A LOOK AT THE SUFFERINGS OF SAINT POPE JOHN PAUL II & MARIAN DEVOTIONS
Karol Josef Wojtyla was just a month short of nine years when he lost his mother (Emilia Kaczorowska) as a result kidney and heart problems in 1929. At nineteen, Karol turned to Mary to be his mother. From the shaping of Marian devotion in his early childhood to his final hours, when an image of suffering Christ and a painting of the Blessed Mother hung near his bed in his papal apartment, and even is death, when a cross and the solitary letter “M” adorned his casket, the Blessed Mother never left him. Young Karol took Mary into everything about his life, and her indwelling wove the Marian Thread in his priestly vocation.
One cannot understand St Pope John Paul II’s total gift f self without knowing something of the life and spirituality of St Louis Marie. Louis Marie was a priest who described his vocational objectives in this way_ “I feel a great desire to make Our Lord and His Holy Mother loved, and to go about in a poor and simple way, catechizing poor country people”. As a young man Karol Wojtyla would discover through Saint Louis Marie’s writing that the purpose of sound devotion to the Blessed Mother is to establish devotion to Jesus more perfectly. In his episcopal arms is the motto “Totus Tuus” which expresses the total belonging to Jesus through Mary. “I am all yours and all I have is yours, O dear Jesus, through Mary, your holy Mother”. Karol never ceased to ask Mary for prayers, this he does by visiting the Marian Shrines in Poland. Some of his devotions were Our Mother of Perpetual Help, Our Lady of the Angels, Our Lady of Czestochowa (Black Maddona) on whose account the Polish were given victory in a series of battles.
His life was marked with suffering. Even before he was born, his infant sister (Olga) died. Three years after his mother’s death, his 26 year old brother (Edmund), a Physician, also died of Scarlet fever (contracted from one of his patients). Then came the greatest tragedy of all: the death of his father whose example he described as ‘my first seminary’.
In 1944, he was hit by a truck. Thrown onto the curb, he hit his head and lay unconscious. By divine providence he was rescued by German military officer, he was picked up and made sure he was taken care of at the nearest hospital. He was beset by physical difficulties including broken thigh that led to femur-replacement surgery, the removal of his precancerous tube from his colon and a fall that led to a dislocated shoulder. On the feast on Our Lady of Fatima, a bullet ripped into his stomach, right elbow, and left hand in St Peter’s Square. The Parkinson’s disease that he later developed may well have been caused by the wounds. It is said that he missed death by “a matter of millimeters”. Even more remarkable are the x-rays that would reveal the trace of the bullet through the Pope’s body, which formed the letter “M”.
St John Paul II wrote two encyclicals: Redemptoris Mater (1987) and Mulieris Dignitatem (1988) and in a series of seventy Wednesday audience catecheses (1995-1997) to draw our mind back to the salvific role of the Mother of the Redeemer. No wonder he is rightly known as “Mary’s Pope” or the “Most Marian Pope in History”.
It is fitting that, like the sorrowful Mother, he becomes known as “a man of suffering, accustomed with infirmity” (Isaiah 53:3), and who never run away from the cross. The cross in our lives can mean loneliness, rejection, ridicule, and unjust accusations. Never climb down from the cross, for Jesus never did.
To Be Continued….
Mother of Perpetual Help, Pray for us!!!
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