Литагент HarperCollins - In God’s Hands - The Spiritual Diaries of Pope St John Paul II

Having stood with Mary in her faithfulness throughout his life and having preached the love of God on the worldwide stage, now was the time to return to the Father. His final words on his deathbed were: ‘Let me go to the house of the Lord’ (Psalm 122). In the first chapter of the Gospel of John we read of the disciples of the Baptist asking Jesus, ‘Master, where are you staying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Come and see’ (John 1:38). In God’s Hands is a chronicle of one who responded to that invitation in prayer and in faith every day of his life.

+George Stack

Archbishop of Cardiff

Chair of the Department of Christian Life and Worship of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales

We present the reader with a book that covers the content of the two notebooks in which Bishop Karol Wojtyła, and later Pope John Paul II took personal notes and recorded his reflections, which related primarily to the retreats and reflection days which he attended between 1962 and 2003.

The text has not been abbreviated in any way. We have attempted to maintain the layout of the notebooks’ pages, as well as any additional notation: underlining, textboxes, etc.; the marginalia are presented in the same way as in the original notebooks.

The words that were impossible to read are marked as [illegible].

The editorial interventions consisted in the following:

– restoration of the chronological order in the entries from the first notebook;

– translation of phrases and sentences recorded in foreign languages (mainly in Latin and Italian);

– correction of obvious spelling and punctuation mistakes;

– expansion of the abbreviations used in the reflections to facilitate reading; if these abbreviations were not easy to decipher, they were retained in their original form.

All editorial insertions are marked by square brackets.

Pope John Paul II’s notebooks were first published in Polish in 2014, and soon afterwards translated into several languages, including Italian, French, German, Romanian and Portuguese. It is a great joy to present the English-speaking reader with this translation. In order to help the reader fully to appreciate the richness of John Paul II’s thought, the English edition provides notes with references to biblical quotations and other important sources used by John Paul II, as well as additional background information on people, places and events mentioned in particular entries. All biblical quotations are given according to the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition. For other sources, wherever possible, full references are given to the editions used by John Paul II and to existing English translations. When citing from John Paul II’s speeches and homilies delivered in Polish, I used the existing Vatican translations with minor adjustments where necessary. To make the edition more accessible, Latin names of regular prayers and services have been translated into English. The edition has greatly benefitted from Dr Máté Vince’s expertise in Latin and Greek, and Dr Andrea Selleri’s assistance with Italian. I gratefully acknowledge their help.

‘I leave no possessions of which it will be necessary to dispose. As for the things I use every day, I ask that they be distributed as seems appropriate. Let my personal notes be burned. I ask that Fr Stanisław see to this, and I thank him for his kind help and collaboration over the years. I leave all my other “thank yous” in my heart before God Himself, because it is difficult to put them in words’ (John Paul II, Testament , 6 March 1979).

This is the instruction that the Holy Father John Paul II left in his Testament. After his death in 2005, I faithfully fulfilled the Holy Father’s will, giving away all his possessions, especially the personal memorabilia. I did not dare to burn the personal notes and notebooks that he had left behind because they contain significant information about his life. I saw them on the Holy Father’s desk, but I never looked into them. When I saw his Testament, I was moved that John Paul II, whom I had accompanied for almost forty years, had entrusted me with his personal affairs.

I did not burn John Paul II’s notes because they are a key to understanding his spirituality, that is, what is innermost in a person: his relationship to God, to other men and to himself. They reveal, so to speak, another side of the person whom we knew as the Bishop of Kraków and Rome, the Peter of our times, the Shepherd of the universal Church. They show his early life, in the years when he was ordained a bishop and installed in the Diocese of Kraków. They allow us to get a glimpse of the intimate, personal relationship of faith with God the Creator, the Giver of life, the Master and Teacher. At the same time, they present the sources of his spirituality – his inner strength and his determined will to serve Christ until the last breath of life.

When I return to John Paul II’s notes, I can see the figure of the Holy Father in the home chapel at Franciszkańska Street, 1as he prays immersed in God, before the Blessed Sacrament, and I hear his sighs coming from the little chapel at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. His radiant face never revealed his inner experiences. He always looked at the cross and the icon of Our Lady of Częstochowa with courage. He learnt from her to surrender himself to God entirely, repeating the words of Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort: Totus Tuus ego sum, o Maria, et omnia mea Tua sunt – ‘I am entirely Yours, O Mary, and all that is mine is Yours’. Complete surrender to God in Mary’s likeness and the fulfilling of God’s will until the end were the characteristic traits of this man of prayer, who discovered the abundant world of the spirit in his relationship with God.

May reading the spiritual notebooks of John Paul II help everyone discover the spiritual depth of the people of the twenty-first century, and may it lead everyone to a greater love of God and other people.

Stanisław Cardinal Dziwisz, Metropolitan Archbishop of Kraków

On the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Patron Saint of the Parish in Wadowice 2Kraków, 21 November 2013

Karol Wojtyła–John Paul II’s personal notes already aroused interest at the time of his death. The Pope wrote in his Testament that Fr Stanisław Dziwisz, his personal secretary and closest collaborator, who had accompanied him for the nearly forty years of his episcopal service in Kraków and the Petrine ministry in Rome, should burn the notes. Fr Dziwisz, the current Metropolitan Archbishop of Kraków, did not burn them out of respect for their author, but presented them to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which examined the life of the Holy Father in the beatification process. A glimpse at the notes was enough to see that their author led a rich spiritual life that embraced all dimensions of his work.

The spiritual notes reveal the depth of Karol Wojtyła’s life with God during the many years (1962–2003) when he served as Auxiliary Bishop, and then Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal and Pope. They shed light on the secret of the heart of the Peter of our times, who was Bishop of Kraków in the difficult period of communism, and then for almost twenty-seven years led the Barque of St Peter through the turbulent waves of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The spiritual notes contain reflections on inner experiences, resolutions, prayers, meditations and remarks on spiritual progress. They express, above all, their author’s relationship to God, who was the centre of his inner life.