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Picture from https://www.peakpx.com/en/hd-wallpaper-desktop-kuwff Thanks. This webpage was 1st launched on 9 May 2023. Last updated: 13 May 2023, 18:38 SGT. Pope Saint John Paul II, pray for us. Many Thanks. Profile of Pope Saint John Paul II (Wikipedia). Two Women Helped Put Pope John Paul II on the Path to Sainthood (25 April 2014). The Homilies and Angelus/ Regina Caeli of the Saint on Sundays and Important Feast Days can be found at the Bottom of each of these Webpages for Year A (now), Year B & Year C.
On these webpages, we will concentrate on listing down His General Audiences’ Teaching for our & your reference (we will start from his earliest Audiences in 1978. Due to our tight schedule, we are only able to do some of the extracts). Happy Reading! Have a quick view of his Audiences text.
Webpage under construction…
General Audience, 1 August 1979 Subject: Pope Saint Paul VI and the Second Vatican Council. Text.
General Audience, 17 January 1979 Subject: Service of unity is the primary duty of the ministry of the bishop of Rome. Text.
General Audience, 10 January 1979 Subject: Motherhood. Text.
General Audience, 3 January 1979 Subject: The Feast of the Holy Family. Text. Extracts: The importance of these fundamental duties is very great from many points of view. Not only from the point of view of this concrete community, their family, but also from the point of view of every human community, every society, nation, state, school, profession and environment. Everything depends, generally speaking, on how the parents and the family carry out their first and fundamental duties, on the way and to the extent to which they teach this creature—who, thanks to them, has become a human being, has obtained "humanity"—to "be a man". The family cannot be replaced in this. Everything must be done in order that the family should not be replaced. That is necessary not only for the "private" good of every person, but also for the common good of every society, nation, and state of any continent. The family is placed at the very centre of the common good in its various dimensions, precisely because man is conceived and born in it. Everything possible must be done in order that this human being should be desired, awaited and experienced as a particular, unique and unrepeatable value right from the beginning, from the moment of his conception. He must feel that he is important, useful, dear and of great value, even if infirm or handicapped; even more loved, in fact, for this reason.
This is what the mystery of Incarnation teaches us. This is the logic of our faith. This is also the logic of all true humanism. I think, in fact, that it cannot be otherwise. We are not looking here for elements of contrast, but we are looking for meeting points, which are the simple consequence of the full truth about man. Faith does not take believers away from this truth, but brings them right to its heart. Pope Saint John Paul II (General Audience, 3 January 1979)
GENERAL AUDIENCE, Wednesday, 27 December 1978 Subject: Christmas. Text. Extracts: Man is the being who seeks God. The ways of this search vary. The histories of human souls just along these paths are multiple. Sometimes the ways seem very simple and near. At other times they are difficult, complicated, distant. Now man arrives easily at his "eureka": "I have found!". Now he struggles with difficulties, as if he could not penetrate himself and the world, and above all as if he could not understand the evil that there is in the world. It is known that even in the context of the Nativity this evil has shown its threatening face. A good many men have described their search for God along the ways of their own lives. Even more numerous are those who are silent, considering everything they have lived along these ways as their own deepest and most intimate mystery: what they experienced, how they searched, how they lost their sense of direction and how they found it again. Man is the being who seeks God. And even after having found him, he continues to seek him. And if he seeks him sincerely, he has already found him; as, in a famous fragment of Pascal, Jesus says to man: "Take comfort, you would not be looking for me if you had not already found me." (B. Pascal, Pensées, 553: Le mystère de Jésus.) Pope Saint John Paul II (General Audience, 27 December 1978)
GENERAL AUDIENCE, Wednesday, 20 December 1978 Subject: Advent reminds us that God's will to save is more powerful than sin. Text.
GENERAL AUDIENCE, Wednesday, 13 December 1978 Subject: The Liturgy of Advent. Text.
GENERAL AUDIENCE, Wednesday, 6 December 1978 Subject: The Mystery of Advent. Text.
GENERAL AUDIENCE, Wednesday, 29 November 1978 Subject: The Reality of Advent. Text.
The 7 Cardinal Virtues: Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude & Temperance. GENERAL AUDIENCE, Wednesday, 22 November 1978 Subject: The Cardinal Virtue of Temperance. Text.
GENERAL AUDIENCE, Wednesday, 15 November 1978 Subject: The Cardinal Virtue of Fortitude. Text.
GENERAL AUDIENCE, Wednesday, 8 November 1978 Subject: The Cardinal Virtue of Justice. Text. Extracts: …In this wide and differentiated area, man and mankind are continually seeking justice: this is a perennial process and it is a task of supreme importance.
According to the different relationships and different aspects, justice has obtained more appropriate definitions throughout the centuries. Hence the concept of justice: communicative, distributive, legal and social. All this testifies what a fundamental significance justice has for the moral order among men, in social and international relations. It can be said that the very meaning of man's existence on earth is bound up with justice. To define correctly "how much is due" to each one from all and at the same time to all from each one, "what is due" (debitum) to man from man in different systems and relationships—to define, and above all to put into practice!—is a great thing, through which every man lives, and thanks to which his life has a meaning.
Therefore there remains, during the centuries of human existence on earth, a continual effort and a continuous struggle to organize in accordance with justice the whole of social life in its various aspects. It is necessary to view with respect the multiple programmes and the activity, sometimes reformative, of various trends and systems. It is necessary, at the same time, to be aware that here it is not a question in the first place of systems, but of justice and of man. The system must be for man, not man for the system.
Therefore defence is necessary against the hardening of the system. I am thinking of social, economic, political and cultural systems, which must be sensitive to man, to his complete good. They must be able to reform themselves, their own structures, according to what the full truth about man requires. The great effort of our times, which aims at defining and consolidating "human rights" in the life of present-day mankind, peoples, and states, must be evaluated from this point of view.
4. Each of us, then, must be able to live in a context of justice and, even more, each of us must be just and act justly with regard to those near us and those who are far away, with regard to the community, to the society of which one is a member... and with regard to God.
Justice has many references and many forms. There is also a form of justice which regards what man "owes" God. This is a vast subject in itself. I will not develop it now, although I cannot abstain from indicating it.
Let us give our attention, meanwhile, to men. Christ left us the commandment to love our neighbour. In this commandment, everything that concerns justice is also contained. There can be no love without justice. Love" surpasses" justice, but at the same time it finds its verification in justice. Even a father and a mother, loving their own child, must be just in his regard. If justice is uncertain, love, too, runs a risk.
To be just means giving each one what is due to him. This concerns temporal goods, of a material nature. The best example here can be remuneration for work or the so-called right to the fruits of one's own work or of one's own land. But to man is due also his good name, respect, consideration, the reputation he has deserved. The more we know a man, the more his personality, his character, his intellect and his heart are revealed to us. And the more we realize—and we must realize!—with what criterion to "measure him" and what it means to be just towards him.
It is necessary, therefore, to deepen our knowledge of justice continually. It is not a theoretical science. It is virtue, it is capacity of the human spirit, of the human will and also of the heart. It is also necessary to pray in order to be just and to know how to be just.
We cannot forget Our Lord's words: "The measure you give will be the measure you get" (Matthew 7:2).
A just man is a man of a "just measure". Pope Saint John Paul II (General Audience, 8 November 1978)
GENERAL AUDIENCE, Wednesday, 25 October 1978 Subject: The Cardinal Virtue of Prudence. Text. Extracts: …Well, today I wish to continue this plan, which the late Pope had prepared, and to speak briefly of the virtue of prudence. The ancients spoke a great deal of this virtue. We owe them, for this reason, deep gratitude and thanks. In a certain dimension, they taught us that the value of man must be measured with the yardstick of the moral good which he accomplishes in his life. It is just this that ensures the virtue of prudence first place. The prudent man, who strives for everything that is really good, endeavours to measure every thing, every situation and his whole activity according to the yardstick of moral good. So a prudent man is not one who—as is often meant—is able to wangle things in life and draw the greatest profit from it; but one who is able to construct his whole life according to the voice of upright conscience and according to the requirements of sound morality.
So prudence is the key for the accomplishment of the fundamental task that each of us has received from God. This task is the perfection of man himself. God has given our humanity to each of us. We must meet this task by planning it accordingly.
But the Christian has the right and the duty to look at the virtue of prudence also in another perspective. It is, as it were, the image and likeness of the Providence of God himself in the dimensions of concrete man. For man—as we know from the book of Genesis—was created in the image and likeness of God. And God carries out his plan in the history of creation, and above all in the history of mankind. The purpose of this plan is—as St Thomas teaches—the ultimate good of the universe. The same plan in the history of mankind becomes simply the plan of salvation, the plan that embraces us all. At the central point of its realization is Jesus Christ, in whom was expressed the eternal love and solicitude of God himself, the Father, for the salvation of man. This is at the same time the full expression of Divine Providence.
Well, man who is the image of God, must—as St Thomas again teaches—in some way be providence: but within the proportions of his life. He can take part in this great march of all creatures towards the purpose, which is the good of creation. He must—expressing ourselves even more in the language of faith—take part in the divine plan of salvation. He must march towards salvation, and help others to save themselves. By helping others, he saves himself. Pope Saint John Paul II (General Audience, 25 October 1978)
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