Remembering John Paul II

Dear Alice at Cottage Blessings reminded me (thank you, Alice!) that today is the third anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II. (I need those reminders.) Do go take a look at her post, and at her column in the Long Island Catholic. Beautiful and worth your reading time.

I still miss our beloved Papa, though I am getting to know and love our new papa, too. Isn't it funny? Three years, and Pope Benedict still feels like "the new pope" to me. That's because I live in Catholic Time, which moves like a glacier (I say that with all and real affection.)

Three years ago, I wrote the piece below, just after John Paul II died, and it still holds true.

Papa, pray for us.

And, if you'd like to take a look at the JP II unit study we did last year, the link is here.


Closer than Ever

Our beloved Holy Father (“Holy Daddy,” as my toddler calls him) is with the Lord. There’s no doubt in my mind. I’m certain that Karol Wojtyla, our dear Pope John Paul II, lived his purgatory on earth and was taken straight into the Beatific Vision.

Granted, our family said prayers for the repose of his soul. He asked for our prayers, after all, and we know that our Church never presumes to know the state of a particular soul. But almost immediately, my husband pointed out how backward it felt: We all strongly felt the urge to ask him to pray for us.

At Mass on Divine Mercy Sunday I felt closer to Papa than ever before. I’ve long loved him, of course. As a convert to Catholicism ten years ago, I was greatly influenced by his writings and I continue to be. I grew to love the Catholic Church in large part because Papa explained it to me so thoroughly, so clearly, so beautifully. His apostolic letters and encyclicals told me of the riches of God’s providence, what it means to live a life of and for the Lord, and about the unity and beauty of our faith’s doctrines. Papa showed me that God loved me.

When he was alive, the closeness I felt to him was due to his role as my earthly spiritual father. He taught, led by example, and prayed for his flock. He exemplified a life of sacrifice, of pure and true love for God. However, although I knew his prayers for “all the faithful” included me, I also knew that on a practical level, JPII didn’t know me. He didn’t know for whom or for what I prayed, he didn’t know my private struggles and many weaknesses. He didn’t know how much I personally needed him. Now he does.

As I prayed at Mass, on Divine Mercy Sunday, I felt an overwhelming need to cry out to my papa. I asked him to pray for me. I felt drenched in his love and paternal concern as I imagined his beaming face. I felt convinced, down to my bones, that he now knows. He knows every private struggle that I reveal to him in prayer and he will lay them before my Heavenly Father’s throne, in urgent and loving intercession. He is now present to me as never before.

Like so many others, I will miss Papa’s earthly presence and leadership. But, with him and St. Faustina, I can say, “Jesus, I trust in Thee.” I know that our Church will go on and we will move forward with a new shepherd. We’ll have adjustments to make, and we’ll miss seeing dear Papa’s face, but our Church will go on. I do not have fears about our next pope. I fear only what he (and we) will personally endure as he shepherds us through the mess of the modern world. I trust in the Holy Spirit and I trust in Christ’s promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church. We will push on. We will overcome. Evil will not triumph.

And so, while I am sad that I will no longer read new encyclicals from JPII, hear new pronouncements, or see Papa’s face on the news, I am happy for him. His earthly suffering is over. He has entered into the eternal happiness for which we all long.

When fear creeps in, I will remind myself that Papa is closer to me than ever. I’ll ask for his prayers and know — good father that he is — that he’ll take them to the Lord. Papa told me not to be afraid. I plan to follow his advice.

John Paul the Great: The Notebooks

We're finishing these up this week, and I want to pull together a final list of all the resources we used. (Don't forget to check out the surprise resource at the end of this post!)

Resources used:

The Young Life of Pope John Paul II, by Claire Jordan Mohan (the girls read and narrated it)

The Jeweler's Shop , by Pope John Paul II (I read the play, and we included a page in our notebooks about JPII, the playwright)

The Poetry of Pope John Paul II , by Pope John Paul II (I read a couple of selections to the girls, and they did part of one poem as copywork)

From Pflaum Publishing Group:

A wealth of resources! These are all pdf files, so I won't put the links here, but they're easy to get to through Pflaum. We used their biography, Encyclical summaries, Fascinating Facts quiz, Pope's Crest coloring page, Spreading the Word and Teach All Nations pages (geography sheets), another printable quiz as well as the pop-up online quiz, an "FYI" sheet and some of their information about electing a new pope.

The Young Life of Faustina Kowalska by Claire Jordan Mohan (with discussions on John Paul the Great's involvement in spreading the devotion, officially establishing Divine Mercy Sunday and canonizing St. Faustina ... many thanks to the beautiful website, Marians of the Immaculate Conception)

We are praying the Divine Mercy Novena, which began on Good Friday and is prayed through Divine Mercy Sunday

Visited Divine Mercy Images to see a number of different renderings of the Divine Mercy image

Viewed a short video/photo compilation at The Daughters of St. Paul website

Read and clipped articles about Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, who has been healed of Parkinson's disease

Printed out this coloring sheet of the pope (and when I explained the Latin phrase "Totus Tuus" to the girls, Betsy said, "Oh! Totus Cool!")

Printed out pictures of Our Lady of Fatima, of the Holy Father meeting with Sister Lucia, and of Our Lady of Czestochowa, in order to include a page on special devotions of John Paul the Great. We also discussed, in the context of his devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, the 1981 assassination attempt.

We also looked through all the pictures in Witness to Hope, by George Weigel

And, finally, what study on a great pope would be complete without Marvel Comics? (H/T to Mary at Our Domestic Church)


Special thanks to Alice and her notebook ideas, and to Heart and Mind magazine (whose link I cannot seem to access right now) for the wonderful unit study by Cay Gibson, Maureen Wittmann and Nancy Brown.

(Postscript: to include this link -- it's a pdf file -- to the Heart and Mind unit study. Thank you, Ana! For some reason the bookmark I'd saved was not working earlier today. )

John Paul the Great ... Loveliness Defined

Visit Sarah, at Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering, for a beautiful collection of posts on John Paul the Great. Thanks for putting together this perfect Loveliness Fair, Sarah!

I'm such an idiot

So, I've been really focused on John Paul the Great lately. I'm reading to my kids about him, and finding new resources to share with them as we work on notebooks about his life and his pontificate. I'm devouring his insightful play, The Jeweler's Shop, and generally feeling the enormous and immense love for him that I have felt since sometime before I entered the Catholic Church.

So, you would think that it wouldn't have surprised me to suddenly read a bunch of beautiful John Paul the Great tributes today on many of my favorite blogs, as they all commemorate the second anniversary of his death.

You would think.

But no, this is me. I can't seem to keep track of things that normal people keep track of. Like dates. And anniversaries of things that are important to me (though I always remember ours, Atticus.) I'm not very good at commemorating things that happened in the past.

You see it on a small level ... such as on this blog. I have no idea what the exact date was that I began this blog (oh, yeah, I could go back and look, but the thing is ... I don't know. It was fall-ish, 2005.) And I don't know how many posts I've put up, how many comments I've received, or exactly how long I've been doing this.

The blog just is. This writing exists now, as a part of my present, part of who I am, a part of what I do every day. I don't look back (except to dig for decent material on a day when it's all I can do to wake up, shower, drink coffee and tell you about You Tube. )

I do it in other ways, too. I can't remember what life was like before Ramona, or before Betsy and Anne. Sometimes I recall something from early in our marriage, and I think extraordinarily stupid things, like, "Gosh, how did all five of us fit into that tiny one bedroom apartment?" and then I remember that there weren't five of us because Atticus and I didn't have any children yet.

I can't remember things I should commemorate. I live in the present because most of the time, my fuzzy, caffeine-addled, mothering, homeschooling brain can't handle anything more than that. So, instead of specifics, and anniversaries and commemorations, I live in a more, ummm ... conceptual world. Yeah, that's it.

So, I get up one day, and even though I love my Papa, John Paul the Greatest Ever, I forget that it is the anniversary of his death. Because I'm living in a concept, instead of a normal life. But, here's the concept, and when I put it this way, it doesn't seem half bad:

In the days after my dearly beloved Holy Daddy (as Ramona called him, and as I felt down to the core of my being) died, I felt his presence and his prayers for me so closely, so sharply, that I stopped thinking of his death. I felt his life, and I continue to feel it.

As I wrote that year:

... although I knew his prayers for “all the faithful” included me, I also knew that on a practical level, JPII didn’t know me. He didn’t know for whom or for what I prayed, he didn’t know my private struggles and many weaknesses. He didn’t know how much I personally needed him. Now he does.

As I prayed at Mass, on Divine Mercy Sunday, I felt an overwhelming need to cry out to my papa. I asked him to pray for me. I felt drenched in his love and paternal concern as I imagined his beaming face. I felt convinced, down to my bones, that he now knows. He knows every private struggle that I reveal to him in prayer and he will lay them before my Heavenly Father’s throne, in urgent and loving intercession. He is now present to me as never before.

He is present to me as never before.

And, mercifully, he knows how much I loved him and love him still. He knows that my forgetting the anniversary of his death is not because I don't care, but because I care so much about the present, and his presence in it.

He didn't go away two years ago. He's still here. Closer than ever.

We love you, Holy Daddy.

Remembering Pope John Paul II

We're taking a break from World War II (other than to discuss what Karol Wojtyla was doing at the time) in order to put together a scrapbook on Pope John Paul II. I have a number of pictures, articles and newspapers that I saved from 2005 (has it been two years already?)

And, for what's turning into a unit study, I'm pulling ideas from a number of other resources:

Alice's "John Paul II Memorial Notebooks" -- details can be found on this thread at 4Real

A wealth of links to ideas on this thread at 4Real ... you must check these out

Photographs in Witness to Hope, by George Weigel

Selections from The Poetry of John Paul II

And, I get to read The Jeweler's Shop (or, more accurately, I really, really hope to make time to read it. You know how that goes, fellow moms ....)

I'll also share with my girls this essay, which I wrote right after our beloved Papa left this earth.

Is this work?

Is this school?

Is this why I love the work of homeschooling?