In God’s Hands: The Spiritual Diaries of Pope St John Paul II

Rosary (III); First Vespers for Sunday

Evening meditation: Recapitulatio dieitotius [Summing up the whole day]: mysterium [mystery] of the Son, the ‘visibility’ of God, His ‘historicity’ is connected to the Mother, Mary, in a special way. She is the first one, in a way, to determine this visibility and historicity. And this is why our entire relation with the visible God, with the Son – and through Him with the invisible Father – takes place through Mary. In any case, the relation cannot exclude Her, and it is well known that it is thanks to Her that this relation is the most complete and most potent.

At the same time, one thought kept returning to me in the meditation: how Mary, experiencing God’s ‘visibility’ and ‘historicity’ every day in Her Son–Man, simultaneously had to experience His divine transcendence. Amazing and unfathomable life.

(Meditation throughout the Eucharistic service and Rosary); Anticipated Matins for Sunday

Reading the ‘Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops’

Litany of the Saints and others; Compline

Finally, reading the book Polacy w Australii [i Oceanii] 1790–1940 by L. Paszkowski (in the context of my recent participation in the Eucharistic Congress in Melbourne)

12 August

Getting up at 6.00 a.m.; Intention; Daily prayers; Lauds in the chapel

Meditation before Holy Mass, with the preparation of the Liturgy of the Word and the homily, was from the beginning directed at the mystery of the Holy Spirit

Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament; 8.00 a.m., Holy Mass with a congregation, homily; Reading from the Divine Office

Meditation (longer): De mysterio SS-mi Spiritus [On the mystery of the Holy Spirit]: ‘God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthy’ (J).

Our conception of God’s spirituality is based on our meagre experiences of our own human spirituality. The ‘purely’ spiritual and ‘purely’ personal reality at the same time. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are the Spirit. ‘The Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.’

We know that He is holy and that He is a Person, like the Father and the Son. We know that He ‘proceeds’ from the Father and the Son as love. God is love. The Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son. He is ‘holy’ because holiness consists in love. His ‘proceeding’ from the Father and the Son is simultaneously His being in unity with the Father and the Son and – in a way – constituting that unity (communio). Beyond this, however, the mutual givenness of the Son with the Father and the Father with the Son in the Holy Spirit – and the mutual ‘breathing’ of the Spirit – is an absolute mystery of faith. The Holy Spirit is the ‘hidden God’ (Deus absconditus). If He is an inner gift with whom the Father and the Son are united, then He was revealed to people as, above all, the Gift. He was revealed by Christ, who described His passion and death as the price of that Gift for man: ‘for if I do not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you’ (J).

Here we already pass from ‘Trinitas theologica’ [‘theological Trinity’] to ‘Trinitas oeconomica’ [‘economic Trinity’]: the Persons’ actions in the work of human salvation. The Holy Spirit – for the price of the Son’s passion and death – becomes the gift for souls: ‘He will guide you into all the truth’, ‘God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’: the Holy Spirit is the source of human holiness, and holiness consists in truth and love.

They express the very essence of ‘spirituality’ and holiness, also on the human level. In a sense, revelation tells us more about the Holy Spirit in the ‘economic’ than in the ‘theological’ order. But He is also ‘Deus absconditus’ [the ‘hidden God’] in the economic order. While the Son–Christ is God’s ‘visibility’ and ‘historicity’ – the Holy Spirit introduces us back into His ‘invisibility’. And yet the Holy Spirit is, above all, action, He is efficacy and fruitfulness – without entering into our sphere of vision. His work in the soul, which is very efficacious and fundamental indeed, is always the work of the Invisible in the invisible.

Lunch at 1.00 p.m. and thanksgiving at Bachledówka

Reading on the way to Kraków: Holy Scripture (the end of 2 Chronicles); Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops; Fr Wciórka – the end of the book on Teilhard de Chardin

Sunday Vespers; 4.00 p.m., Bachledówka, participation in the visit of the icon of Our Lady of Częstochowa;

Holy Mass; Sermon

In the evening: Rosary (II), (III); Anticipated Matins; Compline

Deo Gratias! [Thanks be to God]

De Maria numquam satis [One cannot say too much about Mary]

7/8 November [probably 1973]

In the afternoon – Tyniec, recapitulatio [summary]:

1. Trinitarian

2. The Good Shepherd.

Thanksgiving; The Way of the Cross; Litany of the Saints; Penitential psalms

1974 (#ulink_ee04c91d-060c-5452-8dd6-6bb5fd4c18c1)Ante exerc. spir.

[Before the Spiritual Exercises]

4/5 July

Kalwaria

23/24 August

Rząska (at the Albertine Sisters’)

(Fr Granat: Ku człowiekowi i Bogu w Chrystusie)

Remembering previous retreats, especially the retreat of 1973; Office for the Feast of St Bartholomew (the Way of the Cross; Adoration)

Topic: ‘evangelisation’ (Synod; CRIS);

Reading texts; Participation in Holy Mass; Rosary

Reflections lead to a re-evaluation – based on previous reflections – of the main problems and tasks of spiritual life (1) personal, (2) in the archdiocese and in Poland, (3) in the universal Church (Synod), in order to understand God’s thoughts and submit to the actions of the Holy Spirit through the mediation of the Mother of God. Only in this way can one maintain the balance in one’s soul, retaining it in love, purity and humility in the face of all these problems and tasks.

[3–7 September] 1974, The Holy Year (#ulink_a06a7210-4e00-5fa5-872e-a03209df1d07) Retreat in Gniezno Topic: God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. (St Paul)

Led by Bishop J[erzy] Ablewicz

3 September

Wrocław

Funeral of Bishop A. Wronka. Concelebration and the Word of God were a kind of ‘memento’ on the way to Gniezno.

Gniezno

8.00 p.m.

The opening of the retreat/(absent)/separately: Veni Creator [Come, Creator]

And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Counsellor, to be with you for ever – the Spirit of truth. He will guide you into all the truth, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Evening reading

4 September