jesus, who filled it and through it did so much good for the Church and the world. How many hearts have been converted by the sight of this saint? How many marriages have been saved by his work,
Love and Responsibility? How many vocations have been discovered through the witness of his priesthood? Karol Wojtyla, a man from Poland, set the world on fire for Jesus and His Church. Today we celebrate the life of this great saint who lived for the heart of Jesus and allowed that heart to take charge of him. Letting Jesus come into your heart and take charge is an exercise of tremendous poverty. This virtue of poverty, I believe, formed John Paul and gave him the freedom to have Jesus live in him, with him, and through him.
First, we can see John Paul’s poverty exercised in his priestly celibacy. Fr. Griffin writes that celibacy “is a form of human and indeed sexual fulfillment in which the priest is able to give himself generously, fully, and fruitfully to the Lord and to his people in a powerful way.” There was nothing empty or lacking in John Paul; he found complete fulfillment in the poverty of his celibacy because he received it as a gift from God to make him a physician of souls.This isn’t to say that loneliness is not felt in celibacy. Fr. John Cihak writes that “[t]here is an essential felt loneliness in the priesthood because there is an essential loneliness in the Cross.” But this participation in the poverty of the cross fills the heart with love and devotion to others. The gift of celibacy gives the priest the freedom to love others with his whole self without reservation and to put himself on the line for the flock when necessary. St. John Paul lived his celibacy with joy because he knew it was there that he found Jesus and had the freedom to love without reservation.
We can also look at John Paul’s poverty as it’s exercised in his fatherhood. As celibacy is the seed of a priestly vocation, John Paul’s exercise of fatherhood was the fruit of it. He loved his children with a full heart of devotion because it wasn’t a heart divided, but one belonging to Jesus. His joyful fatherhood persisted when encountering the youth, sick, and elderly: the gifts of the Church. Always, no matter who it was, John Paul practiced the fatherhood of Jesus Christ in himself. To be the Holy Father in the age of modernity is a difficult task, but he found a way to share the hardest truths with the greatest charity. As a teacher, preacher, and physician, his fatherhood captivated the whole world. However, it was in the silence of the chapel that these virtues developed and emanated from him.
This is a third way we can look at John Paul’s poverty of self: the beauty of his interior life. A man that caught the attention of so many spent each morning in the silence of his chapel. Here he drew close to Jesus and asked Our Lady to protect him and form his heart after that of her divine Son. It was the time he spent in silent adoration of our Lord in the blessed sacrament that gave him the strength to witness virtue to a world so desperate for it. John Paul is a witness to the reality of prayer and how those hours spent in the chapel are what brought people to flock to him. Ultimately it wasn’t John Paul who touched so many hearts - it was Jesus who, because of John Paul’s poverty and reliance on the Holy Spirit, made him His instrument of God’s work in the world.
St. John Paul II lived in a radical poverty that opened him to receive Jesus. In his celibacy, he experienced the love of Jesus and participation with the cross. In his fatherhood, he gave himself entirely to others in charity, truth, and devotion. In his interior life, he found that silent relationship of Jesus that grounded him and formed in him a virtue that captivated the world. St. John Paul II was a lover, and he found love in the cross of Jesus Christ, in himself, in his wounds, in his trials, and in others; he always sought and found Jesus. As we continue our pilgrimage toward our heavenly homeland, we can ask St. John Paul to aid us and show us how to live in poverty of heart so that, like him, we can be filled with Jesus, and ignite the whole world.
St. John Paul II, pray for us.
Mr. Shanahan is a College IV seminarian for the Diocese of Richmond.