Quo Vadis

Nov 28, 2022

In this video we share Saint John Paul II and the Final Confrontation

Karol Cardinal Wojtyla's was selected as a Cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1967.

In March of 1976, he was invited to give a Lenten retreat to the aging Pope.

The talks became a book of deep spiritual insights and reflections entitled "Sign of Contradiction."

He was chosen by the late Pope to be his representative to the International Eucharistic Congress held in the United States in July of 1976, the Nation's bicentennial.

It would be the beginning of a deep and enduring friendship with the American people.

In an address given during that 1976 Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia for the bicentennial celebrations, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla offered these prophetic words:

“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through.

I do not think that wide circles of American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully.

We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel.

“We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not-too-distant future; trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives, and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ.

Through your prayers and mine, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it.

How many times has the renewal of the Church been brought about in blood! It will not be different this time.”

On October 16, 1978, the Cardinals gathered under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and chose Karol Cardinal Wojtyla as the 263rd successor to the Apostle Peter.

He took the name John Paul II as his first teaching act, sending the signal of continuity.

He stepped out on to the balcony in Saint Peters Square and proclaimed: "Be Not Afraid!

Open up, no; swing wide the gates to Christ.

Open up to his saving power the confines of the State, open up economic and political systems, the vast empires of culture, civilization and development...

Be not afraid!"

Like a lion in Peter's chair, he consistently and tirelessly lived what he boldly proclaimed with great courage.

Unafraid, he traversed the globe, proclaiming freedom to the captives and truth to the victims of failed false ideologies that had ravaged the people of the twentieth century, the bloodiest in all of human history.

He has not stopped passionately re-presenting the classical, unchanging, Christian message with a prophetic urgency, profound clarity and contemporary relevance.

Communism, atheism, secularism, false humanisms... have now all been exposed in both their empty promises and the horrors that they unleashed in the wake of their false utopian claims.

This Pope proclaimed that the "Redeemer of Man" (the title of his first encyclical letter), Jesus Christ, is the path to authentic personal, social and universal freedom!

He authored more encyclical letters, apostolic exhortations, constitutions and letters than any Pope in the two thousand year history of the Christian Church.

Saint Pope John Paul II called all men and women to the Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

He reminded us that only in Jesus Christ can we discover the purpose and fulfillment of human life.

He proclaimed that human existence itself is an invitation to communion with God and with one another.

He was entrusted for twenty six years with the most important role of service in the Church and the world, Saint Pope John Paul II was a prophetic Pope in both his words and his deeds.

Mirrored from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAmRKhLIT6Q