A dictator and a disciple, both men had a tremendous impact on the world, and they were both masters of communication. Fulton Sheen saw the power of the new media and became a radio and TV personality who used the airwaves to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They both faced failure and correction, but went in two very different ways.

Difference Between Word and Action

The two sons of today’s Gospel give a verbal answer that is different from what they actually do. It is not enough to say yes; we have to also act according to what we promise to do. While many people tend to criticize new media and see only a tendency to ruin communication, Archbishop Sheen saw a tremendous opportunity to spread the faith.

Fulton Sheen is a man who spoke and wrote profusely, and lived up to his words with his life. This is why the Church recognizes his heroic virtue, and he is in the process of becoming a saint. For someone to become a saint, normally his cause is introduced in a diocese before going on to Rome. Then, at some point he is beatified and we call him or her “Blessed.” This is the case for Archbishop Sheen now. Finally, the Church gives her final approval and the person is canonized, receiving the title of “Saint.”

Many times, when we want to get to know a saint, we are going to look for biographies. For Fulton Sheen, he has written enough for us to get a good sense of the man. Furthermore, many of his videos are online and give a window into the soul of this great evangelizer.

Love for Christ

The range of his writing is impressive. His Life of Christ is one of the great books to get to know the life of Jesus if you want to go beyond reading the Gospels. He brings a lot of knowledge and experience to his re-telling of the history of Jesus Christ. For those wanting to grow in devotion to Mary, The World’s First Love is one of my favorite books of Marian devotion. He has such a gentle way of presenting Mary that it seems like our hearts melt into hers. In my own journey to the priesthood, A Priest Is Not His Own was an important book. It is a great reminder to priests from a solid spiritual father that his priesthood is not a source of glory but rather a call to service.

Heroic Life

Finally, it is uplifting to read his autobiography Treasure in Clay, which I read again this year. It can serve as an exercise in seeing your own life through the prism of Christ’s eyes.

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We can sympathize with the two sons from today’s Gospel. We often don’t feel like doing our duty. We might protest that we don’t want to do it, or we might shirk the work. But we are called to hop up and get it done, as Fulton Sheen did throughout his life. A saint isn’t someone who naturally does what is right. It is the one who keeps getting up. This is what Christ calls us to do. The Gospel gives us hope because Christ is not asking whether we have always said yes. Rather, he is asking what we will do now.

If you watch the videos of his talks, you will discover a witty, humorous man with a deep love and devotion to Jesus Christ. We need more of this in our world. Whenever we discover another saintly life, it is an invitation to look at ourselves and see how we can respond more faithfully to the invitation that Christ extends to us.

What attitude are you going to bring into this week? We can be tempted to lie around in protest to life’s problems. Or, we can get up and begin finding solutions. This is the Christian way to live. This is the way Fulton Sheen lived. Blessed Fulton Sheen, pray for us!

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From the time we came into existence, God has assigned a guardian angel to each one of us. Our guardian angel’s primary purpose is to get us to Heaven. He is supposed to protect and shepherd us. Finally, he intercedes to God on our behalf. Your guardian angel is your greatest ally for your spiritual life, and you should grow in your devotion if you want to grow in holiness. The other day, I came across a passage that still has me thinking about our relationship with our guardian angel. I would be careful about claiming a guardian angel is designed with a personality, but I was intrigued by what the author had to say.

We’ve all heard that we become the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Your guardian angel was specifically designed with a personality that was meant to rub off on you. You’re supposed to have a certain amount of psychological compatibility with your guardian angel — his personality was meant to influence you, the decisions that you make, the way that you speak, the way that you think. And God designed this from the beginning (Cameron Riecker “The Devil Revealed to Padre Pio the Secret to Beating Lust”).

How is it that your angel’s “personality” is supposed to do something that changes how you act and brings you closer to God? It seems like it is a lot to say that an angel has a personality, but I do think our angels interact in a way that helps us grow in holiness. An angel is created with intellect and will, and his purpose is to aid you in your spiritual journey.

It is perhaps hard to speak of a “personality” regarding angels. However, we can say confidently that each angel is different from the others. When St. Thomas Aquinas reflects on the angels, he shares that as spiritual substances not individualized by physical bodies, each angel is completely unique (cf. Summa Theologica, I, q. 50, a. 5). Perhaps along these lines, we could think of our angels having a personality.

Our angel looks for the way to help us in our spiritual journey, illuminating our minds towards the good and helping us resist what draws us away from God.. Personally, I think this is very hard to imagine. But I will do my best to explain it and would love to get other people’s perspectives.

Our guardian angels do not need to learn about our human nature the same way we do. But each angel accompanies us through the circumstances of our lives and suggests a course of action that leads us towards Heaven and holiness.

What does it mean to be guided by an intelligence immensely higher than our own? This is one of the great gifts that God gives us and I think few of us really take advantage of it. Perhaps, we are used to praying a simple prayer to our guardian angel before traveling or when we are going to bed. However, this seems like too powerful of an ally to relegate to peripheral areas of our lives. We should get in the habit of consulting our guardian angels frequently.

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Especially when we are experiencing temptation, we should turn to our guardian angel to petition grace and strength. A guardian angel doesn’t intervene only in crisis moments, like Desmond Doss at Hacksaw Ridge. Our guardian angel is right beside us when we are thinking about cheating on a test, saying an unkind word, or cutting someone off in traffic. By responding to his guidance, we draw closer to God and cooperate more fully in the work of our salvation.

Perhaps our guardian angel wants more than occasional prayer before bed or when we find ourselves in danger. Maybe he is waiting for us to invite him into the everyday decisions we have to take, because this is where holiness is won or lost.

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Karol Wojtyła had moments to consider his own future rather grimly. He had lost his brother and both of his parents. The Nazi occupiers were replaced by Soviets who controlled the government of the country he loved so much. Even from a young age, he possessed what we might characterize as the “folly of the saints” and it came out clearly in his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, proclaiming Christ to be the Redeemer of Man.

While others look to the Second Vatican Council as an abandonment or at least a departure from traditional Catholic living, Wojtyła saw it as a necessary step in the ongoing mission of the Church. Only by opening the windows of the Church to the world, as Pope St. John XXIII envisioned the historic meeting of bishops in Rome, could the Church hope to dialogue with a world that had changed so radically in countless ways. Wojtyła didn’t see engagement with the world as abandoning Christ. He saw it as a way of bringing Christ into the modern world.

In the Steps of Paul VI

Cardinal Wojtyla saw the former Archbishop of Milan as a prophetic voice. Cardinal Montini was going to inherit a curious situation when he took the reins of the Church as Pope Paul VI upon the death of Good Pope John. In the Church of Pope Pius XII and Humani Generis, Archbishop Roncalli, Monsignor Montini, and Fr. Wojtyła looked ahead 50 years to the dawn of the third millennium. Aware of the problems of their times, with the risk of nuclear proliferation and worries about tremendous change in society, they were nevertheless more excited about the fact that Jesus was going to influence the third millennium.

In the encyclical, Pope St. John Paul II saw himself in continuity with Pope St. Paul VI even to the point that he continued some of the same self-questioning about the direction of the Church. To be Pope is an amazing thing because the man can do a lot to steer the rudder of the Barque of Peter, but he is mandated to listen closely to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. He felt a strong calling to foster a new advent in the Church while serving as a good shepherd, called to care for the sheep.

Learning from Architecture

In the Basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome, the words of Jesus and Peter adorn a banner going around the church. When one turns toward the center of the church from the image of Our Lady of Good Help, he sees the words, strengthen your brethren. In addition to feeding the sheep, Peter was called to strengthen his brethren once he turned back from his betrayal of Jesus. The words are emblazoned there to remind all successors of St. Peter that they are called to strengthen their brethren, first their brother bishops and through them the entire Church.

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Walking through the Basilica and reflecting on the various encounters of Jesus with Peter is always striking. How much deeper must the experience be for the Pontiffs wandering through when all the pilgrims are absent? I loved visiting St. Peter’s early in the morning, with barely anyone inside. You felt like you were locked in a museum, but something with greater significance than a museum. For the Popes, it is almost like a time machine, transporting them to the time of Jesus, and they take their marching orders from him. This is not in the sense that they physically hear the voice of Christ, but their habits of prayer help them to make a deep experience. At least, that’s the way I imagine it. The Pope, too, has to remember that he is not the center. Pope John Paul II expresses this beautifully in his poem, “The Floor.” Just like Peter, the Pope is there to strengthen his brethren by pointing them toward Christ.

Walking Toward Jesus

From the first days of his pontificate, and throughout the more than quarter century that followed, John Paul II was always walking toward Christ and inviting the Church to follow.

Our spirit is set in one direction; the only direction for our intellect, will, and heart is towards Christ our Redeemer, towards Christ the Redeemer of man. We wish to look towards him because there is salvation in no one else but him, the Son of God (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 7).

In the recent note from three dicasteries in the Vatican, the Church reminds us again today that Jesus is the one savior of mankind. While there is a shared heritage between Christians and Jews, Christians cannot look to Judaism as a parallel path of salvation (cf. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, “Note. A Journey of Hope. Sixty Years of Interreligious Dialogue and Fraternity in the Light of the Conciliar Declaration Nostra Aetate”). Remembering the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Declaration Dominus Iesus (2000), there is a consistent insistence on Jesus as the unique savior of mankind. This insistence is due, in large part, to the pontificate of Pope John Paul II.

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The Church has always been aware, and the Council developed the need to see Christ as the head through whom we exist. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and the resurrection and the life. Because of Christ, the Church is a “kind of sacrament or sign and means of intimate union with God, and the unity of all mankind” (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 7). In the first part of the 20^th century, much theological reflection had revolved around the sacraments and the need for a renewed life of the Church. We can look at the efforts of the Council Fathers as a deep dive into this renewed theology and a presentation of the same perennial truths to the modern world. Wojtyła always admired the work of the Council and did his best to promote its work throughout his pontificate.

Need for Return

John Paul II recognized the need of the Church to return constantly to Christ. With Peter, the Church recognizes the unique role of Jesus Christ. Being God, he speaks to man also as man. This is part of what gives Christ such an incisive insight into the meaning and purpose of the life of every human being.

We may experience suffering and abandonment. In Jesus, we find the God-man who also suffered physical pain and abandonment. In the Eucharist, the Church finds her “‘fountain of life and holiness,’ the efficacious sign of grace and reconciliation with God, and the pledge of eternal life” (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 7). So much of what the Church is a source of grace and redemption to others, as her mission is an extension of Christ’s mission. This is how she “stays within the sphere of the mystery of the Redemption, which has become the fundamental principle of her life and mission” (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 7).

When we are going through difficult times, we need to turn to Jesus and his Church, remembering that we receive the sacraments of salvation so that we can be happy with him forever in Heaven. We don’t begin by managing our lives. We begin with Christ.

We have to look for Jesus before it is too late. As Isaiah says in the first reading, “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call him while he is near” (Is. 55:6). There is a huge risk in thinking that there will always be time. In the ancient Church, many had the bad habit of delaying baptism. They wanted to wait until later in life so they could take the demands of Christianity seriously. They ran a great risk: we never know how much time we have. It also misses something important about our lives in Christ: we are all called to holiness.

Call to Holiness

The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, dedicates Chapter V to the Universal Call to Holiness within the Church. It was commonly misunderstood in the past that priests and religious are called to holiness, while the laity kind of coexists in the Church. The Council Fathers wanted to make it clear that we are all called to holiness.

The Lord Jesus, the divine Teacher and Model of all perfection, preached holiness of life to each and everyone of His disciples of every condition (Lumen Gentium, 40).

Now, the question becomes: how do we follow Jesus? Today’s Gospel gives such a powerful image about following him. Jesus tells a parable about workers in the field, all waiting to be called into work, each being called at a different moment.

The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard (Mt. 20:1). Some are called to Christ from childhood. Others encounter him after years of wondering. Others come to Christ very late in life. The parable reminds us that when the call comes, the important thing is to answer it.

Called from dawn

Some people are blessed to be called from dawn. They have always had a sense of what it means to follow Jesus. They have always been basically on the right path. Of course, they have moments of difficulty, but they have the grace to know Jesus and follow him. It would seem that this is the best possible life. And yet, Jesus warns of an insidious attitude that can sneak in. They can resent the fact that they have always been on the path. They can look around and feel that it is more fun to mess around for a while before finding Jesus.

I remember speaking with married people who nearly regret meeting their spouses too young. They think, I could have had other experiences first. I am not sure I have made the right decision. Early fidelity is a gift, and we have to learn to see it as such. When you get married and have kids, one of the greatest gifts you can give them is growing up in the faith.

Called during the heat of the day

Others get called later in life. They have perhaps had a turbulent past. As they want to get their lives in order, they “find religion” as part of their ordering process. They discover the challenges of Christian life and sometimes envy those who have had Christ from early on, because they have to work doubly hard to build the habits they see come so easily to others.

There is something beautiful about being called in the heat of the day. These people know what Christ has rescued them from. They know the difference he makes and their past does not disqualify them from holiness.

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Called at the last minute

It is incredible to me how Jesus speaks of the ones called in the evening. These are the ones who seem to give only the twilight years of their lives to Jesus. We don’t want to risk something like this but we can admire God’s grace when it enters someone’s life in such a marvelous way.

Reckoning

When they come together for wages, they all receive a denarius, the Roman coin worth a day’s labor. The first ones are jealous. They are surprised that they have worked so long and hard, while their work is valued the same as the late arrivals. What is the message Jesus is sending with this parable? Salvation is a gift, not a recompense. We can’t stand before God and expect payment for what we have done. Everything we have, including the grace to work in his vineyard, is already his gift.

We have to follow Christ when he calls us. Hopefully, it is as early as possible. I have run into many people who perhaps get tired along the way. I see this in people following religious and priestly vocations as well. Should I have experienced more things beforehand? While comprehensible, it always seems tremendously shortsighted to me. We should not fear following Christ, but rather appreciate that he calls us. That is why Pope Benedict XVI spoke so powerfully at his inaugural Mass about our fear of giving ourselves completely to Christ.

If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great (Pope Benedict XVI, Inaugural Mass, 24 April 2005).

Maybe Christ is calling you to eliminate a particular sin.

Perhaps he is calling you to confession.

Maybe he is calling you to repair a relationship.

Perhaps he is calling you to take seriously a vocation you have been avoiding.

Is today the day he is calling you to take the first step toward become Catholic?

Perhaps he is calling you simply to stop putting off the conversion you already know you need.

Do not worry about how many hours remain in the workday. Answer the call you have received today.

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Others become interested because of the doctrinal solidity of the Catholic Church. Even if they have personal qualms about some of the teaching, they admire that the Church has maintained the same teaching in spite of the world changing so much. There is something comforting about knowing that truth doesn’t change.

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Not Quite Enough

I appreciate both of these starting points for people who become interested in the Catholic Church. And yet, I find them to be insufficient. I think we are looking for more than a historically cogent account of salvation and a teacher who does not change the syllabus halfway through the semester. We are seeking meaning. We are seeking the face of God.

When we come to faith, we have to be careful to not be too easily satisfied. Nothing less than God can fill us up.

As I lead people through the teachings of Catholicism, I enjoy the back and forth and learn from the questions they ask. At the same time, I carry in the back of my mind the constant concern that they may grow in their love for Jesus. If they were to become Catholic but don’t encounter Jesus, I certainly feel I have failed as a guide.

The Surprise

While we are truly seeking God, the surprising truth is that he is the one seeking us. We are hard-wired to seek Him. Augustine, the saintly bishop from Hippo, North Africa, phrased it: “Our hearts are restless until we rest in him.” Our desire to love is ordered towards Him.

God wants you and loves you. How are you going to respond?

When we want to get to know the faith, we look at the Creed, the set of basic doctrines laid down in the early Church and that serve as a litmus test for our faith. The word for “creed” in Greek is symbolon. This means a sign or identifying mark. For us, it becomes our identity and signifies our relationship with God. We are not merely setting down a series of affirmations. We are establishing a relationship with God.

Called To Seek

It is important that as we seek to grow in the faith, we recognize that we are called to be seekers. We are seekers of truth. We are seekers of answers. We want to know who we are. What does it mean to be spiritual? What does it mean to have a soul? What does it mean to be human?

Perhaps we become suspicious that we can only find the deepest meaning of our lives if we discover our relationship with God. He made us for himself and we discover who we are, only in relationship with him. Heeding one of Pope St. John Paul II’s favorite lines from the Second Vatican Council, we let the words of Gaudium et Spes 22 echo in our hearts:

Only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.

The Good News is that we don’t have to just look for God. This is the story of all humanity, looking for God. The wonderful miracle we live as Christians is that God has come looking for us. This is the mystery of Divine Revelation – God’s communication of himself, most fully realized in sending us his own divine Son, Jesus Christ.

And so, as we seek God, we run through various sources that connect us to him, especially Sacred Scripture. Additionally, we have Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church that help us to understand who God is and how he wants to establish a relationship with each one of us.

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Let’s pray for everyone who is authentically seeking God, especially those people who have begun a formal process within the Catholic Church. May God use catechists to preach the word “in season and out of season” (cf. 2 Tim. 4:2) so that many hearts may be softened and may receive the love of God. Catholicism is not merely intellectually satisfying. Catechesis should lead to communion with Christ.

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Champion of Ecumenism

Because of his faith in Jesus as the Savior, Pope St. John Paul II championed ecumenism. This raised more than a few eyebrows and drew criticism from many. His zeal for ecumenical dialogue was evident from the first encyclical of his pontificate, Redemptor Hominis, “The Redeemer of Man,” and its focus on the person of Jesus Christ. He laid out the

problem of Christian unity with evangelical clarity as a simple consequence of the will of Jesus Christ himself, our Master, the will that Jesus stated on several occasions but to which he gave expression in a special way in his prayer in the Upper Room the night before he died: “I pray... Father... that they may all be one” (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 6).

If Jesus himself is calling for unity with practically his dying breath, John Paul II saw it as his mission to respond to that call. What is amazing in Pope John Paul II’s first encyclical is that it truly outlines the program of his pontificate. He introduces themes in his first writing to the whole Church that he will end up developing over the next twenty-five years of his pontificate. Throughout his papacy, he reflected on the relationship between Christian unity, religious dialogue, and the Church’s universal mission.

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Being a man deeply imbued with the spirit of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, he reflected deeply on the reframing of the Church’s relationship with the world proposed by Nostra Aetate. The Church recognizes what is true within other religions and recognizes that they may seek answers to fundamental human questions. Nevertheless, the Church continues to proclaim Christ as the one Savior of mankind.

Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue

Ecumenism refers to the dialogue between Christian traditions, while interreligious dialogue refers to dialogue with non-Christian religions. John Paul II never missed an opportunity to further ecumenism and interreligious dialogue through his teaching. His enthusiasm did not stem from the false doctrine of universalism: the belief that all people are going to Heaven and that all religions are the same. Nor does it stem from indifferentism, which he condemns in the same breath as he speaks about ecumenism in this first encyclical.

Some even express the opinion that these efforts are harmful to the cause of the Gospel, are leading to a further rupture in the Church, are causing confusion of ideas in questions of faith and morals and are ending up with a specific indifferentism. It is perhaps a good thing that the spokesmen for these opinions should express their fears. However, in this respect also, correct limits must be maintained (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 6).

Dialogue is not hindered by truth. Rather, truth makes genuine dialogue possible. Believing that truth is real, I can listen to a person I disagree with and take this person seriously without pretending to assent to all of his or her beliefs.

Universal Mission, Not Universalism

He speaks about the universal mission of the Church, which is not the same thing as declaring that all are saved with no consideration for their own faith and life decisions. The mission of the Church is universal in the same way that Christ’s mission is universal. The Second Person of the Trinity takes on flesh and becomes man to suffer and die for all, even if not all choose to receive this salvation.

For John Paul II, ecumenism is not a concession to modernity, but an answer to Christ’s call for unity. Looking at the modern world in which cultures and religious traditions were increasingly encountering one another, sometimes peacefully and sometimes clashing, he recognized the importance of unity among Christians for the purpose of giving credible witness to the rest of the world. This spirit animated both his defense of the faith and his dialogue with others. He would be able to approach other religious traditions respectfully, without ever sacrificing his fidelity to Gospel truth.

Spirit of Assisi

In 1986, Pope John Paul II invited religious leaders from around the world to Assisi to pray for peace. Some people were confused by the gesture, equating it with a statement that all religions are the same. Cardinal Etchegaray explained that it was not a promotion of religious pluralism.

Assisi was the symbol, the staging of what the Church must do by virtue of her proper vocation before a world in a state of flagrant religious pluralism: to profess the unity of the mystery of salvation in Jesus Christ (Card. Etchegaray, “The Spirit of Assisi”).

When they came together to pray for peace, it was not a moment of unity of religious belief. Each one continued in his or her own tradition. They shared the common purpose of peace, while maintaining the integrity of their own traditions. They were not asked to create a common religious prayer. They were invited to come together to appeal for peace, while praying according to their own traditions.

That year at Christmas, Pope John Paul II would address the Curia to explain some of his motives and how he saw religious dialogue. He had not come up with the idea of unity. Rather, his deep contemplation of the Word in Sacred Scripture had moved him to call for this day of prayer.

The fact that we came together in Assisi to pray, to fast and to walk in silence—and this, in support of the peace which is always fragile and threatened, perhaps today more than ever—has been, as it were, a clear sign of the profound unity of those who seek in religion spiritual and transcendent values that respond to the great questions of the human heart, despite the concrete divisions (cf. Nostra Aetate, 1) (Pope St. John Paul II, “Address to the Roman Curia”, 22 December 1986).

Why was it appropriate to come together in the first place? John Paul II understood the world along the lines of the Second Vatican Council document on the joys and hopes of the world. In the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes. This document describes dialogue with other religions as one of the signs of the times. As communication has made international boundaries more relative in some sense, mutual knowledge and learning are not only optional, but necessary. The hopes and joys of the modern world are dependent on becoming increasingly aware of the world community. The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, exhorts us to recognize the “relationship between the very identity and the mission of the Church on the one hand, and the human race on the other” (Pope St. John Paul II, “Address to the Roman Curia”, 22 December 1986).

Drawing on his philosophical training, Karol Wojtyła was at ease discussing topics with people of different intellectual convictions. This did not mean that he was giving in to intellectual, much less moral relativism. Rather, he was convinced that he was always searching for the truth, a truth he found ultimately in the person of Jesus Christ. For Pope John Paul II, ecumenism and interreligious dialogue were always intimately linked to the missionary vocation of the Church.

Mission of the Redeemer

He would revisit the topic of religious indifferentism in his encyclical on missionary work, Redemptoris Missio (1990). He noted that:

great obstacles to the Church’s missionary work include past and present divisions among Christians, dechristianization within Christian countries, the decrease of vocations to the apostolate, and the counterwitness of believers and Christian communities failing to follow the model of Christ in their lives. But one of the most serious reasons for the lack of interest in the missionary task is a widespread indifferentism, which, sad to say, is found also among Christians (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 36).

To think with the Church (sentire cum Ecclesia) is to recognize her missionary mandate, including the necessity to speak with those of other religious traditions. Critics thought that dialogue would lead to indifferentism, which would lead to a loss of missionary zeal. The Pope believed that indifferentism had diminished zeal, but he looked for another solution. For him, authentic dialogue leads to encounter and witness, meaning a new zeal for the mission. For Karol Wojtyła, this is a necessity laid upon the heart of every Christian, just as it was on the heart of St. Paul.

The mission of Christ the Redeemer, which is entrusted to the Church, is still very far from completion. As the second millennium after Christ’s coming draws to an end, an overall view of the human race shows that this mission is still only beginning and that we must commit ourselves wholeheartedly to its service. It is the Spirit who impels us to proclaim the great works of God: “For if I preach the Gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!” (1 Cor 9: 16) (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 36).

Some critics have interpreted his approach as an abandonment of objective truth and of the Church’s missionary tradition. John Paul II was always centered on the person of Jesus Christ, even in and perhaps especially, his moments of dialogue with men and women who thought differently. Put simply, for Karol Wojtyła, “the redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the universe and of history” (Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 1). Was John Paul II abandoning orthodoxy at Assisi? No. If anything, the meeting at Assisi makes sense only when we understand how radically Christ-centered Wojtyła remained until the end.

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Anger as a Lousy Leader

We live in a culture that constantly gives us reasons to be angry. When we turn on the news, open social media, or look at our phones, we stumble across something designed to provoke a reaction. Anger gets attention. Outrage keeps us watching. Anger and fear are some of the best emotions for keeping us hooked.

But when we are angry, are we really in a place to be making the best decisions? We need to learn to take a step back and evaluate the situation more objectively, with less emotional attachment.

The United States bishops just put out a statement following the anniversary of the 2001 terror attack that calls for forgiveness and peace instead of fear and worry.

Courage is the proper response to fear, just as forgiveness is the best solution to anger.

Forgiveness as a solution to anger

Forgiveness is one of the best ways to deal with anger.

Wrath and anger are hateful things; yet the sinner hangs them tight (Sir. 27:30).

We sometimes hold onto anger because, strangely, we like it. Anger is a comfortable emotion, one that we are familiar with. Perhaps it raises our blood pressure and worries those around us, but often we feel like the angrier we become, the more likely we are to win an argument. It can make us feel powerful, righteous, or justified.

When we choose to forgive, we begin to free ourselves from anger’s grip and become more capable of looking at the situation calmly and objectively. We do not want to be ruled by anger in these moments, but rather we want to be fully in control of ourselves.

Just as forgiveness is a great response to anger, courage is a great response to fear. We see it in the reaction of the first responders to 9/11. When others were running away, they ran towards the danger in their efforts to rescue the injured and recover the dead.

The servant’s refusal to forgive reveals that he has not allowed mercy to change his heart. We are called to forgive, just as we have been forgiven. God’s mercy is meant to transform the way we deal with others. This message comes out clearly in the first reading and is a belief we repeat each time we pray the Our Father. Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending that something wrong didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean that we should ignore injustice or fail to hold people accountable. Forgiveness means refusing to let someone else’s wrongdoing take possession of my heart.

Avoiding Emotional Manipulation

We should always be asking ourselves whether we are in control of ourselves and whether we are responding in a properly measured way, or if our emotions are being manipulated by someone else. The bishops remind us that in spite of conflicts around the world, we are called to be

Christ’s instruments of peace in an increasingly fractured and divided world. The building of peace in our country and around the world -- a mission that enables us to be called children of God¹ -- is the great challenge of our time (Archbishop Paul Coakley, 9 September 2026).

We can feel like we are being righteous when we demand justice, like the man in the parable who seized a fellow servant and demanded the payment of a debt. Christ condemns the attitude because he had been forgiven much more. Anger can convince us that we are the judge and the other person is simply the guilty party. Jesus invites us to go deeper and to respond compassionately. Anger is a lousy leader because it narrows our field of vision.

When we recognize our own faults and that Christ has paid for our sins by dying on the cross, it changes the way we respond to the injuries we suffer.

Rather than pointing fingers, we become more concerned about how to heal the broken hearts we find around ourselves. The unforgiving servant received mercy but was unwilling to treat his fellow servant mercifully. The message of the Gospel is that we are all fellow servants and we owe mercy to one another.

The woman from the story of the mongoose let her emotions determine her actions and she killed the loyal mongoose. When we let anger determine our actions, we are apt to be just as rash and to make mistakes. The mongoose had done nothing wrong. The mother simply didn’t know the whole story. Because she allowed fear and anger to make the decision for her, she made a mistake she could not take back afterwards. Let’s learn to listen, observe, and understand before we react. Let’s not let anger lead us. Let Christ lead us.

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What are some ways you deal with anger? Leave a comment.

Regarding anger, we have two fundamental misunderstandings.

We either think that we are supposed to burn with righteous anger or that meekness means we never even feel angry.

Both visions are mistaken.

We have been lied to regarding anger. We are told that venting is the best way of releasing anger. This is how we “get it off our chest.” Research on anger suggests otherwise.

Looking at the psychological studies, we can conclude that venting does not get rid of anger. Instead, it feeds it.

When we imagine the hurt we have suffered, we are training ourselves to be perpetually hurt and confused. This seems to be the prevailing narrative in our society today and part of the reason people are so generally hurt and confused. Replaying the anger is not always releasing the anger.

How often have you run into someone who rants about the same thing over and over? We probably all fall into this from time to time. We become experts in how other people have hurt us. We hold onto the hurt instead of letting it go and growing greater than the injury.

How do we get rid of the anger and the hurt? We need to bring the anger and hurt out of the darkness into God’s light. He alone knows everything that is going on in our hearts and can help us get to a place of healing. The secret lies in confession.

Brandon Robinson wrote:

There is a difference between confession and combustion. Confession brings darkness into the light. Combustion keeps feeding the fire.

Christianity does not ask us to never be angry, but rather to avoid sin. Anger is tricky and can lead us into sin, so we have to be careful not to give ourselves over to anger.

Righteous anger is rare. People love to cite the example of Jesus clearing out the money changers from the Temple (cf. Jn. 2:14-16). He probably did this with the right amount of passion. His anger was rightly ordered towards the good, while our anger is usually mixed with our wounded ego and desire for revenge.

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I know that I am not Jesus, and if I were to take a whip of cords and start swinging it around, I don’t think that I would be full of righteous anger.

Sometimes, we think that we need to be able to get angry so we can react forcefully when an emergency arises. But I think this may not be as wise as we might think.

One of the favorite lessons I learned from Brant Hansen’s book, Unoffendable, is that you probably want to be level-headed when there is a crisis.

Being so meek that we never experience emotions is inhuman. We are going to feel things: it is part of the human experience. But this does not give us the right to turn over our decisions to our emotional responses. Our reason should always be driving our responses.

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Standing before the mirror and rehearsing your angry discourse is probably not healthy. What you rehearse, you reinforce. There is no reason to make yourself angrier about a specific situation. You are much better off training your heart to forgive in these situations.

Forgiveness is the Christian answer to anger. This does not mean that we are going to ignore the injury or pretend that we were not hurt. Rather, we learn to release our desire for revenge by focusing on the fact that we are first forgiven.

The more we realize that we are forgiven by Christ, the more we can forgive others. One of the privileges I experience in pastoral ministry is getting a glimpse of what is going on inside others. I am continually amazed at how understandable people’s actions are when we get to perceive their motivations and pressures more clearly. Understanding does not necessarily justify the behavior, but it makes forgiveness easier.

Anger is an emotion, not an act of the will. We don’t sin by feeling anger, but rather when we give it free rein and allow it to form our response. We are all going to have moments when we feel sad, confused, and even angry. What we do with these emotions, especially when we forgive, is what makes us better followers of Christ. Following Jesus means responding to anger as he would. We don’t deny the hurt. Rather, we carry it into the light and choose to forgive.

Paul Tillich and Faith as “Ultimate Concern”

Paul Tillich is one of the most renowned theologians of the 20^th century. He explored the topic of faith and described it in a way that could fit the postmodern mind. He described faith as devotion to the “ultimate concern.” Drawing on Kant with the Copernican turn of thought from the objective to the subjective, his description of faith fits in perfectly. The important thing is to be completely devoted to the object of faith.

Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned: the dynamics of faith are the dynamics of man’s ultimate concern (Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, 1).

This definition focuses on the subjective act of faith and relates it to the polarizing concept that motivates and guides a single individual. He relates freedom to faith as they are both the “possibility of centered personal acts.”

This contrasts with the way that Pope St. John Paul II looks at faith. For him, the center is still the object of faith, at the same time that he is interested in the subjective experience of believing. For him, faith is the free response of the believer to the self-revelation of God. This hearkens to the teaching of St. Augustine, pointing out that every religion expresses man’s desire to come into contact with God. What distinguishes Judaism and Christianity is that we experience the descent of God to man. Through revelation, God opens the path to communion and relationship with him.

Existential Act

Drawing on existentialist philosophy of the 20^th century, Tillich emphasizes the reality of the experience of the whole person though the act of faith. Wojtyla emphasizes the personal act at the same time that he underlines the objective self-revelation of God. Faith consumes all that we are.

It is not just that freedom is part of the act of faith: it is absolutely required (Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 13).

There is an intersection with the insight of the existentialist philosophers, while maintaining the distinction that the ultimate purpose of our lives is received by us, not created by us. One of the possible pitfalls of adopting existentialist philosophy to reflect on faith is that there is a tendency to deny purpose and meaning. For Wojtyla, life is full of meaning and purpose, precisely because through faith, we come into contact with our Creator who placed us on earth with a mission.

Object of Faith

Wojtyla and Tillich differ not only in their understanding of the experience of faith. They diverge also on the object of faith. When someone believes in God, what does that mean? For Tillich, God is the “Ground of Being,” rather than a being among beings. This is attractive for postmodern thought, giving a place to God but emptying the concept of God of its full meaning. Wojtyla, on the other hand, proclaimed the reality of a personal God who enters into relationship and communion with us.

Referring to the branch of theology that focuses on a philosophical reflection on the act of faith and the contents of faith, John Paul II writes:

fundamental theology should show how, in the light of the knowledge conferred by faith, there emerge certain truths which reason, from its own independent enquiry, already perceives (Pope St. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 67).

Reason perceives the reality of God. Following the Vatican I reflections on the capacity of man to attain knowledge of God, the role of theology is to explicate the truths of faith, not explain them away into something beautiful to contemplate but fundamentally unreal.

Just a Symbol?

Tillich explores the value of symbols and suggests that they participate in the reality they signify, but are not literal descriptions. Such an interpretation allows theologians to explain away Gospel truths in a way that feels more comfortable and acceptable to a postmodern mentality. On the other hand, John Paul II proclaims that symbols have their value and that revelation communicates real truths about God.

The difference was illustrated by a now famous anecdote from a dinner party that the Southern author Flannery O’Connor attended. Deeply Catholic in a non-Catholic atmosphere, at one point someone discussed the doctrine of the Eucharist and stated: it’s just a symbol. O’Connor is said to have responded: “if it’s just a symbol, to hell with it.” Her somewhat crass remark belied a deep faith. What look like bread and wine become truly the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ and through Communion, we participate truly in the divine life, receiving Jesus into our soul. For this reason too, Pope John Paul II wrote so frequently and profoundly on truths like the Eucharist, the priesthood, and our personal relationship with Christ.

Faith and Doubt

Doubt is part of the experience of faith, according to Tillich. The “ultimate concern” allows for fundamental doubt. This contrasts with the view of realist philosophy that recognizes that truth is hard to ascertain, but not impossible. It is natural to have struggles with faith, but this is not the same as emptying the doctrine of its importance, as happens in postmodern deconstruction of the act of faith.

Doubt is part of Tillich’s description of faith. Because how do you know that your “ultimate concern” is the correct one? And you also notice that it is easy to be devoted to something that is at best of secondary concern.

Common Ground and Confrontation

The existentialist bent of Tillich emphasizes that faith is not merely intellectual assent to a revealed truth. Enriching Thomistic metaphysics through the phenomenological method and coming from a personalist point of view, Wojtyla would have recognized the value of examining the subjective aspect of the act of faith. For him, faith is essentially man’s response to a personal call from the one, true God. It is a free act, whereby the person entrusts himself completely to God.

They would agree that faith cannot be reduced to an emotion or to blind obedience. Wojtyla would recognize the contribution of Tillich, to bring the concept of faith to the forefront again in a world claiming to move away from faith and towards reason. The postmodern world sees itself as the fullest expression of the Enlightenment. Tillich is more palatable to such thinkers, who want to reflect on faith, while holding on to reason.

By confronting the thought of Wojtyla with Tillich, we find its true value. In a postmodern world that distrusts faith, he is able to portray the reciprocal relationship between faith and reason. By engaging with the concept of faith proposed by Tillich, that of “ultimate concern,” we are able to see that faith has a place in today’s world.

Conclusion

For Pope St. John Paul II, faith cannot be described simply as “the state of being ultimately concerned.” It is not simply the structure of ultimate commitment. Rather, it is man’s response to the self-revelation of the loving God. Ultimate concern may describe faith in its intensity, but can be attributed to devotion to God, to the nation, to family, etc. It cannot by itself describe the essence of religious faith. Ultimately, faith is the encounter between a God who loves and a creature whom he loves.

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One book that made an impact on me was Eat That Frog! I wouldn’t say it was a page-turner, but the concept is good. If you do the hardest thing at the beginning of the day, everything else seems easy afterwards.

Something I dread is making difficult phone calls. If I am afraid of how the other person is going to respond or think about me, I can dilly-dally a long time before picking up the phone and calling. But somehow, it almost always results in improving the situation.

If you get good at conflict resolution, you will be happier. The discipline that comes from doing hard things consistently improves your personal worth, your professional worth, and your capacity to flourish.

Sometimes we read the Gospel like a weather report and miss the wonderful drama that is hidden in its pages. In today’s Gospel (Mt. 18:15-20), Jesus talks about conflict resolution. Did you catch the tension?

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between him and you alone (Mt. 18:15).

It sounds so simple, but if you have any experience in family dynamics, you know it is not that simple. Just walking over and correcting someone’s behavior can be tremendously difficult. There are skills we can learn that make this more approachable.

Listen

Too often, we speak before we listen. If we are going to really solve the problem, we need to identify the correct problem. So the first step is listening. Do I really understand what is going on from the other person’s perspective?

We assume too much. We think we know the other person’s motives. Almost always, when somebody is reporting emotional distress brought on by a relationship, they describe the other person’s motives. I feel it is almost better to describe the actions, but be careful about assigning the motivations.

I remember a story about someone having a playful exchange with one of his sisters. She responded negatively, and it made him feel bad too. She assumed a whole series of motivations on his part, probably derived from some experiences she had with other people.

In a calm moment, he was able to share with her that she had misjudged his intentions. He was simply trying to connect. She took it as a personal attack. He was sorry to have offended her. That is important. We are not talking about gaslighting into thinking that he or she is the problem. But he was able to tell her with all sincerity that what she had assumed were my intentions simply were not present.

And if she had misjudged his intentions, maybe she misjudges other people’s intentions too. She could probably live more peacefully if she would tone down some of these hurtful assumptions.

We create unnecessary suffering when we become too confident that we know what is going on in another person’s heart.

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Identify

Once you have done the work of listening, it is time to identify what is wrong with the situation. Is there a real injustice you need to deal with? Hopefully, you have already established some rapport with the other person through the listening stage.

You need to formulate what you think the problem is. Something helpful here is to remove a lot of the emotion. Write out the way you see the situation. Then, try to remove the emotion and the assumptions, so you are looking at it through a more objective lens. Sometimes, a brief consult with AI can be helpful for trimming the fat in your thinking.

You get to see your argument in black and white, but without the emotional charge it has in your head and heart. This can work wonders and give you a much more objective starting point.

Tell

Then, you fulfill the Gospel word. You go over and tell the person how you see the situation. You share with him or her what has happened and how you perceive the causes. Hopefully, this leads to a first resolution of the conflict. If the person does not respond at all, and the topic is worth it, you escalate it and bring other people to have a bigger conversation.

But you have to celebrate that you have made it this far. You have already had a better process than most people when trying to resolve conflicts.

Check your own heart, because it is almost always difficult to engage in this type of interaction. Once you get used to it, though, it is very freeing. Fraternal correction is a way that you can grow in holiness and help others to do so as well. And the next time that you receive feedback that makes you uncomfortable or defensive, come back to this Gospel passage and realize that someone is giving you an opportunity for growth and for sanctification.

The greatest obstacle is often not the lack of technique, but rather fear and pride. And this is a spiritual problem that, if you resolve it, helps free up your interior and give you the peace you yearn for. Conflict becomes an opportunity for love and holiness when we dare to listen, seek the truth, and speak honestly.

Listen. Identify. Tell. And do it all in love.

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Where is that in the Bible?

Growing up, I had many conversations about the faith with my friends. I remember grad night pretty vividly (so no, I was not drinking). At about 2 in the morning, some of us gathered at one of the picnic benches outside the auditorium where the party was going on. We each started talking about our own experience of faith. Here we were, finishing High School, but thinking about the eternal truths. The friends with me were not particularly devout, but it helped me to see that people have more interest in truth and eternity than they often let on.

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I remember other conversations that were more polemical and almost took the form of a debate. Predictably, my Evangelical and Baptist friends would inevitably ask at some point in the conversation, “Where is that in the Bible?” Over time, I learned that in a debate, you need to make sure you do not mistakenly accept your opponent’s presuppositions. And here, I think the most important thing is to refuse to take the Bible as the only possible source of information. Of course, the Bible is important. But before searching for Purgatory in the Bible, let’s look for where the Bible teaches that it is the only criterion of truth. The early Church did not do this, and I do not need to do so either.

Typically, the Biblical discourse on Purgatory revolves around a story from 2 Maccabees (cf. 2 Maccabees 12:43-46), a deuterocanonical book that Protestants typically refuse to accept as inspired Scripture. When Judas and his troops found the fallen soldiers wearing amulets honoring the false gods of Jamnia, they prayed for the dead. They took up a collection to offer an expiatory sacrifice on their behalf.

Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be absolved for their sin (2 Maccabees 12:46).

Accepting the passage as canonical, it provides a strong argument that the Jews at the time of Jesus believed in the possibility of some type of purification after death and before entering Heaven. So, often, the discussion turns to a debate about the canon of Scripture. Which books should be included and why? However, a different objection pops up more commonly.

Are the Sufferings of Christ insufficient?

Are not the sufferings of Christ sufficient for our salvation? Does the temporal suffering of Purgatory somehow complete the work of salvation begun by Christ, echoing the words of St. Paul?

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church (Col. 1:24).

The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was complete. Jesus said as much from the cross.

It is finished (Jn. 19:30)

The challenge comes in the distinction between salvation and ongoing growth in holiness. Jesus gains for us our salvation. He saves us, and he invites us to progress in holiness. His death on the cross releases us from sin and death. However, our process of salvation does not mean that all of our behavior immediately and irrevocably changes from the moment we enter the Kingdom of God.

I would propose that another passage from the Bible offers a much better image for the doctrine of Purgatory.

A Different Bible Passage to Explain Purgatory

Growing in Christian life comes down to loving more. We will be judged by the love we have in our hearts. Do we want to love Christ much, or do we want to love him just a little? We are sinful creatures, even after baptism and at the beginning of our journey of faith. We sin. (I had a Protestant neighbor growing up who insisted that he never sinned. We got into this conversation while he was attacking the Catholic practice of confession. I was flabbergasted by his claim. I knew I sinned. And seeing him every day for 10 years, I was pretty sure that my neighbor sinned too.)

When we go to Heaven, do we want to love God perfectly, or do we want to still be attached to so many worldly things? I think we want to be perfect and directed completely towards God. It makes me think of the parable of the wedding garment (Mt. 22:1-14).

Jesus tells the story about a man who invites people to his wedding. When the original guests fail to materialize, he brings in other people from all around. They would not normally have been the guests at such an event. Then something happens that used to bother me. One man is found at the celebration without a wedding garment.

It always felt unfair to me. If he just came in from the road, of course he does not have a wedding garment. Why is he being treated so cruelly? “Gnashing of teeth” is the phrase that always got me. Then, one day, I heard that the host would have given them the wedding garments. The man found without had refused the wedding garment that had been provided. He wanted to go to the party, but refused to dress accordingly.

I feel like it is the perfect image to understand Purgatory. I love Jesus, but I know that I fall short so many ways. When I die, I hope to be more perfect than I am today, but there may still be something lacking.

There is nothing lacking to the sufferings of Christ, but I am lacking.

I hope he gives me the chance, the help, the obligatory help, to get perfectly clean and ready for the real wedding feast: Heaven.

Now, all of a sudden, I see Purgatory in a different way. It is the antechamber where I get ready for the party. Of course, I want to participate because I want to be worthy of the one who has waited for me.

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The Solidarnosc (Solidarity) movement was led by an electrician, Lech Wałęsa. Soon, workers across Poland joined the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc. The very name they chose, Solidarity, spoke to a truth that communism could imitate but never fully embrace. Our dignity does not come from the State or our class, but from the fact that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, created in God’s image.

The workers wanted freedom to organize themselves. They no longer wanted to have the communist state determining every aspect of economic life. Without necessarily using the word, they were practicing one of the central tenets of Catholic Social Teaching: subsidiarity.

Solidarity and Subsidiarity

Within Catholic Social Teaching, solidarity helps us see we all belong to one human family. Subsidiarity means that decisions should be made at the lowest competent level. Subsidiarity teaches that higher authorities should support the initiative of families, workers, and civic organizations; not replace them.

While shipyard workers in Gdansk were challenging Communist rule from below, another Pole was challenging Communist ideology from Rome. Pope John Paul II drew on his experience under Soviet rule as he articulated a vision of the human person that contradicted the philosophical foundations of Marxism.

Rejecting Marxist claims

John Paul II rejected the Marxist reduction of the human person to economics. Poverty is a real evil, but Marxism is wrong when it assumes that every human problem has a material solution. As he wrote in Laborem Exercens:

In dialectical materialism too, man is not first and foremost the subject of work and the efficient cause of the production process, but continues to be understood and treated, in dependence on what is material, as a kind of “resultant” of the economic or production relations prevailing at a given period (Pope St. John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, 13).

While critical of materialism in Marxism, he was also critical of the consumer society.

It seeks to defeat Marxism on the level of pure materialism by showing how a free-market society can achieve a greater satisfaction of material human needs than Communism, while equally excluding spiritual values (Pope St. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 19).

Economic freedom is only one aspect of human freedom. While he supported Solidarity’s efforts to gain freedom for Polish workers, indeed for the Polish nation, he served as the moral conscience of the Movement. His contribution to Catholic Social Teaching helps all of us to be more human in the way we view economics and the world. Communism is not the way forward, but neither is unbridled capitalism exercised in a soulless way.

The Marxist system was very much State-centered, with decisions being centralized. The virtue of subsidiarity opposes this directly, moving decisions to a more local level.

Wojtyła’s Experience of Catholic Social Teaching

Throughout his life, Karol Wojtyła lived the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. He called for solidarity movements to dialogue with others and never to become closed unto themselves. Reflecting on Catholic Social Teaching, he reminds us that the State should be concerned with wage levels, humane working conditions, and the dignity of work and of each worker.

The State must contribute to the achievement of these goals both directly and indirectly. Indirectly and according to the principle of subsidiarity, by creating favorable conditions for the free exercise of economic activity, which will lead to abundant opportunities for employment and sources of wealth. Directly and according to the principle of solidarity, by defending the weakest, by placing certain limits on the autonomy of the parties who determine working conditions, and by ensuring in every case the necessary minimum support for the unemployed worker (Pope St. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 15).

Understanding that we are all part of one human family changes the way we look at one another. In the world, there is always the temptation to give in to a mentality of conquest. Pope John Paul II proposed rather a civilization of love. When the state works with intermediate autonomous bodies to promote the good of all, they all work together to promote this civilization of love. This is the principle of subsidiarity at work.

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The principle of solidarity has become even more present since Pope John Paul II, notably in the teaching of Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti, quoted also by Pope Leo XIV in Magnifica Humanitas. Pope Benedict XVI refers to the term in Caritas in Veritate. What began as a workers’ movement had a tremendous influence on Catholic Social Teaching, helping to craft a response to the proposal of Communism to the world. While there can be debate on different economic systems, the Church can never cave to the desire to lose respect for the dignity of each human being. This is at the core of Wojtyla’s thought and teaching as well.

Subsidiarity and the Family

Pope St. John Paul II was known for his love of marriage and family. Respecting the family as the most basic unit of society, he saw in it additionally the best way to promote human dignity and the progress of humanity. Subsidiarity takes on special importance in his reflection on the family in his Letter to Families.

The mission of education must always be carried out in accordance with a proper application of the principle of subsidiarity. This implies the legitimacy and indeed the need of giving assistance to the parents, but finds its intrinsic and absolute limit in their prevailing right and their actual capabilities (Pope St. John Paul II, Gratissimam Sane, 16)

When families fall apart, societies fail. Parents have the ultimate responsibility of the education of their children. Other institutions, whether this be the state, the Church, or others, must give parents their place in the education of their children. A just society involves the parents; it does not exclude them.

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Importance of Economic Freedom

Economic freedom was important for Pope John Paul II, but not because he was promoting consumerism or the market economy. Economic freedom is a means to an end, since it allows the individual to choose what is good. Freedom is not without its limits, and ideally, we should use our freedom to choose what furthers the common good. The risk of the market economy and capitalism is that there can be a strong tendency towards individualism. The rise of selfishness and greed is unchristian and does not promote the common good. Economic freedom is good when we use it so that all can grow and flourish.

Conclusion

When the workers reacted so strongly to the firing of Anna Walentynowicz, they were looking out for one of their own. Self-interest might have suggested ignoring the problem. But they knew they had to stand up for what was right. The Soviet empire eventually collapsed. But the Kingdom of Christ still needs to be built up. The mission of Christians remains the same: to build the civilization of love by defending the dignity of every human person.

In our context, perhaps it is not such a surprising question. We deal with the supernatural, as we are men and women of faith. But if we look at American sports history, the phrase came up in a context that was momentous, but not supernatural.

Which is the best sports movie ever? The other day, someone was trying to convince me that the best sports movie of all time is Hoosiers. I feel pretty confident that I can classify that simply as a wrong answer. There are several football movies that could make the claim. Remember the Titans could make a good run for it, and the fact that Denzel Washington is in it speaks well in its favor. Personally, I would argue for Field of Dreams, but that is because it caught the spirit of baseball and America in a very specific way, and I am biased in its favor.

You could also make a strong argument for the movie Miracle, which chronicles the amazing story of the 1980 USA Olympic hockey team that pulled off one of the greatest upsets in sports history. The 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, were the world stage not just for the best athletes of the world, but also for the Cold War. In fact, the US would lead a boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow, reacting to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The USSR responded by boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

For decades, the Olympics were not only a show of athletic performance, but also of the basic struggle between East and West. Could a free society prevail in the face of an ideology that urged the sacrifice of personal liberties in favor of the State? Since only amateurs were technically allowed to participate in the Olympics, it felt like the Soviet Union had an unfair advantage. In their collectivist society, they prioritized athletes, and so they would train year-round, benefiting from State support.

The 1980 US hockey team was made up of college kids cobbled together by University of Minnesota coach Herb Brooks. They would face a Soviet juggernaut that had won four consecutive gold medals. Yet, in the semi-finals, the US overcame all odds and won 4-3. As time ran out, Al Michaels delivered his immortal line: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”

What those amateur players did for Herb Brooks, we are called to do for Jesus Christ. Today’s Gospel is one of the most challenging for those of us who want to follow Christ. Both Brooks and Jesus ask their players and disciples to stop living for themselves, but Christ asks for something infinitely greater because he has first given himself entirely for us. Jesus gives a simple sequence that is not so simple to carry out. Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow me.

Deny Yourself

One of Herb Brooks’ greatest challenges was to get his players to overcome their college rivals and play for Team USA. We run into many of the same challenges. Do we play for Team Jesus in our ordinary day-to-day life, or are we more set on our personal goals? It is so easy to sacrifice Jesus in favor of personal comfort and glory.

Pope St. John Paul II reflected on the radicality of this call from Jesus that does not allow for hesitation or second thoughts.

It is a demanding requirement that unsettled even the disciples and that, through the ages, has held back many men and women from following Christ (Pope St. John Paul II, 14 February 2001).

While the world often celebrates radical commitment to ideologies and causes, the Gospel calls for a deeper radicality, being rooted in the Word of God and in Christ. This has produced:

Admirable examples of sanctity and martyrdom that strengthened and confirmed the way of the Church (Pope St. John Paul II, 14 February 2001).

To deny ourselves does not mean denying that God has given us desires, gifts, and a personality. It means refusing to make ourselves the center of the story.

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Take Up Your Cross

There are so many false prophets today who try to promise a following of Jesus that does not include the cross. But we will always have to suffer, because we are imitating the one who suffered and died for our sake. We cannot expect to forego what our Master himself lived out for us.

The path outlined by God for his Son is the path to be undertaken by the disciple who has decided to follow Jesus. There are not two paths, but only one: the one trodden by the Master. The disciple cannot invent a different way (Pope St. John Paul II, 14 February 2001).

We take up our cross every time that we accept the small annoyances and the big challenges that we have in our lives. We do this when we carry these burdens with acceptance and even embrace them instead of grumbling and complaining. We don’t merely tolerate suffering because we have no choice. We unite what we cannot avoid to Christ.

Follow Me

If we are going to follow Jesus, we have to understand that our discipleship means we will have to be like him. We are not following an influencer who chronicles his exotic vacations to get likes and follows.

Jesus is not a Messiah of triumph and power. In fact, he did not free Israel from Roman rule and he never assured it of political glory. As a true Servant of the Lord, he carried out his mission in solidarity, in service, and in the humiliation of death. He is the Messiah who did not fit into any mold and who came without fanfare, and who cannot be “understood” with the logic of success and power, the kind of logic often used by the world to verify its projects and actions (Pope St. John Paul II, 14 February 2001).

What in your life is keeping you from following Christ in a more radical way? Each day, take ten minutes to pray with the liturgy of the day. Ask Jesus, Lord, how do you want me to live today? If you spend more time following Jesus and less time following influencers, you begin to live in a way that is deeply satisfying and purposeful. Let’s work together to build a community where we deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus.

What are you playing for?

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People can often be confused about how to prepare for spiritual direction because they are not sure what it is. Frequently, people confuse spiritual direction with counseling or therapy. The spiritual director is not a handkerchief to catch your tears. He or she is an outstretched hand, sometimes helping you up and sometimes shining light on the road God has called you to follow.

Spiritual Direction vs. Counseling

Spiritual Direction does not take the place of good psychological counseling. It can, however, help in a lot of the same cases. Something important to recognize is that Spiritual Direction and Counseling have different purposes. Counseling and therapy focus on mental and emotional health. Spiritual Direction addresses your relationship with God and your discernment of his action in your life. Feelings and emotions may come to the surface in both cases, but they are not the same thing. You may find substantial overlap as far as the topics you discuss in each context, but the lens and purpose are different.

Spiritual direction is not primarily about getting answers from someone else. Rather, it is about learning to recognize God’s voice and respond to his grace.

Getting Ready for the First Session

You are about to embark on a journey that will hopefully help you gain clarity of what God is asking of you in this stage of your life.

The experience may be bewildering, and it can be helpful to plot out a “map” that you can share with your spiritual director as you begin to discern the ways God is working in your life.

You don’t need the perfect spiritual autobiography or even to understand perfectly how spiritual direction works. But before sitting down with your spiritual director, reflect on your goals and aspirations for this formative relationship.

Set Expectations

It is good to take some time to reflect on your initial expectations. These may change over time, but they are helpful for you and your spiritual director. What are you looking for? Why have you sought spiritual direction? What do you know about spiritual direction or the person you are meeting?

Begin your meeting by speaking about these things. Then, move on to give context about who you are and what your life has been like.

Set the Context

You do not have to share every detail of your past life. Look at what is essential and try to draw a map of who you are and what events have shaped you into the person you are now. Describe your home life growing up. Is your family united? Was there economic hardship? Were there separations or tragedies that have left a mark in your soul? This helps the spiritual director form an initial understanding of what is going on in your soul and, more importantly, how you see God.

Look at the major life decisions you have made. How have you made these decisions? How have they turned out? By looking at the life you have now, do these decisions make sense? Were they driven by choice or by circumstance? Where do you see God’s action present in your story? Share any experiences you may have had with vocational discernment. It is very helpful to know if you have experimented with religious life. Have you ever thought about becoming a priest or a religious? Have you taken any steps in that direction? Are there any relationships in your past or present that are important to describe? All of this helps to know you as a person.

Your Spiritual Life

What is your prayer life like right now? Perhaps your prayer life is limited to Sunday Mass. Maybe you do not go to Mass but spend time in Eucharistic Adoration every week. This is a good thing to share. Do you have any experience of mental prayer? What does it mean for you to pray? Perhaps you feel that worship music helps you experience God. How do you experience God in silence, in nature, in reading Sacred Scripture, in the liturgy, or in contemplating his goodness?

What kind of formation have you received in the spiritual life? You might share your formation through spiritual reading and retreats. What has helped you grow in your faith? Describe the experiences that you find most meaningful, both negative and positive.

Share

What moves you spiritually? Perhaps you like the idea of being a spiritual person. Or you feel that the best people are spiritual. Do you feel moved by the great mysteries of our faith? Does the Incarnation move you? Perhaps the sight of Jesus on the Cross makes you feel like something has to change in your life. Does reading the lives of the saints make you want to change radically to correspond to the great graces that God has given you in your life? Share what resonates most with you.

Your own prayer needs to be where you are encountering God, and you bring those experiences to your spiritual direction. Your lights and shadows from prayer are what you bring to your spiritual direction for help in discernment.

Spiritual direction cannot substitute for your own spiritual life, but it can be a powerful catalyst for going deeper in your relationship with God. Sometimes, we can be tempted to avoid spiritual direction until we have everything perfectly mapped out. I would suggest you do your best and then go for it. Sometimes, it is only by beginning the journey that we can discover everything we need to record on the map.

Jan introduced Karol to mental prayer and to Carmelite spirituality. This was incredibly important for his lifelong devotion to St. John of the Cross, and he would write his doctoral thesis on the act of faith in the writings of the great Spanish mystic. The influence of these Carmelite masters would remain with him throughout his life. Even in his mature personalist philosophy, one can recognize themes first encountered in St. John of the Cross.

Jan did more than encourage Karol to pray. He introduced him to an entire spiritual tradition. Through the writings of the Carmelite masters, especially St. John of the Cross, Wojtyla discovered a rich account of the soul’s journey toward union with God. Prayer was not simply saying words or fulfilling religious duties. It was the gradual transformation of the whole person. This mystical vision would eventually shape not only Wojtyla’s spirituality but also his philosophy.

Many of the themes that later became central to his personalism can already be found in the Carmelite tradition he absorbed under Tyranowski’s influence.

To describe the dynamics of the spiritual life philosophically, Wojtyla developed several concepts that became central to his personalism: consciousness, personal freedom, and self-determination.

Wojtyla would never leave these insights behind. As a priest, bishop, philosopher, and eventually pope, he insisted that every person is called to communion with God. The ideas he would later articulate philosophically had first been lived in prayer under Jan Tyranowski’s guidance.

Consciousness

When Karol Wojtyla wrote his great philosophical work, Person and Act, he paid a lot of attention to consciousness. One of the distinct features of the human person is consciousness. He is able not only to act but also to be aware of his own actions. Further, man can be aware of his own human action. This is at the source of freedom and morality in man. This core thought is present in the writings of St. John of the Cross.

The soul, then, conscious of the abundance of its enrichment, at the time of these glorious encounters feels to be almost at the point of departing for complete and perfect possession of its kingdom, for it knows that it is pure, rich, full of virtues, and prepared for such a kingdom (St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, 31).

Part of the greatness of the human soul is its capacity to become aware of the blessings it receives from God. St. John is saying that the soul not only receives grace but also becomes conscious of God’s transforming work within it. This interior awareness fascinated Wojtyla because it showed that the spiritual life does not bypass human experience; it elevates and perfects it.

Wojtyla was open to the world because he was convinced that nothing genuinely human fails to find an echo in his heart. The experiential dimension of St. John’s mystical theology would later find a philosophical expression in Wojtyla’s personalism. As he writes in Person and Act, “Man not only acts consciously but also is conscious of his action” (Wojtyla, Person and Act, p. 121). This capacity for self-awareness is one of the defining characteristics of the human person. What St. John of the Cross explored within the life of prayer, Wojtyla examined through phenomenological analysis, showing that conscious subjectivity is fundamental to every human act. Once Wojtyla understood the person as a conscious subject, the next question naturally followed: How does that conscious subject become free?

Personal freedom

The interior experience of prayer naturally led Wojtyla to reflect more deeply on personal freedom. In the writings of St. John of the Cross, he discovered that freedom was not simply the absence of external constraints but the soul’s interior liberation for union with God. He expresses the paradox beautifully:

All who are free tell me a thousand graceful things of you; all wound me more and leave me dying of, ah, I-don’t-know-what behind their stammering (St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, 7).

Freedom is at the source of every true human experience. The rise of democratic societies and totalitarian regimes marked the twentieth century. Freedom of choice in some parts of the world stood in stark contrast with extreme limits on freedom of thought, expression, and action in other regions.

Wojtyla was always clear that freedom needed to be rooted in truth. Although he loved participating in the Second Vatican Council, he nevertheless criticized the draft of the document promoting religious freedom. He believed that religious freedom could never be understood apart from the human person’s obligation to seek and embrace the truth.

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He would rectify this in his own magisterium as Pope St. John Paul II. From the beginning of his pontificate, he proclaimed the freeing aspect of the truth, quoting Jesus, “The truth will set you free” (Jn. 8:32) in his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis (1979).

Seeking to renew Catholic moral theology, he wrote the encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993), presenting truth and freedom as inseparable foundations of the moral life.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, John Paul II watched Western consumerism and moral relativism spread rapidly through the former Communist countries. Even the Polish people, who had struggled so heroically for political freedom, could mistake freedom for the pursuit of unlimited personal choice rather than the pursuit of the good. He found that the error lay always in divorcing freedom from truth.

The life of St. John of the Cross shows how freedom cannot be reduced to external circumstances. Although imprisoned and persecuted by his own Carmelite brothers, his interior freedom continued to grow because it rested in God. Wojtyla embodied the same conviction. When the Communists built Nowa Huta, the model city of the future without a church, he refused to accept that a society could be truly free while excluding God. Each Christmas he celebrated Mass with the workers until they were finally permitted to build a church.

There is no freedom without God.

Freedom, however, is never merely the ability to choose. It is exercised concretely through action. This led Wojtyla to one of the defining ideas of his philosophy: self-determination through the human act.

Self-determination through the human act

Freedom is key to grasping how Karol Wojtyla understood moral action and what it means to be human. When St. John of the Cross reflected on the human will and its role within the spiritual life, he set up much of what Karol Wojtyla would understand as freedom, especially self-determination through the human act. John’s reflection on desire comes out in the way he understands the spiritual life.

It is not the things of this world that either occupy the soul or cause its harm since they enter it not, but rather the will and desire for them, for it is these that dwell within it (St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, I.3.4).

For Wojtyla, every freely chosen action does more than change the world; it changes the person acting. By choosing the good, we become good. By choosing evil, we diminish ourselves. Human action is therefore self-determining: through our freely chosen acts, we gradually become the kind of person we choose to be.

Pope St. John Paul II used this philosophical reflection as the basis of his critique of fundamental option theory in his encyclical, Veritatis Splendor:

By his fundamental choice, man is capable of giving his life direction and of progressing, with the help of grace, towards his end, following God’s call. But this capacity is actually exercised in the particular choices of specific actions, through which man deliberately conforms himself to God’s will, wisdom and law. It thus needs to be stated that the so-called fundamental option, to the extent that it is distinct from a generic intention and hence one not yet determined in such a way that freedom is obligated, is always brought into play through conscious and free decisions (Pope St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 67).

He resisted those who stated that we could basically choose God, but not act accordingly. What we do determines who we are. We can’t make a theoretical choice that contradicts our practical behavior.

All of the thought of Pope St. John Paul II shows a great unity between his interior life springing from his union with God and his philosophical reflections. It is challenging to live the way we proclaim is best. Wojtyla is someone who did this, and this is part of why he became a saint. Jan Tyranowski began by teaching a young man to pray and unlocked a world of mystery that led Wojtyla to become one of the most influential Christian philosophers of the twentieth century.

The Solidarność (Solidarity) movement was led by an electrician, Lech Wałęsa. Soon, workers across Poland joined the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc. The very name they chose, Solidarity, spoke to a truth that communism could imitate but never fully embrace. Our dignity does not come from the State or our class, but from the fact that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, created in God’s image.

The workers wanted freedom to organize themselves. They no longer wanted to have the communist state determining every aspect of economic life. Without necessarily using the word, they were practicing one of the central tenets of Catholic Social Teaching: subsidiarity.

Solidarity and Subsidiarity

Within Catholic Social Teaching, solidarity helps us see we all belong to one human family. Subsidiarity means that decisions should be made at the lowest competent level. Subsidiarity teaches that higher authorities should support the initiative of families, workers, and civic organizations; not replace them.

While shipyard workers in Gdansk were challenging Communist rule from below, another Pole was challenging Communist ideology from Rome. Pope John Paul II drew on his experience under Soviet rule as he articulated a vision of the human person that contradicted the philosophical foundations of Marxism.

Rejecting Marxist claims

John Paul II rejected the Marxist reduction of the human person to economics. Poverty is a real evil, but Marxism is wrong when it assumes that every human problem has a material solution. As he wrote in Laborem Exercens:

In dialectical materialism too, man is not first and foremost the subject of work and the efficient cause of the production process, but continues to be understood and treated, in dependence on what is material, as a kind of “resultant” of the economic or production relations prevailing at a given period (Pope St. John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, 13).

While critical of materialism in Marxism, he was also critical of the consumer society.

It seeks to defeat Marxism on the level of pure materialism by showing how a free-market society can achieve a greater satisfaction of material human needs than Communism, while equally excluding spiritual values (Pope St. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 19).

Economic freedom is only one aspect of human freedom. While he supported Solidarity’s efforts to gain freedom for Polish workers, indeed for the Polish nation, he served as the moral conscience of the Movement. His contribution to Catholic Social Teaching helps all of us to be more human in the way we view economics and the world. Communism is not the way forward, but neither is unbridled capitalism exercised in a soulless way.

The Marxist system was very much State-centered, with decisions being centralized. The virtue of subsidiarity opposes this directly, moving decisions to a more local level.

Wojtyla’s Experience of Catholic Social Teaching

Throughout his life, Karol Wojtyla lived the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. He called for solidarity movements to dialogue with others and never to become closed unto themselves. Reflecting on Catholic Social Teaching, he reminds us that the State should be concerned with wage levels, humane working conditions, and the dignity of work and of each worker.

The State must contribute to the achievement of these goals both directly and indirectly. Indirectly and according to the principle of subsidiarity, by creating favorable conditions for the free exercise of economic activity, which will lead to abundant opportunities for employment and sources of wealth. Directly and according to the principle of solidarity, by defending the weakest, by placing certain limits on the autonomy of the parties who determine working conditions, and by ensuring in every case the necessary minimum support for the unemployed worker (Pope St. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 15).

Understanding that we are all part of one human family changes the way we look at one another. In the world, there is always the temptation to give in to a mentality of conquest. Pope John Paul II proposed rather a civilization of love. When the state works with intermediate autonomous bodies to promote the good of all, they all work together to promote this civilization of love. This is the principle of subsidiarity at work.

The principle of solidarity has become even more present since Pope John Paul II, notably in the teaching of Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti, quoted also by Pope Leo XIV in Magnifica Humanitas. Pope Benedict XVI refers to the term in Caritas in Veritate. What began as a workers’ movement had a tremendous influence on Catholic Social Teaching, helping to craft a response to the proposal of Communism to the world. While there can be debate on different economic systems, the Church can never cave to the desire to lose respect for the dignity of each human being. This is at the core of Wojtyla’s thought and teaching as well.

Subsidiarity and the Family

Pope St. John Paul II was known for his love of marriage and family. Respecting the family as the most basic unit of society, he saw in it additionally the best way to promote human dignity and the progress of humanity. Subsidiarity takes on special importance in his reflection on the family in his Letter to Families.

The mission of education must always be carried out in accordance with a proper application of the principle of subsidiarity. This implies the legitimacy and indeed the need of giving assistance to the parents, but finds its intrinsic and absolute limit in their prevailing right and their actual capabilities (Pope St. John Paul II, Gratissimam Sane, 16)

When families fall apart, societies fail. Parents have the ultimate responsibility of the education of their children. Other institutions, whether this be the state, the Church, or others, must give parents their place in the education of their children. A just society involves the parents; it does not exclude them.

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Importance of Economic Freedom

Economic freedom was important for Pope John Paul II, but not because he was promoting consumerism or the market economy. Economic freedom is a means to an end, since it allows the individual to choose what is good. Freedom is not without its limits, and ideally, we should use our freedom to choose what furthers the common good. The risk of the market economy and capitalism is that there can be a strong tendency towards individualism. The rise of selfishness and greed is unchristian and does not promote the common good. Economic freedom is good when we use it so that all can grow and flourish.

Conclusion

When the workers reacted so strongly to the firing of Anna Walentynowicz, they were looking out for one of their own. Self-interest might have suggested ignoring the problem. But they knew they had to stand up for what was right. The Soviet empire eventually collapsed. But the Kingdom of Christ still needs to be built up. The mission of Christians remains the same: to build the civilization of love by defending the dignity of every human person.

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I couldn’t wait to talk about the Pope, because I was ready to jump on the topic, proudly proclaiming “Mt. 16:18” as a clear text giving the right foundation to this institution that is so central to the Catholic stance on doctrine and tradition.

Now, many years later, I recognize a certain risk to such an attitude when we make the faith more about polemics and less about the truth. I think the passage still tells us something important about the papacy. But I no longer think its deepest significance is winning an argument with a Baptist.

The passage is worth exploring more deeply, reflecting on what Jesus was doing when he spoke to Peter at Caesarea Philippi. Why did Jesus choose Peter, and what does that mean for our faith today?

Who Do People Say that I am?

Even before reflecting on the papacy, the passage invites us to reflect on Jesus. Who do you say that Jesus is? It kills me when people reduce the person of Christ to just another religious figure. If it is just symbolic, some human wisdom, forget it. I don’t want to give my life for a symbol nor sacrifice so much in life to pretend that I am enlightened. I am giving my life to a person.

Pope St. John Paul II reflected on this passage at the Mass beginning his pontificate, and for good reason. His pontificate, lasting over twenty-five years, would be a constant proclamation of the person of Jesus Christ, and this is who we are called to encounter through this passage.

All of you who are still seeking God, all of you who already have the inestimable good fortune to believe, and also you who are tormented by doubt: please listen once again, today in this sacred place, to the words uttered by Simon Peter. In those words is the faith of the Church. In those same words is the new truth, indeed, the ultimate and definitive truth about man: the son of the living God—”You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 22 October 1978).

Through our prayer, reflection, and service, we should come into contact with the living God. Jesus is truly an historical figure, but he impacts us still today, especially through the Church and through the Eucharist. Jesus is not a guru; he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (cf. Jn. 14:6).

The Pope isn’t important in isolation. His purpose is to point us to Christ.

Peter’s Confession

At least once, Peter got it right. After hearing what other people said about Jesus, it was Peter who spoke correctly on behalf of the disciples. It is the role of the Pope to speak up for the People of God and to speak to this same Church, reminding us always who Jesus is. In spite of scandals and weak men throughout the history of the Church, we still have the unbroken witness of orthodoxy in proclaiming Jesus to be the Son of God and our Savior from sin.

When Jesus turns to the disciples and asks them their answer to the pivotal question, Peter answers in the best possible way:

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16:16).

Keeper of the Keys

Because of this tremendous answer, Jesus chose Peter to be the one. After Jesus established the Church, he chose Peter to carry out a specific role within the Christian Church after his own death. Peter, one of the Apostles who received the power of the priesthood at the Last Supper, also became the first among the Apostles. We see it in the way he is listed among the Apostles throughout the Gospels and in how his authority is respected throughout the New Testament.

Down through the centuries, there has always been someone filling the role that Peter played for the primitive Church. We call this bishop the Pope.

The Church and the Truth

It is not his role to make up doctrine, but rather to preserve the doctrine handed down from Christ through the Apostles. We call this the Deposit of Faith. We owe obedience to the Pope, not because he is perfect, not because he is a saint, not because he can never be wrong about anything, but because he receives a charismatic gift to maintain the true doctrine of the Church.

Our relationship with the Church is not ultimately about winning arguments. It is about receiving what Christ has entrusted to his Church and allowing that truth to shape the way we live.

As you will see, I got a little carried away, but I don’t want to eliminate any of the books. The first resource listed in each category is where I would start. And if you can only read five, start here:

1. Trent Horn, Why We’re Catholic.

2. Christopher West, Theology of the Body for Beginners.

3. Patrick Madrid, Surprised by Truth.

4. C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man.

5. Brandon Vogt, Why I Am Catholic (And You Should Be Too).

Apologetics

Apologetics is not the science of saying you’re sorry. Rather, it comes from the Greek apologia and means “defense of the faith.” It recalls the first letter of St. Peter:

Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope (1 P. 3:15).

Learning to defend the faith brings a lot of joy and is best accomplished in community. Find someone else who has the same interest.

General Apologetics

• Trent Horn. He has written some great books on apologetics. I would recommend Why We’re Catholic. This is the best book I have found for our students coming into the Church. He lays out the various topics well in a way that is digestible for the modern reader.

• Peter Kreeft, Handbook of Christian Apologetics. This book gives a lot of answers and will be especially helpful for people seeking a rational explanation of the faith.

• Brandon Vogt, What to Say and How to Say It. Vogt lays out his arguments forcefully and organizes his topics well.

• Brandon Vogt, Why I Am Catholic (And You Should Be Too). This is a great book with personal testimony and reasons for being Catholic.

• Jimmy Akin, The Salvation Controversy. Jimmy Akin from Catholic Answers has decades of experience in apologetics. He does a great job laying out the important topics and bringing people the truth in an understandable way.

• Bishop Robert Barron, Catholicism. He turned his hit TV series into a book. It is very worthwhile showing people the beauty of the faith, but may be a bit heady for some.

  Christology

• Brant Pitre, The Case for Jesus. This great theologian helps the reader to see why it is clear that Jesus truly existed and is who he claims to be.

Existence of God

• Matt Fradd, Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. Matt Fradd explains things in a way that is down to earth.

• Edward Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God. This philosophy professor is one of the foremost experts on the five ways of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Pope and the Church

• Patrick Madrid, Pope Fiction. In the tradition of 1990s Catholic speakers, Madrid loves puns but gives a coherent defense of the Catholic teaching on the papacy.

Secularism

• George Rutler, A Crisis in Culture. As Christianity has been consistently plagued by attacks in the West, secularism has risen as a new religion. Fr. Rutler explores the meaning of this for Christianity and for the world.

New Age

• Mitch Pacwa, Catholics and the New Age. He explores his own experience with New Age ideology during his priestly formation and explains why this is incompatible with Catholic teaching.

• John Bartunek, Spiritual But Not Religious. Fr. John does a wonderful job of laying out the way the world often looks at spirituality today. He helps the reader to understand why spirituality without religion does not work.

Sexuality and the Human Person

• Christopher West, Theology of the Body for Beginners. Christopher West has helped “translate” Pope St. John Paul’s teaching for generations of Catholics, especially in the United States. This book is a very helpful introduction to the best of what the Church teaches about the meaning of the human body.

• Jason Evert, Male, Female, Other? The author explores the meaning of sexuality in the face of a world that seems to be redefining everything.

Helpful Church Documents

• Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus. This Declaration explains clearly what the Church teaches about the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the role of the Church in salvation.

• Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium. The Gospel of Jesus Christ grants us true joy.

• Pope St. John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis. His first encyclical letter is a great help to falling in love with Jesus and his Church.

• Catechism of the Catholic Church. This is a great resource, but can be difficult to just read straight through while lying on the beach.

Stories of People Coming Home to the Church

• Patrick Madrid, Surprised by Truth. These are great stories of men and women finding their way to or back to the Church. I remember fondly reading this as a teenager.

• Scott and Kimberly Hahn, Rome, Sweet Home. The Hahns chronicle their conversion story, echoing much of what was reported in Scott’s pivotal conversion story tape that we all listened to in the car during the late 1990s. One of the big surprises for me was how different their journeys were, despite being married to each other.

• Sohrab Ahmari, From Fire By Water. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to grow up a secular Muslim in Iran and become Catholic in the United States? Ahmari tells the tale, and his journalistic talent makes it that much more exciting.

• St. John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua. This man went from being an Anglican cleric to a Catholic priest and eventually a cardinal. As part of the Oxford Movement in England, he sought always the truth, and this led him to the Catholic Church.

Podcasts

• Matt Fradd, Pints with Aquinas. He has lots of fascinating conversations with figures from Catholicism and beyond. Apologetics comes up often.

• Jason Evert, Lust is Boring. Speaking about the meaning of human sexuality, the discourse comes back constantly to the value of human existence and Christ, thus serving as a good impulse towards learning about the faith.

• Catholic Answers. This service out of San Diego has been forming people in the faith for decades.

• Lila Rose, The Lila Rose Show. She gives a feminine voice to talking about the Catholic faith.

Other Helpful Books

• C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man. What does it mean to be human? C.S. Lewis explores the question in this short book.

• George Weigel, The Courage to be Catholic. He gives great perspective on what it means to be Catholic in a world that tends to criticize the Church.

• C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. This book has helped countless men and women to encounter the Christian faith. People might need an extra nudge to discover the Catholic faith.

• Timothy Radcliffe, What is the Point of Being Christian. Written by an English intellectual, this book explores the faith from a rather heady angle.

• Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), God and the World. This is one of the most beautiful interviews ever, discussing what it means to be Christian and Catholic.

• Pope St. John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope. This book is comparable to Ratzinger’s God and the World. It brings hope at the same time that it draws the reader closer to the Church.

• G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy. Although a bit older, his thought is coherent and points the way to Christianity, specifically Catholicism.

A friend asked me what books I would suggest for apologetics, so I came up with this list. It was great to go back over so many titles I’ve read over the years and brought some things to my radar that I need to pick up again. Exploring the faith is wonderful, and doing it with a friend is even better. Hopefully, we can all be the guiding hand, leading another person closer to the truth. Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (cf. Jn. 14:6).

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The realist vision of philosophy proclaims that truth is objective but may be difficult to recognize. Truth has both an objective and a subjective dimension. Reality exists independently of us, yet each person must come to know it. Truth is traditionally understood as the correspondence between the mind and reality. From his days as a young professor working with even younger minds, Karol tried to open their intellects to the splendor of truth. That conviction culminated in his 1993 encyclical, Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), his great call for the renewal of moral theology.

One of the principal enemies of moral theology, as he would see it, was moral relativism. He began by calling everyone’s attention to the truth, especially the truth proclaimed by Jesus Christ.

A Return to Truth

This truth demands a certain obedience from our intellect if we are going to live in reality.

Called to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, “the true light that enlightens everyone” (Jn 1:9), people become “light in the Lord” and “children of light” (Eph 5:8), and are made holy by “obedience to the truth” (1 Pet 1:22) (Pope St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 1).

This obedience is not always easy, and we often fall into relativism or skepticism, searching for an illusory freedom apart from truth itself. When truth is no longer viewed as objective, it becomes incapable of holding the attention of men. One of the reasons people began to doubt religious truth was the idea that scientific truth and technology could take its place. John Paul II argued vigorously against such an idea, insisting that the advance of science and technology “does not free humanity from the obligation to ask the ultimate religious questions” (Pope St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 1).

If truth is objective, then morality must also possess objective content. Some actions are wrong not simply because societies condemn them, but because they contradict the truth about the human person. In addition to the existence of objective truth, he would argue for the existence of intrinsically evil acts. After a century marked by genocide, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb, it was clear that evil exists in the world. Yet many moral theologians and philosophers increasingly questioned whether any action could be judged intrinsically evil, preferring to evaluate moral acts primarily by intentions or consequences. John Paul II believed this trend left humanity without firm moral foundations precisely after a century that had witnessed Auschwitz and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We are remarkably creative at rationalizing our behavior. Given enough time, nearly any action can be made to appear reasonable.

As a witness to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the influx of freedom into Eastern Europe, John Paul II was determined to wake people up to the relationship between freedom and truth.

Relation Between Freedom and Truth

John Paul II’s defense of objective truth was never merely academic. It had profound political implications, especially as communist regimes collapsed across Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union dissolved December 26, 1991. The 15 new independent nations had to face economic stagnation at the same time that they had to recover a sense of freedom for their citizens. After decades of propaganda, it was important to rediscover the value of truth in relation to freedom.

The inseparable connection between truth and freedom — which expresses the essential bond between God’s wisdom and will — is extremely significant for the life of persons in the socio-economic and socio-political sphere (Pope St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 99).

As Western consumer culture and radical individualism spread eastward, the leaders of the former Soviet bloc faced the problem of proposing purpose and meaning to the lives of the newly free citizens of their various republics. The Archbishop of Cracow who had preached meaning to Poles living under Soviet occupation became the Roman Pontiff preaching meaning to all who had come out from behind the Iron Curtain.

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Truth and Democracy

A plurality of ideas and the desire to avoid conflict led many Western leaders to take a path of least resistance, preferring to water down their ideas, rather than have firm ideas that could lead to discord and a possible new outbreak of hostilities. It could easily devolve into ethical relativism.

This is the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism, which would remove any sure moral reference point from political and social life, and on a deeper level make the acknowledgement of truth impossible (Pope St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 101).

Rather than arguing on ideological grounds, it became preferable to find a path that was practical. The most important thing was to avoid political and physical violence. Democracy requires citizens capable of recognizing truth. The majority vote cannot substitute moral conscience. Rights depend on and come from objective human dignity.

The Triumph of Pragmatism

With a rise of individual freedoms, there was also a desire to justify the consumerist actions of the masses.

Today’s widespread tendencies towards subjectivism, utilitarianism and relativism appear not merely as pragmatic attitudes or patterns of behavior, but rather as approaches having a basis in theory and claiming full cultural and social legitimacy (Pope St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 106).

This would also serve to lessen cultural distinctions, as that could lead to division among the people.

Moral Theology

Epistemological realism and political pluralism driven by pragmatism led to an influx of moral relativism into moral theology. The sense of sin had declined.

The sense of sin also easily declines as a result of a system of ethics deriving from a certain historical relativism (Pope John Paul II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 18).

Pope St. Paul VI had also spoken about the loss of the sense of sin. Without objective moral norms, no action can be judged universally wrong. Moral judgments become expressions of preference rather than statements about what is objectively good or evil. This is preferable to those who wish to wipe out the idea of evil. When truth disappears, evil becomes merely a matter of opinion.

The saving power of the truth is contested, and freedom alone, uprooted from any objectivity, is left to decide by itself what is good and what is evil. This relativism becomes, in the field of theology, a lack of trust in the wisdom of God, who guides man with the moral law. Concrete situations are unfavorably contrasted with the precepts of the moral law, nor is it any longer maintained that, when all is said and done, the law of God is always the one true good of man” (Pope St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 84).

Today we often hear, “That’s your truth, this is mine.” John Paul II spent his life resisting precisely that temptation. Truth is not something each person invents but something each person receives and seeks. Freedom separated from truth ultimately turns against the human person, while freedom rooted in truth leads to authentic flourishing. For John Paul II, that truth was never merely an idea. It had a face: Jesus Christ, who said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6). That conviction lies at the heart of Veritatis Splendor and remains one of his most enduring contributions to moral theology.

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A Woman in Need

Today’s Gospel features leftovers center stage. A Canaanite woman comes to Jesus, begging for help because a demon is tormenting her daughter. She is a foreigner, at least in relation to Jesus and the disciples. Because the truth is that they are the foreigners. They are in the region of Tyre and Sidon, which the Greeks referred to as Phoenicia. So, it makes sense that they meet a Syro-Phoenician woman, as Mark’s Gospel refers to her. It feels contradictory for the disciples to be so dismissive towards her as a foreigner and a Gentile, since they are the ones far from home.

What were the actions of the woman? She was full of concern and worry because of her daughter’s suffering. When she heard of the holy man coming to her town, she felt compelled to go to meet him. She begged him for help, only to be rebuffed. Rather than being offended or entitled, she begged once again, lowering herself even more. She placed no limits on what she would do for the good of her daughter. Jesus makes it clear that he does not consider her a primary beneficiary of his public ministry. He even goes so far as to compare her to a dog.

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She takes up this title and refers to herself as a dog begging for scraps. The miracle happens. Although she was not a primary beneficiary, she would also benefit. Even the scraps of God are enough for us. His love and his gifts are so bountiful that even a little bit is more than we could ever possibly need. Then, Jesus seems to make a huge turn in his attitude. “Woman, great is your faith.” He praises her. It is unique praise, and interesting that Jesus only praises non-Israelites for faith throughout the Gospel. From suffering rejection, she becomes one of the beloved of God.

Jesus Begging for Our Love

Often, the situation seems reversed. It feels like it is Jesus who is begging for our attention. The other day, I ordered an Uber from the airport. The driver looked rather distraught, and I asked him how he was doing. He went on to share that his home country had just suffered an earthquake. His home was destroyed, and they had rescued his mother from the ruins. He was still trying to find his daughter. We spoke during the trip, and he shared that most of the time we don’t think much about God. It is only when we are thrown into a crisis that we truly turn to God.

Don’t give God the leftovers. So often, in confession, I hear about people not making the time every week to go to Mass. Perhaps they feel bad, and obviously some situations might make it impossible. But I feel that often the problem is that we are giving the leftovers to God. If we have time, if we have energy, and if it is very easy, we make time for God. But we often need to reverse our thinking if we are going to be consistent in our desire to live for God.

Figuring it Out

Before we get to the weekend, we should have a firm commitment to when and where we are going to Mass. Otherwise, it becomes too easy to miss. It can happen in other areas of our lives as well. If we do not set aside time for God, it never happens that we spend the time we feel we need in prayer. If, on the other hand, we set aside the first fifteen minutes of the day to read and reflect on the Gospel, it soon becomes a habit.

Don’t give God the leftovers. Give him the best time of your day and your week so that you are building a strong relationship with him. You would never ask someone on a date and then try to fit the person in between two more important appointments. Don’t do that with God. Give the best to God, and he will do the rest. The Canaanite woman came to Jesus with nothing but her need and faith, and discovered that even what seemed like scraps from God were abundant grace for her.

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