“Your Face, Lord, Do I Seek …”

Each week we let Saint Pope John Paul II share meaningful signposts to spark socio-economic resolves through justice and righteousness combined with mercy and compassion; in short, love.

Each of us can repeat the words of the Psalmist:

             "Your face, Lord, do I seek; hide not your face from me" (Psalm 27:8-9).

We all have our personal history with an innate desire to see God, a passion that makes itself felt simultaneous as we discover the created world. This world is wonderful and rich; it sets before us countless treasures; it enchants us; it attracts both our reason and our will.

Young people realize in their depths that the quest of seeking God is the inner law of their lives. 1

The Desire and Pursuit of Holiness

In speaking today of sanctity, of the desire for, and the pursuit of holiness, we need to ask ourselves how we can create environments that favor the aspiration to holiness.

             What can be done to make the family, the school, the workplace, the office, the villages, the cities, and finally, the whole country a dwelling-place of saints?

             Who can influence others by their goodness, their fidelity to Christ's teaching, and the witness of their everyday lives and thus foster all people's spiritual growth?

The Saints and Blessed of the thirteenth-century reply:

             It requires witness.

             It requires courage not to put your faith under a bushel basket.

             And in the end, it requires that in the hearts of believers, there should abound that desire for holiness, which shapes one's private life and influences society as a whole.

In my Letter to Families, I wrote that ‘the history of humankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family.

             At the center of the great struggle, the family is placed between good and evil.

             The family is entrusted with striving to unleash the forces of good, which is found in Christ, the Redeemer of humanity. 

             Every family unit needs to make these forces their own so that, to use a phrase spoken on the occasion of the Millennium of Christianity in Poland, the family will be ‘strong with the strength of God.’

Brothers and Sisters, do not be afraid to aspire to holiness!

Do not be afraid to be saints!

Make of this new millennium an era of saintly men and women! 2

1 Excerpted from:

APOSTOLIC JOURNEYOF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL IITO PARIS,
ON THE OCCASION OF THE 12TH WORLD YOUTH DAY(AUGUST 21-24, 1997)

MASS FOR 12TH WORLD YOUTH DAY

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II

Longchamp Racecourse
Sunday, 24 August 1997

http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1997/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19970824_youth-paris.html

2 Excerpted from:

APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO POLAND

EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION 
FOR THE CANONIZATION OF BLESSED KINGA

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II

Stary Sacz
Wednesday, 16 June 1999

http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19990616_stary-sacz.html