Posted on 04/11/2010 2:24:01 AM PDT by GonzoII
Following Pope John Paul II’s death five years ago, the world prayerfully reflected on a life that had transformed the lives of millions of people worldwide.
Today, the world continues to reflect on the life of Pope John Paul II because his teaching and his actions point the way forward to building a future worthy of man.
How best to serve our fellow man? This is the timeless challenge of both political and religious leaders, but it was Pope John Paul II who most resolutely taught the world, religious and non-religious alike, that a future worthy of man must be rooted in recognition of the incomparable dignity of the human person and a commitment on behalf of the human person.
From his election in October 1978, Pope John Paul II constantly preached that it was only through an understanding of Jesus Christ that man could fully understand his great dignity — the dignity of the human person — and therefore no country anywhere in the world had a right to separate man from the pursuit of knowing and loving God.
This demand for freedom of faith had powerful social and political implications.
When the Pope preached this message in June 1979 in Warsaw’s Victory Square, on an altar with the backdrop of a 50-foot cross, 1 million of his fellow Poles responded in affirmation with 14 minutes of applause, interrupted by singing in one voice: “Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat” (“Christ Conquers, Christ Reigns, Christ Governs”). In an officially atheistic country, the Polish people dramatically bore witness that God, not the state, was sovereign.
Later in the same homily, when the Pope recalled the great sacrifices made by the Poles during the Warsaw Uprising, the people responded by singing an old Polish song, “We Want God.”
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
John Paul the Great. I sure miss him.
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