The one teaching of John Paul II that will
change your life
He not
only taught it, he lived it out, even as a famous world-traveling pope.
Pope St. John Paul II led
an extraordinary life. From his time as a young priest in 1950s Poland
surviving the brutalities of Communism to becoming a beloved pope who regularly
drew crowds in the hundreds of thousands, he was one of most famous and influential
people of his generation.
In the midst of it all,
however, he never lost his personal touch. For instance, when he was
shot by Mehmet Ali Agca in a 1981 assassination attempt, he later
visited the prison to personally forgive the man. He was also well known in his
younger days for heading out on retreats with small groups of friends or
parishioners deep into the mountains where they had plenty of
time for personal bonding.
It’s telling that he was
devoted to maintaining individual relationships, even while burdened with the
growing responsibilities of serving the Church. I’m just a parish priest with
far fewer demands on my attention than he had, but there are nights I’m so
tired that I go into my room, close the door, and binge on Netflix. It’s
admirable that a man as great as John Paul II managed to make time for personal
encounters when it would have been easy to get lost in the busyness and bustle
of the Vatican.
The willingness to make
time for friendship seems to be waning for many of us. Sure, social media is
connective in its own way, but any honest person knows that scrolling through a
social media feed isn’t quite the same thing as having face-to-face
conversation. This is why many people, when asked, claim to
find our technological age dehumanizing.
There are many other
factors that pull us way from connecting with others. The way we divide
ourselves into “us” and “them” camps so often, especially on social media. Or
the way long work days with long commutes zap all of our energies. It’s so easy
for many days to go by without any real, human connection.
This is why John Paul II is
so fascinating. Because of how smart and busy he was, you would think he’d only
have a few close friends or that he would struggle to remain connected to
people. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, and people who met him always
felt he had
given them his full attention. He was clearly intentional in
reaching out and made a point of getting to know people. Underneath the genius
and in all his many books and teachings, this great man was making one, simple
life-changing point: every person deserves to be loved.
In his book Love and Responsibility, he writes, “A
person’s rightful due is to be treated as an object of love, not as an object
for use.” This holds true for every encounter we have with another person,
whether it’s a family member, a co-worker, a friend, a stranger, or an enemy.
The way John Paul II lived
his own life is an example of this time and time again. For him, the problem
with the rise of technology, politicizing everything, or investing too much
time in work is not that they cross some philosophical boundary, but that they
objectify people.
To really know a person, we
need to pause and take the time to personally connect. The life of St John Paul
II shows that a happy life is not about adhering to any ideology or proving
ourselves to be right or successful – it’s about people. Every person matters.
Every person is valuable. Connection and friendship are the ways we honor that.
No comments:
Post a Comment