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› Pope John Paul II
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Freedom, Truth, Gift, Communion, Dignity, Love…
Freedom, truth, gift, communion, dignity, love, person, meaning: these are all themes which are continually found throughout the writings of Pope John Paul II. They were there even before he became pope. As Cardinal Karol Wojtyla he was influential in the writing of several documents from Vatican II, not the least of which was Gaudium et Spes — the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World — from which he never tired of quoting in his many encyclicals and apostolic letters.
“Man is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, [and he] cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” (Gaudium et Spes 24)
We must first know the purpose of our existence and what we were created for if we are to live a fully meaningful life. Pope John Paul II explored the purpose of our existence in his Theology of the Body, which consists of 129 general Wednesday audiences delivered by him during the first five years of his pontificate.
Prior to his election as pope, John Paul II wrote a book, Love and Responsibility. In Love and Responsibility Karol Wojtyla presented the Catholic Church’s teaching on love and sexuality in a way that makes sense to modern man. Wo jtyla stressed the dignity of the person and showed how important it is to live our sexuality in a way which upholds and affirms the other person. Indeed, the true lover will never use another person or treat her as a means to an end.
In his Theology of the Body John Paul II dug deep into the meaning of being a human person based on Scripture. As a person with a body and soul, made in the image and likeness of God, we find the meaning of life through finding out what it means to image God and what our bodies have to do with it. We not only image God through the gift of free-will, but also through being in communion with others.
“To be human means to be called to interpersonal communion.” Why? Because God himself is a communion of persons in the Trinity. John Paul II explained, “Man became the “image and likeness” of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons which man and woman form right from the beginning.” (TOB, Nov. 14, 1979)
