If he wasn’t praying or studying, he had the feeling he was wasting his time. Truth is brief.” He found television and radio to be a waste of time. On silence and prayer: The more deeply people develop within themselves in their interior life, the more prone they are to silence… Every great work, all holiness, is born in silence and recollection… Only falsehood wraps itself in a flood of words. On the Mass: He lingered lovingly over every syllable that recalled the Last Supper as if the words were new to him. On intercession: Every morning, he would take in 30-40 new petitions and pray specifically for each one. On death: The man who taught the world how to live was now teaching the world how to die. On the devil: Father Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist in Rome, asked the demons more than once ‘Why are you so scared of JP2?’ One response he has received is “because he pulled so many young people from my hands.” Suffering is a privileged vocation in the mystery of Christ and His Church. On suffering: All things can be offered up as a prayer, and the intensity of suffering is not as important as the degree of love with which one embraces each cross.
He always considered his rosary a divine appointment that neither himself nor his mother missed. On Mary: JP2 reread True Devotion to Mary several times in order to finally understand it. On the priest’s importance of prayer: “In the absence of a deep inner life, a priest will imperceptibly turn into an office clerk, and his apostolate will turn into a parish office routine, just solving daily problems.”
He made short visits to the Chapel before and after every meal. He prayed for everyone he met before & after he met them. On devotions: Rosary first thing in the morning, divine mercy chaplets throughout day too, confession every week, each Friday and every day of lent stations of the cross, one complete meal a day during Lent, fasted on eve of our Lady’s feasts, immersed in prayer during meetings and walks. He would spend hours writing before the Eucharist. The Eucharist was the principal reason for his priesthood. On adoration & the Eucharist: “The young priest often spent the night before the Blessed Sacrament, and his parishioners sometimes spied on him, watching him in prayer, lying prostrate on the cold floor.” His 60-90 minutes of prayer before Mass was the best part of his day. On the intense manual labour he underwent: “I was a labourer for 4 years, and for me those 4 years of work are worth more than two doctorate degrees.”
The following are some points I drew from the reading: Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves by Jason Evert is a fantastic summary of the life of a truly extraordinary saint, JP2.
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