Home › Fathers, Saints & Teachers › John Paul II on the Woman
At a glance
| Who | Karol Wojtyła (1920–2005), priest, philosopher and Archbishop of Kraków, elected pope on October 16, 1978; died April 2, 2005 |
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| Standing | Saint; pope beatified May 1, 2011; canonized by Pope Francis, together with St. John XXIII, on April 27, 2014 |
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| The works | The encyclicals Redemptoris Mater (March 25, 1987) and Evangelium Vitae (March 25, 1995); his homilies at Fatima (1982, 1991, 2000); the apostolic letters Tertio Millennio Adveniente (1994) and Novo Millennio Ineunte (2001); his General Audiences on heaven, hell and purgatory (July–August 1999) |
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| Weight | An encyclical is papal teaching addressed to the whole Church, though not every sentence in it is a definition of faith. Audiences are catechesis; homilies are a pastor's preaching. Fatima is an approved private revelation, which Catholics may accept but are not bound to believe (CCC 67). Each is labeled below. |
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Why John Paul II matters here
He lived through the two great tyrannies of the twentieth century in his own country, survived an assassin's bullets on the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, and led the Church into the third millennium. He knew what the dragon's war looks like. Yet he never used Revelation 12 to identify a person or to set a date. He read it the way the Fathers did, as a picture of the Church in every age: threatened, suffering, protected by God, and in the end victorious. And he gave the chapter a new urgency by reading it as a struggle for human life itself.
In Scripture the chapter opens: “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Revelation 12:1). The English texts of his encyclicals quote an older translation, which calls the sign a “great portent.” See the study of Revelation 12 and the Fathers on Revelation 12.
Redemptoris Mater: the woman from Genesis to Revelation
The encyclical on the Mother of the Redeemer, dated March 25, 1987, opened a Marian Year. Three times it joins the woman of Genesis 3:15, whose offspring will strike the serpent's head, to the woman of Revelation 12.
Redemptoris Mater 11 · The enmity foretoldPapal teachingUnfolding
“The ‘enmity,’ foretold at the beginning, is confirmed in the Apocalypse.”
- Teaching
- In the Apocalypse, “the book of the final events of the Church and the world,” there recurs “the sign of the ‘woman,’ this time ‘clothed with the sun’ (Rev. 12:1).” Mary, Mother of the Word made flesh, “is placed at the very center of that enmity, that struggle which accompanies the history of humanity on earth and the history of salvation itself” (Redemptoris Mater 11).
Redemptoris Mater 24 · At Cana and at the crossPapal teachingUnfolding
- Teaching
- Jesus calls his mother “Woman” at Cana and again from the cross. At Calvary, the Pope writes, “we find ourselves at the very center of the fulfillment of the promise contained in the Proto-gospel,” that the “seed of the woman” would crush the serpent's head (Genesis 3:15). Mary remains in the mystery of Christ and of the Church “as ‘the woman’ spoken of by the Book of Genesis (3:15) at the beginning and by the Apocalypse (12:1) at the end of the history of salvation” (Redemptoris Mater 24).
- See also
- John 2:4; John 19:26–27; Genesis.
Redemptoris Mater 47 · Mother in the strugglePapal teachingUnfolding
“…by her ecclesial identification as the ‘woman clothed with the sun’ (Rev. 12:1)…”
- Teaching
- Recalling how Paul VI proclaimed Mary Mother of the Church, the Pope explains that the bond between Mary and the Church sheds light on the mystery of “that ‘woman’” who accompanies God's plan from the first chapters of Genesis to the Book of Revelation. Mary, present in the Church as Mother of the Redeemer, “takes part, as a mother, in that monumental struggle” against the powers of darkness that runs through all of history. And because she is the woman clothed with the sun, the Church has in her already reached its perfection, without spot or wrinkle, while Christians, raising their eyes to her on their pilgrimage, still strive to grow in holiness.
- Why “Unfolding”
- The struggle is not reserved for one final moment. It “continues throughout human history,” and Mary's motherly part in it continues too.
Evangelium Vitae: the dragon and the struggle for life
The encyclical on the Gospel of life, dated March 25, 1995, closes (102–105) with a meditation on Revelation 12. Here the woman's child is the sign of every human life, and the dragon's hatred is turned against life itself.
Evangelium Vitae 102–103 · The great signPapal teachingUnfolding
“In this sign the Church recognizes an image of her own mystery.”
- Teaching
- Mary is the one who “accepted ‘Life’ in the name of all and for the sake of all” (102). In the woman of Revelation 12 the Church sees herself: present in history yet transcending it, carrying Christ into the world. Her motherhood, like Mary's, is lived in suffering, in “constant tension with the forces of evil which still roam the world” (103).
Evangelium Vitae 104 · The great red dragonPapal teachingUnfolding
“…life is always at the centre of a great struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness.”
- The dragon
- The “great portent” of the woman is accompanied by another: “a great red dragon” (Rev 12:3), “which represents Satan, the personal power of evil, as well as all the powers of evil at work in history and opposing the Church's mission.” The hostile powers aimed first at the Child and his Mother, as in the flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13–15).
- The struggle for life
- Because the Son of God has united himself in some way with every human being, the Pope concludes, the rejection of human life in any form “is really a rejection of Christ” (104).
- Why “Unfolding”
- The dragon is personal, Satan himself, but he works through powers in every century. John Paul II names no person and no date; he names a struggle each Christian is part of.
Evangelium Vitae 105 · Do not be afraidPapal teachingFuture
“Mary is a living word of comfort for the Church in her struggle against death.”
- Teaching
- The angel's “Do not be afraid, Mary” is spoken to the whole Church in her trials. Mary shows that in Christ “the forces of death have already been defeated,” and she points ahead to the new heaven and new earth, where there will be no more death (compare Revelation 21:1–4).
- The prayer
- The encyclical ends: “O Mary, bright dawn of the new world, Mother of the living, to you do we entrust the cause of life” (Evangelium Vitae 105).
- Why “Future”
- The victory is already won in the risen Christ; its fullness, a world without death, is still to come (CCC 1042–1047).
Fatima: “a mother's hand”
On May 13, 1981, the anniversary of the first apparition at Fatima, John Paul II was shot and gravely wounded in St. Peter's Square. He came to believe that Our Lady had saved his life. Reflecting on it in 1994, he said that “it was a mother's hand that guided the bullet's path” (quoted in The Message of Fatima). See Our Lady of Fatima.
May 13, 1982 and May 1991 · Pilgrim of thanksgivingPilgrimage
- What happened
- A year after the attack he went to Fatima and celebrated Mass at the shrine on May 13, 1982 (vatican.va), where he repeated the Act of Entrustment of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He made that act together with the bishops of the world on March 25, 1984. The bullet that had struck him was later set in the crown of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima. He returned to Portugal on pilgrimage on May 10–13, 1991.
Homily at Fatima, May 13, 2000 · The woman and the dragonHomilyUnfolding
“The message of Fátima is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the ‘dragon’…”
- Teaching
- Beatifying Francisco and Jacinta Marto, the Pope reflected on the Mass's first reading, Revelation 12: “a woman clothed with the sun” and “a great red dragon.” These words, he said, “make us think of the great struggle between good and evil, showing how, when man puts God aside, he cannot achieve happiness, but ends up destroying himself.” He thanked God once more for the day “when I was saved from death after being gravely wounded on 13 May 1981” (Homily, May 13, 2000).
- The secret published
- At the end of that Mass, Cardinal Angelo Sodano announced that the Pope had charged the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with making public the third part of the secret. It was published on June 26, 2000 in The Message of Fatima, with a theological commentary by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who connected the “Bishop dressed in white” with the attack of 1981 and warned that “the purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed future.” See Benedict XVI on Christian hope.
- Why “Unfolding”
- Fatima, like Revelation 12, describes a struggle that runs through history and can still be changed by prayer and conversion.
The springtime of hope
Tertio Millennio Adveniente 18, 23, 46 · Toward the JubileePapal teachingUnfolding
“It is certainly not a matter of indulging in a new millenarianism…”
- No millennial fever
- Preparing the Church for the year 2000, the Pope said plainly that the Jubilee was not an occasion for a new millenarianism, like the one that arose in some quarters at the end of the first millennium, but for greater sensitivity to all that the Spirit is saying to the Church and to the Churches (23; compare Revelation 2:7). This is the same caution the Catechism gives against every form of millenarianism (CCC 676).
- Springtime
- He spoke instead of “that new springtime of Christian life which will be revealed by the Great Jubilee, if Christians are docile to the action of the Holy Spirit” (18).
- Hope
- The final year of preparation was to bring “a renewed appreciation of the theological virtue of hope,” which keeps the Christian from losing sight of the final goal, and to help believers notice “the signs of hope present in the last part of this century” (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 46).
Novo Millennio Ineunte 1, 58 · Marana thaPapal teachingFuture
“Let us go forward in hope!”
- Teaching
- Closing the Jubilee on January 6, 2001, he recalled that the Church had cried out with the Spirit to Christ, the goal of history: “Marana tha — Come, Lord Jesus” (cf. Revelation 22:17, 20), and that a river of living water flowing “from the throne of God and of the Lamb” (cf. Revelation 22:1) had been poured out on the Church (1). His charge for the new millennium: “Duc in altum!”, put out into the deep (Luke 5:4). “A new millennium is opening before the Church like a vast ocean upon which we shall venture, relying on the help of Christ” (Novo Millennio Ineunte 58).
The last things: the catecheses of 1999
In the summer of 1999, in his Wednesday General Audiences, John Paul II spoke in turn about heaven, hell and purgatory. His language is careful and pastoral, and it reads the images of Revelation as images.
General Audience, July 21, 1999 · HeavenCatechesisFuture
Heaven is “neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds.”
- Teaching
- It is “a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity,” the meeting with the Father “which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit” (General Audience, July 21, 1999; CCC 1023–1029).
General Audience, July 28, 1999 · HellCatechesisFuture
“Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God.”
- Revelation's images
- “The Book of Revelation also figuratively portrays in a ‘pool of fire’ those who exclude themselves from the book of life, thus meeting with a ‘second death’” (Revelation 20:13–15). Such images “must be correctly interpreted.”
- No one named
- “Damnation remains a real possibility, but it is not granted to us, without special divine revelation, to know which human beings are effectively involved in it.”
- Not fear
- “The thought of hell — and even less the improper use of biblical images — must not create anxiety or despair,” but is a healthy reminder of our freedom within the good news that the risen Jesus has conquered Satan (General Audience, July 28, 1999; CCC 1033–1037).
General Audience, August 4, 1999 · PurgatoryCatechesisFuture
“The term does not indicate a place, but a condition of existence.”
- Teaching
- “Every trace of attachment to evil must be eliminated, every imperfection of the soul corrected.” Those being purified after death “are already in the love of Christ” (General Audience, August 4, 1999; compare 1 Corinthians 3:14–15; CCC 1030–1032).
John Paul II's own cautionHe read the dragon as Satan and as every power that serves him in history, never as a living person to be unmasked. He refused millennial excitement at the turn of the millennium, and he said that we are not given to know who is lost. Fatima, which marked his life so deeply, he received as the Church does: as a call to conversion and prayer, not a timetable.
For reflection
Where is the struggle for life in my own life?
John Paul II says that life is always at the center of the struggle between good and evil. Whose life near me is weak, unwanted or forgotten? How can I stand with Mary, the Mother of the living, and do one concrete thing this week to welcome it?
Sources
- John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Mater, March 25, 1987, vatican.va
- John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995, vatican.va
- John Paul II, Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, May 13, 1982; Apostolic Journey to Portugal, May 10–13, 1991; Homily for the Beatification of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, May 13, 2000
- Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, The Message of Fatima, June 26, 2000, with the theological commentary of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
- John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente, November 10, 1994, vatican.va
- John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, January 6, 2001, vatican.va
- John Paul II, General Audiences, July 21, 1999 (heaven), July 28, 1999 (hell), August 4, 1999 (purgatory)
- Pope Francis, Homily for the Canonization of John XXIII and John Paul II, April 27, 2014
- Revelation 12 (NABRE), bible.usccb.org
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 67, 675–677, 1023–1037, 1042–1047
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