22 October 2018
Optional Memorial of St. John Paul II, Pope
“Take care to guard against all greed,
for though one may be rich,
one’s life does not consist of possessions.” (Luke 12:15)
The one who heeds this warning is the one who can begin to be a servant who conforms his will to the will of the Lord, who can finally be faithful to the likeness he bears within himself to the Most Blessed Trinity. One of St. John Paul II’s favorite proclamations from the Second Vatican Council was from Gaudium et Spes: “man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” (GS 24.3) Fullness of human life is not to be found in the mountain of possessions that I say belong to me.
Rather, fullness of human life is found in the richness known only to those who know the one to whom they belong. “The Lord made us, we belong to him.” (Psalm 100:3) Our earthly possessions do not obtain this belonging for us, but rather the riches of the one who teaches us what it truly means to be rich: “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved), raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-6) We do not fill ourselves, we do not save ourselves, we do not make ourselves. “The Lord made us, we belong to him.” What news of great joy!
Surely it was contemplating this God who gives himself to us in mercy that inspired St. John Paul II to spend so many hours a day giving himself back God in prayer, to give himself to the faithful in hours of writing each day and in traveling to visit the people of God in 129 countries over the course of his pontificate. Through his intercession, may we too come to know the one to whom we belong, the God who is rich in mercy. “Making the Father present as love and mercy is, in Christ’s own consciousness, the fundamental touchstone of His mission as the Messiah,” the saintly pope wrote in Dives in Misericordia. (DM 3) May our lives be conformed to such self-giving service of Christ our Lord.