During his stay at the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome from 24 February to 13 March 2005, John Paul II received the first copy of his latest, just-published work, entitled Memory and Identity. Personal Reflections (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2005). This work consists of five chapters and twenty-five issues. The final twenty-sixth issue, which deals with the attempt on the Pope’s life on 13 May 1981, concludes the book.
The twenty-fourth issue is unusually titled: “The maternal memory of the Church”. As is well known, the Church’s memory, handed down from generation to generation, is primarily concerned with the Holy Trinity and her salvific design for humanity. It refers, therefore, to God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth, to his only-begotten Incarnate Son Jesus Christ and His work of salvation and redemption, and to the Holy Spirit, who by his sanctifying power leads the Church to the fulfilment of hope in the attainment of eternal happiness. This remembrance of the Church is expressed in both the Apostolic Creed and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol.
Referring to the words of St Luke in his Gospel: “And [Mary] his mother treasured up all these things [faithfully] in her heart” (Lk 2:51), John Paul II pointed first to the memory of Mary herself as the source of the Church’s faith. Indeed, he wrote: “Mary’s memory is a source of singular importance for knowing Christ, an incomparable source. Mary is not only a witness to the mystery of the Incarnation, in which she knowingly cooperated. […] In any event, Mary was present at his Ascension into heaven, she was with the Apostles in the Upper Room awaiting the descent of the Holy Spirit and she was a witness to the birth of the Church on the day of Pentecost” (pp. 166-167).
The memory of Mary, which the Church lives, is at the same time extremely important for the Church herself. For it is on this memory that it builds its identity; moreover, it is this memory that becomes, as it were, typical of itself. As John Paul II goes on to write: “The maternal memory of Mary is particularly important for the divine-human identity of the Church. It could be said that the memory of the new People of God is intimately associated with Mary’s memory, and that the celebration of the Eucharist relives events and teaching of Christ learned from the lips of his mother. Moreover, the Church has a maternal memory of her own, because she herself is a mother, a mother who remembers. The Church, in her turn, safeguards what was present in Mary’s memories” (p. 167).
In fulfilling her mission to the world, the Church – alongside the memory of Christ – also preserves and proclaims the memory of man. For, as we read in the book “Memory and Identity”: “the Church preserves within herself the memory of man’s history from the beginning: the memory of his creation, his vocation, his elevation and his fall. Within this essential framework the whole of human history is written, the history of Redemption. The Church is a mother who, like Mary, treasures in her heart the story of her children, making all their problems her own. There was a clear echo of this truth during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000. The Church celebrated it as a jubilee of the birth of Jesus Christ, but also as a jubilee of man’s origins, of man’s appearance in the universe, of his elevation and his vocation. The Constitution Gaudium et spes rightly said that the mystery of man is fully revealed only in Christ. […] The question about man, which is asked repeatedly, finds its complete answer in Jesus Christ. […] And it is linked to the dimension of memory. Mary’s memory and the Church’s memory enable man to rediscover his true identity at the dawn of the new millennium” (pp. 170-171).
It was this message of the memory of the Church as mother, rooted in Mary’s memory of the saving work of her Son Jesus Christ, that John Paul II personally affirmed at the Gemelli Polyclinic. Shortly after his tracheotomy procedure, having, as it were, the book “Memory and Identity” right next to him, he wrote on a piece of paper given to himself: “What have you done to me! But. Totus Tuus”. There was in this note both a complaint about his fate, marked by suffering and illness, and Sant Paul’s agreement to complete, in the spirit of the Blessed Mother, what was lacking in “Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col 1:24).
It is my deepest conviction, that the main task of the John Paul II Foundation must be seen in this event. Through faithful remembrance of its holy Patron, it should be inscribed in the great history of the Church’s memory, which he taught and demanded, among other things, in his book “Memory and Identity”.
This history of remembrance includes, first of all, the remembrance of Jesus Christ, the one Redeemer of man, whose saving power must open wide the doors and “the boundaries of States, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development”, as John Paul II cried out in St Peter’s Square on 22 October 1978, at the very beginning of his long pontificate. One cannot understand his Petrine ministry without his characteristic, passionate, courageous and at the same time humble preaching of Christ in all the Areopagus of the world. Showing precisely this feature of the activity of St John Paul II the Great appears to be an extremely important task facing the Foundation.
The memory of the Church also concerns the truth about man. Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II’s anthropology, first contained in works such as “Love and Responsibility” and “Person and Action”, and then developed and deepened by him in his numerous encyclicals, letters and apostolic exhortations, is also inscribed in this truth. The Foundation’s great task is to analyse the various elements of Wojtyła’s anthropology and boldly demonstrate its perennial relevance, especially in relation to such issues as truth, conscience, freedom, responsibility, justice and solidarity, as well as love in its most varied forms: spousal, marital, family, social and love with regard to the nation.
The memory of the Church is a Marian memory. In his book “Memory and Identity”, John Paul II wrote: “For in the mystery of the Church, which is itself rightly called mother and virgin, the Blessed Virgin Mary stands out in eminent and singular fashion as exemplar both of virgin and mother” (Lumen Gentium, n. 63). “Mary led the way because hers is the most faithful memory, or rather, because her memory is the most faithful reflection of the mystery of God, transmitted in her to the Church and through the Church to humanity” (p. 169). Giving himself to Mary as her Totus Tuus, John Paul II, and before that Bishop and Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, in his personal fervent prayer and in his word, which was always that of a Witness, sought to fathom the divine mysteries handed down by her to the Church in order, then, through the Church, to show and proclaim them to all contemporary humanity. Bringing this feature of John Paul II’s personality and piety to light is therefore another important challenge for the Foundation of his name.
All three of these features – Christological, Anthropological and Mariological – are theological and ecclesial in nature. It is my deepest conviction, that they constitute a kind of foundation on which to place the most diverse personal, historical, political, national, literary and other threads that make up the life and achievements of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. Also those threads that would make it possible to realise his original idea, which today presents itself in a completely new reality – that the John Paul II Foundation should become a true bridge for the societies and nations living to the East of Poland, bringing them not only Christianity itself, but also the high culture closely related to it, especially the Polish culture, about which he wrote so much, so wisely and so insightfully in his book “Memory and Identity”.
Exc. Marek Jędraszewski, archbishop of Cracow, Symposium September 23rd, 2022, Rome