The Supreme Vocation of Women by Melissa Maleski
As the world marks the closing of
the centennial anniversary of St. John Paul II’s birth, and the emergence of the first generation of people with no living memory of the Polish Pope, it is fitting to pause and reflect on his legacy. Taking a step back to consider his corpus of writings and work as a whole, John Paul II’s pontificate may well be summed up by the word communio. His was a papacy dedicated to the pursuit and understanding of authentic and balanced relationships rooted in Truth—whether it was the relationship between God and man (Veritatis Splendor), between faith and the natural gift of human reason (Fides et Ratio), between the Church and other ecclesial communities (Ut Unum Sint), or between the sexes (Theology of the Body). John Paul II was unafraid to engage in what Pope Paul VI called the “dialogue
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of salvation” (Ecclesiam Suam, 70), approaching every person as Jesus did the Samaritan woman at the well. The broad desire for communio that connected John Paul II’s various pastoral endeavors was an outward expression of his theological and philosophical rootedness in personalism, and man’s ontological dimension as a communio personarum in the image and likeness of God. Even before his election to the Chair of Peter, the man christened as Karol Wojtyla devoted much of his thought and energy to the nature and purpose of man as a relational being; Love and Responsibility and The Jeweler’s Shop are notable and profound meditations on the evangelical character of human connection and intimacy. As pope, John Paul II continued to develop a theological anthropology that harmonized the eternal truths
