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A Year with John Paul II QUOTES

A Year with John Paul II QUOTES

1 " Do not forget that freedom involves responsibility. A person is defined above all by his responsible behavior toward others and before history (Gaudium et Spes). No one should avoid the challenges of the time in which he lives. "

― Pope John Paul II , A Year with John Paul II

2 " Contemporary man seems to have lost, to a certain extent, the flavor of this joy (the joy of penance). He has also lost the deep sense of that spiritual effort that makes it possible to find oneself again in the whole truth of one’s interior being. Many causes and circumstances, which are difficult to analyze,…contribute in this connection. Our civilization—especially in the West—closely connected with the development of science and technology, catches a glimpse of the need of intellectual and physical effort, but it has lost to a considerable extent the sense of the effort of the spirit, the fruit of which is man seen in his interior dimensions. When all is said and done, man living in the currents of this civilization very often loses his own dimension; he loses the interior sense of his own humanity. The effort that leads to the fruit, just mentioned, becomes alien to this man as well as the joy that comes from it: the great joy of finding again and of meeting the joy of conversion (metanoia), the joy of penitence. Discourse at the Vatican, February 28, 1979 "

― Pope John Paul II , A Year with John Paul II