Marco Carvalho
Starting on October 19th and until mid-April 2022, Father Andrzej Blazkiewicz wants to discuss the various meanings of human love in the Divine Plan with local Catholics. The Polish priest will promote a series of workshops – one per week – based on the book Male and Female He Created Them, a compendium of Pope John Paul II’s teachings on love and sexuality, in which the Polish pontiff discusses issues such as the human condition or human dignity.
The theological anthropology of Pope John Paul II will be under analysis from October 19th to mid-April 2002, with Polish priest Andrzej Blazkiewicz promoting a series of workshops – called “Readings on Human Love” – based on Male and Female He Created Them, a book which is considered one of the most important and original contributions of the long pontificate of Karol Wojtyla.
The volume brings together more than one hundred and twenty speeches presented every Wednesday by Pope John Paul II in the first years of his pontificate. The book deepens the analysis that the Polish pontiff made of the various meanings of human love, a current of thought which is known today as “Theology of the Body”.
The workshops that Father Andrzej Blazkiewicz wants to promote runs every Tuesday, starting from October 19th, follow a similar initiative, held earlier this year in cooperation with Argentinian Father Eduardo Aguero: “Earlier this year we organized a beginners course on the Theology of the Body. That initiative was organized together with Father Eduardo. That beginners course took place at Saint Joseph’s Seminary , lasted for eight weeks, at the rate of one meeting per week, and attracted around twenty people. This course gave them access to the basic teachings of John Paul II’s catechesis and the Theology of the Body, which the Pope ministered in St. Peter’s Square under the title “Catechesis on Human Love,” the Polish priest recalls.
This time, Father Blazkiewicz – a missionary of the Neocatechumenal Way – proposes a more participative approach to issues such as the human condition, the dignity of man and woman and the path one should follow to achieve self-fulfillment: “This time I want to discuss in an open way – and not in a overtly academic way – this text in its entirety and also to give the participants the opportunity to understand John Paul’s message, so that they can take advantage of this reflection to change their lives. This book is a valuable message that John Paul II left to humanity,” Father Andrzej Blazkiewicz told O Clarim.“The fact that it takes the form of a workshop means that this initiative will comprise different steps: first, there will be a reading every week, of one of the teachings of John Paul II’s catechesis. Then, we will have the possibility of listening to the resonance of these teachings and how they affect the participants’ lives. A third moment presupposes the analysis of the Holy Scriptures and a scrutiny of the sacred texts that the Pope included in his catechesis. Finally, we will have a Q&A session,” the Polish priest adds.
A gift from God
Male and Female He Created Them – Catechesis on Human Love is a work of theological anthropology, with a well-established foundation in the Bible and the Holy Scriptures. In the book, John Paul II seeks to establish a permanent dialogue and a better commitment between faith and reason, allowing the readers to reach an adequate understanding of the complex reality of what it means to be human. Such a commitment originates, in Andrzej Blazkiewicz’s opinion, in the perception that the human being is, first and foremost, a gift from God: “The basis of all this has to be the perception that the person, the human being, is a gift from God. As soon as it presents itself to the other, a new dimension is created. When we realize the meaning and value and importance of the other – when you can see the richness that the other offers me – we have a different perception of the diversity and importance of the other,” the missionary of the Neocatechumenal Way claims. “When you learn that love is giving, it’s receiving the other as a gift, everything starts to make sense. This is where all this teachings, this whole vision of people as being a gift from God, makes sense. We have an ordinary life, but we are a gift from God. We are undeniably a gift from God and, therefore, love is certainly seen in a different light,” Father Blazkiewicz adds.With the series of workshops that he intends to conduct until mid-April 2022, the Polish priest proposes the sacramentality of marriage to be based on the perception of of human love as the cornerstone of the meaning we offer our life: “The purpose of these workshops it is to direct our attention so that we can understand how this reality, which keep us going, also tests the meaning of our life. This is what a relationship is all about. We will try to see how these teachings of the Church can help us, having in mind the distractions of today’s world. Today we realize that both marriage and family, as well as the love that human beings perceive and receive in themselves are nothing more than a radiation of the love of God”, the Polish missionary assumes. “This is what I would like to convey. It’s not just about listening, it’s not even about studying, it’s about trying to understand how these things happen in our lives, isn’t it? I would like to invite adults, especially, and all interested parties – whether they are couples or people preparing for marriage or whether they are people who already have grown-up children – to understand that life has a lot of surprises in store for us,” Father Blazkiewicz told O Clarim.
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