To the Pauline Fathers in Jasna Gora (19 June 1983)

Czestochowa (Poland) - On Sunday, 19  June 1983, the Holy Father addressed the Pauline Fathers in Jasna Gora, on whom, for their centuries-long care of the Sacred Image, the Pope invoked God's blessing.

Dear Children of Saint Paul, first hermit!

Before the final blessing, I would like to address a few words to you, as we celebrate here not only the 600th anniversary of the Image of Our Lady of Jasna Gora, that is, the six centuries of Jasna Gora, but also the six centuries of your vocation and service in this Sanctuary. Your six hundred years in Jasna Gora are, in a certain sense, absorbed in this great Jubilee of the Church in Poland and of the whole nation, just as your life, the life of entire generations of monks, religious, was absorbed in these six centuries of Jasna Gora on Polish land.

Giving thanks, together with the Church and my Nation, for these six centuries of Jasna Gora, I would like to thank, together with you for your six centuries, all the generations of the servants of God, children of Saint Paul, the first hermit. Paulines who here in Jasna Gora made their pastoral guard to the image of Jasna Gora, guarded this sanctuary, served it and defended it when there was a need, like the great Augustyn Kordecki.

This is, my dear brothers, a great grace of God. It can be said that this grace of Jasna Gora has become the common charism of your entire Order, since, although you are also located beyond Jasna Gora, in Poland and beyond its borders , it seems that the service in Jasna Gora more fully expresses the charism of your Order in the Church and on Polish soil and, indirectly, also in the universal Church. My desire to meet you, to be in Jasna Gora and to give thanks for the six centuries of presence of the Madonna in her Image of Jasna Gora on Polish land was great; I wanted to meet you and to thank you, together, for this common grace that has been granted to you; to thank the Mother of God, to thank, through the Mother of God, the Holy Trinity. It is truly an enormous and exceptional grace, and it is also certainly a great, difficult and responsible service, since Jasna Gora is perhaps the most crucial point of pastoral activity throughout the Polish land, especially if it concerns pastoral activity carried out in the Sacrament of penance.

Therefore, this responsible and difficult service, this great priestly and pastoral service also demands of each of you a particular spiritual maturity, a rich interior life, a great spiritual perfection. We know well that this perfection is not an end in itself, but its end is love. Well, your particular vocation is love, a great love towards the souls of men, which arises from the great love towards God.

You must be those who give, you must express this love, which the eternal God wants to bestow in this place, through the Mother of his Son, to the sons and daughters of the Polish nation and also to the numerous pilgrims coming from beyond the borders of Poland, from far and near.

So you must announce this love, you must be its servants and, both to express it and to serve it, you must continue to fill yourselves with it. This is your Pauline perfection. You must demand this love from yourselves, you must practice it, you must find in it the content, the program and the purpose of your vocation. This is a great vocation, a particular vocation, a Pauline vocation, and, above all, the vocation of Jasna Gora. I congratulate you on this vocation on the occasion of its 600th anniversary. Because congratulating means giving thanks. But first of all, on the occasion of this anniversary, I wish you with all my heart that the vocation and charism of your Order extend to the new generations; may Jasna Gora, thanks to your service, grow, grow and become radiant, grow through the action of the Holy Spirit, with that interior growth that is typical of the Servant of the Lord, Bride of the Holy Spirit. Our times need this action, for they are times of great struggles. The late Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, Polish Primate, who was your spiritual brother, often spoke about it. Many times he said, occasionally using the Latin words: “Non est nobis colluctatio adversus carnem et sanguinem, sed adversus princes. . . tenebrarum harum” ( Eph 6:12).

Precisely in the period of these great struggles, Mary is given to us as a sign. “A woman clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars” ( Rev 12, 1), this is how John sees her in the Apocalypse. Precisely in the period of this great struggle with the "principes et postates". . . tenebrarum harum ”a powerful illumination is needed, more powerful than at any other time, of the power of the Holy Spirit, through the Most Pure Bride of him. You, dear brothers, find yourselves on the path to this enlightenment; it passes through you; she places you in your service; constitutes the daily content of this service, both in your cloistered life, monastic life, and in your pastoral life.

Dear brothers and children, Paulines, may God reward you for the six hundred years of your service in Jasna Gora, and may God help you in the following years of service to your Order. This is what I wish to tell you here, in front of this beloved Image, celebrating the Holy Mass for the whole Church, according to the duty of my office and my vocation. I know that here, in Jasna Gora, you pray a lot for me, and many pray for me, for the Pope.

Moreover, my predecessors had asked for this prayer. He had asked the deceased Primate, John XXIII. Paul VI had asked for it. I, obviously, asked it in a particular way and I also ask it today, since at the center of the struggle, of which Saint Paul speaks in his Letter to the Ephesians, at the center of this struggle there is the Apostolic See, there is Peter, his service and his mission. We serve together, we struggle together, and we love together, for this is a struggle through love. Christ asked Peter, “Do you love me?” ( Jn 21, 15). This is the struggle through love. Love is our strength in fighting. Therefore we unite ourselves so strongly with the One who she loved the most and who she continues to love, to win with love this struggle, which is done through love.

Accept these words as a preamble to the blessing that, on the occasion of my pilgrimage, I want to give to your religious community of Jasna Gora and also, beyond this place, in Poland and in any other place. I bless everyone present, but you in particular.
 

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