Happy Feast of Saint John Paul II !!! This is a very special day in our family, because of the great grace we received at the very beginning of our married life. Eileen and I met this tremendous Pope on our honeymoon, on July 3, 1996.
We spoke to him and told him that we were from the Communion and Liberation movement in the U.S.A.—which seemed to please him very much—and we hugged him and told him that we loved him. He was by this time at the beginning of his long struggle with Parkinson’s disease, and it also seemed like he carried in his heart all the profound sufferings of the Church and the world. I sensed the powerful and vulnerable reality of his humanity, and his own need for love and solidarity. I wanted very much to “stand with him” in that moment, when I said, “We love you, Holy Father.” He responded very deliberately and personally in English, “Thank you.” We then asked him to bless our marriage, and he traced the sign of the cross on our foreheads and said, “God bless you.”
Thus he blessed our marriage from the beginning, some 28+ years ago. Since then we have felt the strength of his accompaniment and the great compassion of his humanity as a sign of the closeness of Jesus Christ in all our trials and our joys. This became something new and greater after his death in 2005, and we are grateful now that we can call upon him daily as a saint in the Church.
And every night, before we go to sleep, Eileen and I still bless each other by tracing the cross on each other’s forehead. We did the same with the kids when they were growing up and we still bless Jojo, our youngest, who lives with us.
John Paul II is a saint who intercedes especially, I think, for the strengthening of the Christian and human vocation of families, for their living communion in Christ. He also helps married couples to grow in love, to forgive each other every day, to persevere through trials, and to live together the grace of the sacrament of marriage through all the stages of married life, so that we can experience the many changes in our married life and in each other as persons as a continual “calling” from Jesus to remain in Him together, to trust in His merciful love, and to be open to each other in such a way as to be “surprised” by renewed and deepened affection, understanding, and gratitude to God and each other. .I want to encourage people—especially young people—to take up this vocation of marriage, especially in a society that fears permanence, where people think they want to “keep their options open” forever, to “hold on to their freedom” even though freedom is meant to be used for the good. Freedom is made for love. Freedom is the capacity to give one’s self away, to take the risk of love of an “other” person, to move beyond ourselves and bring us to find ourselves again in relationships and communion. We can be sure that Saint John Paul II continues to say “Be not afraid” to commit yourselves to the lifelong human adventure of walking together with Jesus in the fundamental human companionship of marriage, which the Lord “supernaturalizes” by the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony into a sign of His healing and transforming love. Be not afraid to get married in Christ, who remains with you and whose grace is stronger than all your inadequacies, and who will bring you sustenance and joy in the Holy Spirit all through your married life. He will never abandon you and will give you the grace to endure together, with love, the many sacrifices and sufferings that come, building you up in His wisdom even when life feels like a whirlwind and you’re confused and you think you’re doing everything wrong. You will mess up a lot, which will humble you and teach you to ask for forgiveness and to give and receive forgiveness.
Saint John Paul II, pray for us, pray for married people, and for families! Pray for us all, for the Church, for the whole world. Pray for us to experience the mercy of God our Father who really loves us and wants us to live forever; to experience the mercy of Jesus Christ His Son who took our human nature to become one of us so that He could save us and transform us and dwell with us because He wants to be with us now and forever; to experience the mercy of the working of the Holy Spirit who transforms our way of seeing reality, so that everything reveals itself as a sign of the mystery, gratuity, and purpose of God who draws all things to Himself. The One God—a Trinity of three persons in ineffable communion—pours out gratuitous love so that we come into being and exist and seek the fullness of life, and pours out a greater gratuitousness in the grace that calls us, stirs up our hearts, gives us the desire for God, and draws us into a participation in Divine life, now and forever.
