{"id":303504,"date":"2019-10-22T06:16:31","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T10:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/?p=303504"},"modified":"2019-10-22T06:22:06","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T10:22:06","slug":"the-many-nazareths-of-st-john-paul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2019\/10\/the-many-nazareths-of-st-john-paul\/","title":{"rendered":"The many Nazareths of St. John Paul"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Wikipedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

In 2011, my parish offered a special Mass to celebrate the first feast of Blessed\u00a0 John Paul, a year after his beatification. I was invited to preach. <\/em><\/p>\n

Today, the feast of Saint<\/strong> John Paul, I repost it. <\/em><\/p>\n

St. John Paul pray for us!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

+<\/p>\n

By a happy coincidence, this gospel touches on a theme that was so vital to Pope John Paul.\u00a0 In the parable, a tree is given one more chance to bring forth good fruit.\u00a0 The gardener gives it that chance; he offers it the gift of mercy.\u00a0 John Paul, you\u2019ll remember, was beatified on the Feast of Divine Mercy. \u00a0In fact, the opening prayer for this mass begins, \u201cOh God, who are rich in mercy\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercy was something Pope John Paul understood in a profound way.<\/p>\n

Less than a third of John Paul\u2019s 85 years were spent as pope. \u00a0Most of his life, in fact, was spent living and working and praying among ordinary men and women in small villages around Poland.\u00a0 From that experience, I believe, he came to understand in a very personal way how deeply the human heart seeks just one more chance, how much the soul seeks the mercy of God.<\/p>\n

So this afternoon, I wanted to speak about someone besides that man we all remember as Pope John Paul II.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like us to consider Karol Wojtyla.\u00a0 A lonely boy\u2026.a poet\u2026 a laborer working in a quarry\u2026a young man in hiding.<\/p>\n

Jesus, you\u2019ll remember, spent most of his life in Nazareth, preparing for his great public ministry.<\/p>\n

Well, Karol Wojtyla had his own Nazareth.\u00a0 He had many Nazareths, in fact \u2014 places and experiences that touched his heart and shaped his life.<\/p>\n

His first Nazareth was a town called Wadowice, where he was born.<\/p>\n

His mother died when he was eight, his older brother when he was 12.\u00a0\u00a0 Karol was raised by his father, a tailor, in a small one-room apartment. \u00a0A friend remembered entering their apartment one day to find the father and son playing soccer with a ball made of rags.<\/p>\n

His father died of a heart attack when Karol was only 20 \u2013 leaving him completely alone.<\/p>\n

His next Nazareth was Krakow, where he enrolled in a university and was required to undergo military training.\u00a0 He did as he was told, but with one exception: he refused to fire a weapon.\u00a0 After the Nazis invaded Poland, all able-bodied men were required to work, so Karol worked in a chemical factory, and labored in a limestone quarry.\u00a0 In his free time, he tried his hand at acting and writing \u2013 crafting plays and poems and short works of fiction.<\/p>\n

But after his father\u2019s death, only one thing mattered.\u00a0 He felt drawn more and more deeply to the priesthood.\u00a0 But the Nazis had closed all the seminaries.\u00a0 He began studying in secret \u2013 risking imprisonment, or even death.<\/p>\n

A year into his studies, in 1944, the Germans fled Poland.\u00a0 Karol and other seminarians reclaimed the abandoned seminary.\u00a0 The future pope volunteered for the most unpleasant work imaginable: he spent hours cleaning away piles of frozen waste in the bathrooms.<\/p>\n

That winter, he was on a railway platform waiting for a train when a 14-year-old named Edith Zierer collapsed.\u00a0 It turned out she was a Jewish girl who had fled a Nazi labor camp in Czetochowa.\u00a0 Karol picked her up and carried her to a train and traveled with her to Krakow, so she would be safe.\u00a0 Years later, she would say that Karol Wojtyla had saved her life.<\/p>\n

After he was ordained a priest, he was sent to another Nazareth, a small village about 15 miles from Krakow.\u00a0 When he arrived, the first thing he did was kneel and kiss the ground \u2014 a gesture he repeated again and again in his travels as pope.<\/p>\n

He was a typical village priest.\u00a0 He said Mass, heard confessions, presided at baptisms and weddings and funerals.\u00a0 He founded a small youth group that quickly became so popular, it grew from 20 people to 200.\u00a0 He took students hiking, kayaking and skiing.\u00a0\u00a0 While he was kayaking on the lakes of northern Poland, he got word that Pope Pius XII had named him a bishop.\u00a0 He was 38 years old.\u00a0 Karol Wojtyla refused to cut short his trip.\u00a0 He kept on paddling.<\/p>\n

And so it began.\u00a0 This is how he began the path to sainthood.\u00a0 His was a life spent not only gazing toward the heavens, but also kissing the earth.\u00a0 He picked up those who fell and rescued those in need and risked his life for what he knew to be true.\u00a0\u00a0 He saw hardship, and hate, and hope.\u00a0 He shared joys and sorrows, struggles and fears.\u00a0 And he saw God\u2019s mercy at work, in sins that were forgiven and faith that was restored.<\/p>\n

So it was that 33 years ago today, on an autumn morning in 1978, he stood before the world and said with clarity and conviction: \u201cDo not be afraid.\u201d \u00a0They were the first words of his first homily as pope.\u00a0 They were words that he had lived.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo not be afraid.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This day, we remember where they came from.<\/p>\n

And we remember, too, that greatness, even sainthood, often begins in unexpected places.<\/p>\n

Blessed John Paul had his own Nazareth.\u00a0 But so do we all.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s an apartment in Queens.\u00a0 It might be a hospital in Brooklyn, or split-level on Long Island, or a shelter in the Bronx.\u00a0\u00a0 But it is still Nazareth: the place where life is lived, where we are formed day-by-day, where we learn and grow and love.<\/p>\n

These are the places where God\u2019s plan unfolds.<\/p>\n

He has a plan for each of us \u2013 just as He did for Karol Wojtyla.<\/p>\n

So, on this, his first feast day, we recall that lonely boy from Wadowice, that poet in Krakow, that laborer in the mines, that priest in the kayak paddling against the current.\u00a0 We pray for his intercession, and his companionship.\u00a0 We ask him to be with us, to guide us, to be a reminder to us of God\u2019s infinite mercy.<\/p>\n

And we ask him to help us remember the words that gave light to world hidden in darkness \u2014 words that angels spoke to shepherds two thousand years ago, and that then echoed in our own age, from Rome to Gdansk to Manila to Denver to New York.<\/p>\n

They are words of boundless hope.<\/p>\n

This is the message of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

And this is the message of now-Blessed John Paul \u2014 the message he learned as Karol Wojtyla: no matter how lonely, how isolated, how persecuted, how endangered we might feel\u2026no matter how wide the world or how great our challenges\u2026a merciful God is with us.\u00a0 He calls on us still to remember that.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo not be afraid.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2011, my parish offered a special Mass to celebrate the first feast of Blessed\u00a0 John Paul, a year after his beatification. I was invited to preach. Today, the feast of Saint John Paul, I repost it. St. John Paul pray for us!\u00a0 + By a happy coincidence, this gospel touches on a theme that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":303513,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21],"tags":[947],"class_list":["post-303504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hanging-with-the-saints","category-homilies","tag-pope-john-paul-ii"],"yoast_head":"\nThe many Nazareths of St. John Paul<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In 2011, my parish offered a special Mass to celebrate the first feast of Blessed\u00a0 John Paul, a year after his beatification. 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