Читать книгу In God’s Hands: The Spiritual Diaries of Pope St John Paul II - Литагент HarperCollins USD, F. M. L. Thompson - Страница 8

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.