Pope John Paul II

Today we celebrate the September 15th liturgy of Our Lady's Sorrows, Our Lady Corredemptrix, which is Our Lady of Sorrows, and it's looking at it from a devotional aspect.

Pope John Paul II spoke of the Corredemption.

He taught it very clearly.

He used the word even six times when he was pope.

I mean, official ones and stuff.

But again, there's oftentimes, again, when you're reading Ratzinger, when you're reading Pope John Paul II, when you're reading Thomas Aquinas or Augustine, it can be a hard language to get into, but there's a lot there.

Why the reticence, Randall? And maybe I'm asking a question that has an obvious answer, but why the unwillingness to do the work of kind of hacking the weeds of the language so that we can get into the meal?

Yeah, I mean, look, learning a new language and learning a new culture is are difficult things, right? I mean, we should admit that, particularly for Americans, of course, because we don't have multiple languages.

And, and it's, and here's a good example of how it's failed to be that.

By the way, somebody told me, who is really close to John Paul II, involved even in drafting some of John Paul II's encyclicals, that, um, he, when he asked for a compendium, what he had in mind was a document maybe 30 pages long.

Mm.

He wanted what we would call a précis or summary or a quick guide or executive summary, and, uh, he never got that.

Saint Pope Paul VI, pray for us.

Saint John Paul II, pray for us.

In the name of the Father, and

of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

If you do the stations of the cross, this is the wisdom of the church.

We're seeing our means of salvation through suffering that we actually are meant to engage and enjoy human suffering.

That apostolic letter, Salvifici Doloris, written by Pope St. John Paul II, I think is so relevant to this conversation, where he talks about the writings of St. Paul in the letters to the Romans, where the apostle we read details still more fully with the theme of this, quote, birth of power and weakness.

This spiritual tempering of man, as Pope St. John Paul II referred to it, a particular vocation of all of those, Pope St. John Paul II said, who share in Christ's suffering, this tempering of the human person, this suffering that we're meant to engage in.

For his fifteenth anniversary, Pope John Paul II was scheduled to be interviewed by an Italian journalist.

Uncharacteristically, Pope John Paul canceled this interview at the very, very last minute due to a change in his schedule.

He was so bothered by the fact that he needed to cancel this interview, and on such short notice, our pope personally called the interviewer and asked him to send over a list of the questions.

Now, in this book, when asked about heaven, purgatory, and hell, the pope mentioned that he believed that we, we the clergy of the Church, in our human weaknesses, have failed to speak more often and more openly about hell and the possibility of a person's eternal damnation.

Well, to be honest, I'm sure how I could skip talking about hell this week when the first reading warns that our unforgiving actions can bring us, quote, "To suffer the Lord's vengeance", and the gospel tells us how the unforgiving servant who could never, never repay his debt is sentenced to an eternity of torture.

However, to be sure that I do not miss this opportunity, and out of respect for one of my heroes, Pope John Paul II, let me be clear.

If any of us think that we are on our way to heaven and that we can withhold forgiveness for others along the way, then we are sadly, sadly mistaken.

We may be eternally damned, or we may end up in purgatory until we can let go of those feelings that we feel more strongly about than Jesus, but if we are withholding forgiveness, heaven is not happening.

Are we being faithful to the Vatican documents, particularly Sacrosanctum Concilium, which was the first document of Vatican II? And so this morning has been dedicated to going back to that document as a source document and to see and to recognize the, the theological principles that underlie the liturgy, to become conscious of those, and to see how we are in fact living them in our own liturgies.

Speaking of Sacrosanctum Concilium, so we're looking at this after sixty years, and over these years, over this period, if we look at the popes that we've had, starting from Pope John Paul, he actually stressed the need for inculturation, that local communities should live, you know, liturgy according to their norms.

But how do local communities do that without injuring [chuckles] liturgy?

Correct, Sheila, because one of the things after the Second Vatican Council, and I'm a testimony to this because I was a young priest, uh, you know, about, um, twenty years after the council and a student before that, uh, for, for the priesthood.

You know, now this leads me to one of the great arguments of feminists to try to prove that the church is discriminating against women.

Can women become priests? And our Holy Father John Paul II declared quite officially, you know, repeating the whole tradition of the Church, no, this is not a woman's vocation.

Now Father, I think that we should do some thinking about this because, I mean, it's a problem which is so very, very actual.

And it seems to me that we have to make a distinction between two things.

So there's another, again, I think it was in an encyclical.

Pope John Paul II wrote about Mary.

I'm going to get the date wrong.

you'll know this, you'll know it, but where he, he basically, he makes the point.