Immediately prior to being elected as pope, St. John Paul II delivered a striking sermon during his last visit to the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa on September 17, 1978.
It was during a music festival called "Sacrosong," which then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was supportive of when he was in Poland.
Climate of wonder
He focused on "wonder" and his desire that the family may create a "climate of wonder":
We must wonder! We must create a climate of wonder! This task is closest to the family…Wonder is needed so that beauty might enter into human life, society and the nation. We need to marvel at everything that is found in man.
St. John Paul II further mentioned how this plays out in a family: "There is wonder over the first smile of a baby, over the first words of a child."
Simply put, a "climate of wonder" means that we see everything with God's eyes, feeling the joy God had when he created the world.
He then explained how essential this is to society and how beauty needs to be fostered:
We need this wonder, so that the lives of man, of society, of the nation may be filled with beauty. That beauty with is the foundation of the wellspring of culture. Culture cannot be created by administrative means! Administrative means can only be used to destroy culture. this is very important, and this must be remembered in our times.
At the time John Paul II was living in communist Poland, where he felt first-hand the "administrative means" of the government obliterating culture and beauty.
He also reiterated this concept of wonder in his encyclical, Fides et Ratio:
[F]undamental elements of knowledge spring from the wonder awakened in them by the contemplation of creation: human beings are astonished to discover themselves as part of the world, in a relationship with others like them, all sharing a common destiny. Here begins, then, the journey which will lead them to discover ever new frontiers of knowledge. Without wonder, men and women would lapse into deadening routine and little by little would become incapable of a life which is genuinely personal.
Author and speaker Bill Donaghy has expanded on this concept from John Paul II to promote a "Way of Wonder," stressing the need to wonder at the world around us.
Too often we have become entirely glued to our phones and the Internet, that we miss the beauty of everyday life and the world that God created for us.
St. John Paul II reminds us that we need to stop and wonder more in our daily lives, taking time out of our day to sit an enjoy the beauty of the leaves falling from the tree, or the sound of a baby giggling.
