John Paul II: teacher of Christ's Passion
Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith says we shouldn't be disturbed by the revelation that John Paul II mortified himself

5 February 2010

Pope John Paul II visits the Hill of Crosses on his way to celebrate an outdoor Mass in Siauliai, Lithuania, in 1993. The crosses recall the suffering under Communism

The news that the Venerable John Paul II practised bodily mortification, which has caused a ripple of interest in the secular press, ought not to come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Catholic tradition. The idea of a leather belt hanging in the wardrobe and the nights spent on the bare, cold floor may be piquant to the worldly mind, but the details as such are not important. Far more to the point is the spiritual lesson to be learned from the late pope.

John Paul II was for much of his reign a strong man, a powerful exponent of the Gospel, an athlete lionised by the media. Yet as his reign drew on, a different picture emerged: that of a man living with crippling illness. At his final appearance in his office window he was unable to speak, yet then he was most eloquent; and as he lay dying, that was when perhaps his message was most clear. His closing days vindicated his decision not to retire from the throne of Peter; for he was never a better shepherd and teacher than when he was visibly carrying the Cross.

The present revelation about bodily mortification is both salutary and useful, because it draws attention to a side of John Paul II that could easily be missed; amid the roaring crowds and the cries of "JP Two, we love you!" was man who was humble and convinced of his own personal sinfulness, his inadequacy before God.

But why should anyone deliberately choose to whip themselves? It is, on the face of it, a crazy thing to do. It is something, we can be sure, that the late pope did only with the permission of his confessor, and after careful consideration. Many spiritual writers do not approve of bodily self-chastisement, but those who do allow it emphasise that its purpose is not simply to inflict pain on oneself. Pain is a physical evil, but the physical pain involved in this sort of penitential act is slight, or should be so, a token pain that awakes in the penitent a spiritual awareness.

The real purpose of the exercise is to remind oneself that one is mortal and that the body in which one lives is not the body of a godlike creature, but an imperfect and fallen body. This is something that the world has forgotten; in this age of surfaces and obsession with the look of things, too often we are duped into thinking that we have the bodies of gods. But this is not true: not only are our bodies weak vessels, they are also damaged vessels. They communicate poorly: we often try to make ourselves understood, but fail, because we are trapped in a world bound by sense perception. All the nonsensical talk of being oneself, making oneself understood, self-esteem, and, perhaps most absurdly of all, "good" sex, fly in the face of what is true: we hardly know ourselves, let alone other people. The person who makes use of the discipline (as it is called) is acknowledging a truth about the Fall of humanity and is, from a theological point of view, lining up alongside St Augustine, the saint who, par excellence, saw the grandeur of the spirit and the contrasting fragility of the flesh.

So John Paul II was not a superman, and he was certainly not deceived by the adulation verging on hero worship that he received. Moreover, in lining up with St Augustine, he was also lining up with numerous other saints who practiced bodily mortification. We know that St Thomas More, inspired perhaps by his fellow martyrs, the Carthusians of the London Charterhouse, practised bodily mortification by wearing a hair shirt. This was by no means uncommon at that time among lay people as well as religious, and it reflects not just a realism about our physical selves, but also a desire to share more closely in the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Many of More's contemporaries' spiritual lives focused sharply on the Passion, and More himself even wrote a devotional book about it. One of the most popular devotional books, then as now, The Imitation of Christ, is an extended meditation on the Passion, aiming to help readers feel compunction for their sins - that is to say, it aims to stir up the feelings that a sinner should feel on contemplating what Christ suffered for our sins. The recent much admired exhibition, The Sacred Made Real, at the National Gallery, contained many visual aids for meditation on the Passion and made it clear that such contemplation was (and still is, to some extent) a staple in Spanish spiritual life.

But the centrality of the Passion in Catholic devotional life was not simply a Spanish phenomenon, but found in the Netherlands (where the Imitation was written), and England too; it was a universal (that is, a truly Catholic) phenomenon. Evidence for it exists still, for in every church one still finds the Stations of the Cross. Further evidence may be found too, perhaps, in the astonishing popular success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

John Paul II's physical mortification makes clear to us that he saw the Cross as central to the Christian mystery. I am reminded of one of the most important things he ever wrote, under the title: "Lest the Cross of Christ be emptied of its power!" These are words of St Paul (1 Corinthians 1:17) that head the third chapter of Veritatis Splendor. The Pope's message was this: if we state that Christian morality is too difficult a challenge for us, then we say that Christ's Cross is not powerful enough to redeem us.

Despite the fact that John Paul II has been dead five years this Easter he continues to teach us, which is surely a sign of his sanctity; and he teaches not just through his encyclicals, not all of which will be read a hundred years from now, but through his example, through his heroic virtues.

In an age addicted to pleasure and instant gratification, in an age that has forgotten that true happiness is only to be found in doing the will of God, the heroic Holy Father points us to the fact that we are weak and fragile, and through this weakness and fragility he points us to the glory of Christ the Saviour. For this is not about John Paul II, but about Christ. He was wounded for our sake, and He died in terrible agony; but He rose from the dead, and His wounds are now glorified. As He was, we are; as He is, we hope one day to be.

Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith is a moral theologian and author of Narrative Theology and Moral Theology (Ashgate, 2007)