I HAVE FOUND THE HEART I WAS SEARCHING FOR
Mother Adela writing on Servant of God John Paul II, Our Spiritual
Father
Foundress
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These words were written for the pilgrimage "Family...be who you
are", for the visit to the tomb of our spiritual father,
Servant of God John Paul II - February, 2009.
It is difficult to
find the words that can explain what it means for us, as a Family,
to come before the remains of our spiritual Father, John Paul II… we
come as sons and daughters, to tell him that we will always be
willing to receive with total receptivity and to respond with a deep
sense of responsibility to his three “great calls of love”: Do not
be afraid! Family, be who you are! Build a civilization of love and
life! Under his Pontificate and his paternal, Josephite and Petrine
heart, this Family was born to be a particular enfleshment, --humble
and simple-- of all of his Magisterium. It has not been of our
election to have this immense gift…. This Charism was born and
gradually discovered itself to be, a response, a singular response
to the heart of John Paul II. Everything: each word, each gesture,
every teaching, his life, his vision of the human person, of human
love, of the Family… of the Church, his response to the challenges
that man and the world confront today… his great call to the human
person to live love with responsibility… his luminous marian path of
personal formation and total consecration, of Totus Tuus,…, all
seemed like a shining star before my eyes which marked with clarity
my own interior path… my own identity and mission… and the future
identity and mission of this Family: to permit love to triumph in
our hearts, that love may form us, heal us and make us free, that
love may elevate us and transform us… so that we can live in
communion, walk together and live together the science of love… to
be a Family, because it is the family that is the path of the
Church… and together, in communion of hearts, to be ardent witnesses
to love, so as to go out into the deep, without fear, proclaiming
that love is the essence and the vocation of the human heart and the
only way of building a new civilization, a world that can be a home
for the human person.
On October 16th, 1978, Karol Wojtyla was elevated to the
Pontificate, a great gift of the Merciful Heart of Christ and of the
Maternal Heart of the Blessed Mother… a great, unimaginable gift for
the life of the Church at the end of the Second Millennium; which,
with his oblative love and with his piercing gaze of the mysteries
of the love of God and of the reflections of these mysteries in the
human heart, would mark the path of the Church for the Third
Millennium. We will understand this great gift with ever greater
clarity as the path of the Church of the Third Millennium is built!!
For my heart, on that day, my father was also born. I can remember
even though I was very young, that moment when he came out on the
balcony… and I saw his face… By the grace of God, I was able to
contemplate the profound freedom of his heart… and to say these
words: “I have found the heart that I have so much looked for here
on earth.” Perhaps I did not have a complete awareness of that which
a very luminous path which I had to follow!!! My path and my marian
heart had found in the heart of Peter (JPII), it’s deepest identity,
its fullest realization, its clearest star to follow with freedom,
with interior strength and without fear, the path formed in my own
heart by the maternal love of the Blessed Mother… in the school of
Her Heart and in the fecundity of Her womb.
His life was the most coherent testimony of his words. For this
Family, his Magisterium is a treasure which we must live and guard
with great gratitude and dedication; which we must study and ponder
with filial attention; which we must discover evermore as the map
which directs the path that this Family is to follow and will follow
in its future generations. We have a plan upon which we are to build
this House…! We are to be what we were called to be: a living legacy
of his Magisterium! A living image of the face of the Church which
he has taught us to contemplate and which he has revealed to the
world; and a living presence of the potency of love and life that
the Holy Spirit has communicated through his Magisterium. Before his
remains, on the 6th of April, 2005, two days prior to his funeral,
as I was experiencing the desolation of his parting, I asked the
Lord the miracle of leaving the heart of John Paul II, beating and
pulsating in the Heart of the Church. I heard these words in my
heart: “his heart will continue to love, to beat, to palpitate and
to form through your sons and daughters. His Heart will remain
beating in this Family.”
The paternity of John Paul II over us has been a very profound
reality… a very certain one… which --in a mysterious way- has
entailed his suffering so as to beget this gift in the life of the
Church. “Upon the altar of the suffering of many, my vocation was
born,” he told us in his book, “Gift and Mystery.” In my immense
poverty and littleness I think I can say to this family, that is it
upon the altar of the priestly and paternal, Josephite and Petrine
suffering of John Paul II that this vocation, this marian gift for
the Church has been born. His first suffering for us, in the great
and mysterious economy of grace, the economy of love, was on the
13th of May of 1981… when he shed his blood in Saint Peter’s square
on the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima. Peter was shedding his
blood, his life, for the marian charism in the Heart of the Church.
I am convinced that a rosary of offerings has conceived this gift.
His last sacrifice, his agony and death… “would open a new door of
grace, mercy, and fecundity in the life of this Family… would give
birth to its priests and would maximize the fecundity of this
Charism in the Heart of the Church.” These words were written in my
heart by the Lord on the Holy Thursday before John Paul II’s death.
To know that our father would soon be going to the House of the
Father, pierced my heart…, my entire being… John Paul II would die
soon… our beloved father would die and his oblation would give a new
life, a new grace in the life of this Family. What a great sign of
love for us that he would go on a First Saturday, opening the doors
of mercy… and that we would receive notice of his death just moments
before beginning the Apostle’s meeting. We will never know but we
can lovingly try to deduce that ours was the first Mass that was
celebrated for John Paul II’s soul.
I have never felt alone..! This great father accompanies us, cares
for us and points us to path to follow… he opens ways, opens doors
so that this simple Family can be what it is in the Heart of the
Church. Just as he showed us his paternity with another gesture,
when, on October 3, 2007, priests of the Family were carrying
through St. Peter’s square, together with us and some Apostles, the
statue which we now contemplate in Two Hearts Convent and that
miraculously we were allowed to take it to his tomb. We were also
permitted to remain there for a long time alone with John Paul II…
to rest our heads upon his heart… to bless the statue, there, before
his remains; I was able to repeat to him, with all my love and
fidelity: “We will do it John Paul, we will be witnesses to love.”
On the 25th of March of 2006… Solemnity of the Annunciation, after
having gone to Loreto and having received the words of the Lord on
the theme of the following year: “The Word became Flesh”… where “a
new and special grace of incarnation of the charism would be poured
forth”--, I had the gift of seeing John Paul II with the eyes of my
soul, --with his face resplendent, bathed in a most beautiful light
and adorned in a gold and red chasuble--, place his gaze upon us,
smile and say to us: “Do not be afraid!” and then with his right
hand call us forward so as to advance, following his footsteps, upon
the path that he has marked for the good of the Church of the Third
Millennium.
We follow his footsteps, the footsteps of this pilgrim of love. His
footsteps have always marked my life, my vision, my path… listening
to his word which were a fecund fruit of his life and of his heart,
I discovered deeply the most excellent dignity of the human person,
the luminous beauty of human love, the fecund power of human
suffering, the potent mediation and communication of life that comes
from total marian consecration, the greatness of the fiat of the
heart of St. Joseph, the Family as the path of the Church and the
heart of the new civilization of love… the vision of consecrated
life as a great vocation to love, the priesthood as an incarnation
of the heart of the spouse and pastor… so much… so much… With John
Paul II, I have understood what the most elevated dignity of the
feminine heart is: to reign is to serve! With him, I learned to
discover that the true dignity of women is in being who she is,
image and presence of the Virgin Mary…. In him, I contemplated the
petrine heart elevating, caring for and revealing the marian
charism… and that the marian charism reveals all of its splendor
when it lives to elevate and serve the petrine heart.
John Paul II said in Mexico these words which continue to resound
with an echo in our hearts: “I go but I do not go, I go but I stay…
because even though I go, my heart remains” … John Paul remain
palpitating with love for the Church and for humanity in our
hearts.! To you John Paul… who have taught me that love is the
potent fecundity of the human heart and of every mission in the life
of the Church, thank you. Thank you for teaching me to live love
with responsibility! To you, simply I say, thank you!
In the Love of the Pierced Hearts,
Mother Adela, SCTJM
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