Pope John Paul II

John Paul II, We Still Love You!

What Blessed JPII did is nothing compared to what the Holy Spirit did through Blessed JPII

April 11, 2011

 

John Paul II changed my life.

 

I know that, in the weeks and months surrounding his beatification, the newspapers and the magazines and the airwaves will be filled with people talking about how JPII "changed their lives." And I’m quite certain that he did, just as he changed mine. They’ll say "I heard his message, and it was so remarkable that I decided I had to share it." As did I. Or they decided to change the way they were living, or they decided to follow Christ in the priesthood or religious life, or they made some other life-altering decision because of his witness.

 

He did all that. But when I think about it, I realize that those stories won’t tell the whole story of what Pope John Paul II "did", or rather what the Holy Spirit did through him.

 

It’s all about much more than what we did under our own power. It’s much larger than "I heard and I decided."

 

Let’s use my story as an example. I was a senior in college when I first heard the message of JPII’s "Theology of the Body." It was in the context of a speaker series on chastity. And I was touched – deeply, profoundly moved. It was the first time I had ever connected chastity with love. Hunger for love was

fueling the sexual activity all around me, and it occurred to me that a) it wasn’t working, and b) if chastityleads to real love, then we have what they really need.

 

And we’re not telling them.

 

So I decided I wanted to tell them. I wanted to spread the message I had heard in those talks. I heard and I decided. Simple enough. But if you knew me at that point in my life, you would realize it wasn’t quite that simple. I was quite good at deciding things, but notoriously poor at actually following through with those decisions. I talked a lot. (Probably a good trait for a future speaker.)

 

This instance was no different. I liked the idea of giving talks on the Theology of the Body, but I had no idea how to make it happen. And I wasn’t particularly inclined to go out of my way to figure out how to make it happen. So I floated through the rest of my senior year, graduated, and got a job in the Silicon Valley. No big evangelist in the making there.

 

But then things started to happen. I got a call from a local pregnancy center asking me to serve on their new speaker’s bureau, going into schools and talking about – you guessed it – chastity. I agreed, and put a talk together based on the Theology of the Body. One talk turned into five, which turned into thirty, which turned into too much demand to keep my job. I quit, and was promptly hired by a major Catholic publisher. Withina year of that first talk I was traveling to other states to give talks. Within three years – still in my mid-20’s – I was training teachers and priests all over the country. I had to go back to school to bump up my credentials. At that point, I received a full-tuition scholarship to the newly formed American campus of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. And then there was too much demand to keep up with any job, and I started speaking full time. All of this happened with no promotion

or marketing effort of any kind.

 

Do you think that was the result of my own efforts, or of any "decision" of

mine? I assure you, it wasn’t.

 

Here’s the thing. It wasn’t just that John Paul II was a compelling speaker with great wisdom who inspired people to go out and share the message. He was a holy man whose words had power – real power. Things happened in people’s lives that went far beyond his words or their own decisions or their own efforts. God’s grace came into play, in amazing and powerful ways.He had natural gifts, yes. He was a brilliant, charming and charismatic man. But what made him so powerful was that he put those gifts -- and his entire life -- completely at the disposal of the God who gave them to him. And that made him more than just a gifted man. It made him an enormously effective conduit of the grace of God.

 

The amazing things that happened in our lives didn’t just happen because we heard JPII speak. They happened because JPII prayed (up to eight hours a day, according to some reports). They happened because he sacrificed and suffered on our behalf. They happened because he allowed God to use him and transform him and to shine through him. And when that happens, the results don’t stop with us, or with us. They go wherever the Spirit blows.Those things that happened in our lives, the way we realized things and

changed things and started speaking out – they were certainly a result of what he said and how he impacted us. But on a deeper level, they were all the result of the enormous grace that was released into the world through the life – and the holiness -- of Pope John Paul II.

 

My adult life would have been completely different if not for John Paul II. I suspect many of you can say the same thing. We’re grateful for that, and so we want to "pick up his mantle" – to make a difference the way he did. But there’s no way we could ever do that, is there? We aren’t brilliant like he was. We aren’t leaders of the worldwide Catholic Church.

 

And yet, we can make a difference. Not by our own efforts. Not by coming up with "a plan." Not by trying to emulate the brilliance of John Paul II or his Polish accent.

 

We’ll change lives when we emulate the holiness of His Holiness. When we pray, when we turn our lives over to God, when we surrender to His plan instead of trying to make up our own, that’s when God’s grace is released. That’s when things start to happen. We may not see them. We may never even know about them in this life. But they’ll be there.

 

So pray, surrender to God. Ask John Paul II to help you, to lead the way. Because if his work was fueled by grace, it will continue by grace.

Done