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MY WITNESS MY HOPE Saint Pope John Paul II in Knock, 1979

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MY WITNESS MY HOPE Saint Pope John Paul II in Knock, 1979 CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE MY WITNESS MY HOPE Saint Pope John Paul II in Knock, 1979. MY WITNESS MY HOPE CONTENTS Preface by Michael Kinsella QUESTION 1 Does God Exist? .................................................................4 QUESTION 2 Is This ‘Proof’ Still Valid? .......................................................7 QUESTION 3 Why is God Hiding? ........................................................... 11 QUESTION 4 Is Jesus the Son of God? .................................................... 14 QUESTION 5 What Has Become of the ‘History of Salvation’? ......................... 19 QUESTION 6 The Centrality of Salvation ................................................. 22 QUESTION 7 Why Is There So Much Evil In The World? ................................ 27 QUESTION 8 Why Does A Loving God Tolerate Suffering? ............................. 29 QUESTION 9 What Does ‘To Save’ Actually Mean? ...................................... 32 QUESTION 10 Was God at Work in the Fall of Communism? ........................... 37 QUESTION 11 Is Rome Right? ................................................................ 42 QUESTION 12 In Search of Lost Unity ....................................................... 49 QUESTION 13 Why is the Church Divided? ................................................. 54 QUESTION 14 The Church and the Council ................................................ 56 QUESTION 15 A ‘Dialogue of Salvation’ ..................................................... 59 QUESTION 16 The Reaction of the ‘World’ ................................................. 63 QUESTION 17 Does ‘Eternal Life’ Exist? ..................................................... 67 QUESTION 18 What is the Use of Believing? ............................................... 73 QUESTION 19 ‘Be Not Afraid’ .................................................................. 78 QUESTION 20 Crossing the Threshold of Hope ........................................... 82 JOHANNES PAULUS II 1 PREFACE PREFACE his short e-book has been extracted from ‘Crossing the Threshold of Hope’1 a 1994 Tpublication which was prepared by the Italian Catholic journalist Vittorio Messori based upon a series of 35 written questions Sig. Missoni submitted to the then-Holy Father and to which the Holy Father responded in writing. An unadapted copy of the Holy Father’s original opus can be read gratis online.2 In this abridged version those 20 questions which most directly address St. Pope John Paul’s Witness to Hope have been selected for re-presentation. In doing so in the interests of brevity a number of Messori’s sometimes elliptical ques- tions have been truncated. While none of the Holy Father’s words have been excluded or altered, the ‘look’ of the Holy Father’s words ‘on the page’ has been reformatted and the text itself has been highlighted in various ways in order to make it more accessible and to draw in the attention of the reader. Hopefully it will also encourage a slow, repeated and medita- tive reading of this witness to Hope as given by a great Saint of our time. As such the aim of producing this abbreviated e-version of St. John Paul II’s original work is to make his authoritative and perennial witness to Christian Hope and Christian Truth freely available to the people of today. Truly today and perhaps more than ever people are in need of Hope as our world finds itself ever more threatened by an increasing number of existential risks. Today’s world is sadly one where honesty is an increasingly scarce commodity and Truth is being denied. 1 His Holiness John Paul II Crossing the Threshold of Hope, 1994. Published in English by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc ISBN 0-679-76561-1. 2 http://www.catholic.net/rcc/POPE/HopeBook/toc.html. Note that Pope John Paul ‘s answer to Question 26, raised under the heading of ‘A Qualitative Renewal’ is not provided at this site. 2 MY WITNESS MY HOPE PREFACE It is a world where the Good News of the Gospel finds itself under relentless attack by the ‘fake’ news and falsehoods of the moment. It is to this world that John Paul comes as an honest witness, a thoughtful witness, an experienced witness, a concerned witness, a credible witness. St. Pope John Paul II is a credible witness. History has already shown us that throughout his long life John Paul ‘walked the walk’ and so it is that herein one can listen with confidence to the Saint ‘talk the talk’ as he gives his account for the Hope he held within him3. Dr. Michael Kinsella National Director, ACN Ireland 3 Cf. 1 Peter 3:15 ‘In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the Hope that is in you.’ JOHANNES PAULUS II 3 QUESTION 1 QUESTION 1 DOES GOD EXIST? VM: Every Christian believes that God exists. Thus, every Christian believes not only that God has spoken and that He assumed human flesh in a historical figure at the time of the Roman Empire: Jesus of Nazareth. Faith, certainly, is a gift, a Divine Grace. But another Divine gift is reason. According to the ancient exhortations of the Saints and Doctors of the Church, the Christian “believes in order to understand”; but he is also called “to understand in order to believe.” From a human perspective, how can one come to the conclusion that God really exists? JPII: Your question ultimately concerns Pascal’s distinction between • the Absolute-that is, the God of the Philosophers (the rationalist libertins)-and • the God of Jesus Christ; and, prior to Him, the God of the Patriarchs-from Abra- ham to Moses. Only the God of Jesus Christ is the living God. As has also been stated in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum (no. 3), the first God mentioned above- the God of the Philosophers-is the fruit of human thought, of human speculation, and capable of saying something valid about God. In the end, all rationalist arguments follow the path indicated in the Book of Wisdom and the Letter to the Romans-passing from the visible world to the invisible Absolute. Aristotle and Plato follow this same path, but in a different manner.The Christian tradi- tion before Thomas Aquinas, and therefore also Augustine, was tied to Plato, from whom it nonetheless rightfully wanted to distance itself. For Christians, the philosophical Absolute, considered as the First Being or Supreme Good, did not have great meaning. Why engage in philosophical speculations about God, they asked themselves, if the living God has spoken, not only by way of the Prophets but also through His own Son? The Theology of the Fathers, especially in the East, broke away more and more from Plato and from Philosophers in general. Philosophy itself, in the Fathers, ends up in Theology (as in the case, for example, in modern times, of Vladimir Soloviev). 4 MY WITNESS MY HOPE DOES GOD EXIST? Saint Thomas, however, did not abandon the Philosophers’ approach. He began his Summa Theologica with the question “An Deus sit?”-”Does God exist?”4. You ask the same question. This question has proven to be very useful. Not only did it create Theodicy, but this question has reverberated throughout a highly developed Western civilisation. Even if today, unfortunately, the Summa Theologica has been somewhat neglected, its initial question persists and continues to resound throughout our civilisation. At this point it is necessary to cite an entire passage from the Pastoral Constitution Gaud- ium et Spes of the Second Vatican Council: “In truth, the imbalances existing in the modern world are linked to a more profound imbalance found in the heart of man. Many elements conflict with each other in man’s inner struggle. As a created being, he experiences his limitations in thousands of ways yet he also perceives himself to be boundless in his aspirations and des- tined to a higher life. Enticed by many options, he is continually forced to choose some and to renounce others. Furthermore, since he is weak and sinful, he often does what he detests and not what he desires. This causes him to suffer an inner division, which is the source of so many and such grievous disagreements in society. With all of this, however, in face of the modern world’s development, there is an ever-increasing number of people who ask themselves or who feel more keenly the most essential questions: • What is man? • What is the meaning of suffering, …of evil, …of death, … which persist despite all progress? • What are these victories, purchased at so high a cost, really worth? • What can man offer to society and what can he expect from it? • What will there be after this life? 4 cf. 1, q.2, a.3. JOHANNES PAULUS II 5 QUESTION 1 The Church believes that Christ, who died and was resurrected for the sake of all, continuously gives to man through His Spirit the light and the strength to respond to his higher destiny. Nor is there any other name under Heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved. The Church also believes that the key, the centre, and the purpose of all of human history, is found in its Lord and Master”5. This passage of the Council is immensely rich. One clearly sees that the response to the question “An Deus sit?” is not only an issue that touches the intellect; it is, at the same time, an issue that has a strong impact on all of human existence. It depends on a multitude of situations in which man searches for the significance and the meaning of his own existence. Questioning God’s existence is intimately united with the purpose of human exis- tence. Not only is it a question of intellect; it is also a question of the will, even a question of the human heart (the raisons du coeur of Blaise Pascal). I think that it is wrong to maintain that Saint Thomas’s position stands up only in the realm of the rational. One must, it is true, applaud Etienne Gilson when he agrees with Saint Thomas that the intellect is the most marvellous of God’s creations, but that does not mean that we must give in to a unilateral rationalism.
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