St. John Paul II and the search for truth, goodness and beauty

Last April marked the twentieth anniversary of the death of St. John Paul II. His figure has left a deep mark on the recent historical panorama of the Church and the world. Poet and playwright, philosopher and theologian, he was a man of extraordinary culture, an acclaimed and respected moral leader, a pastor close to his people, a living witness of faith incarnate.

Martyr in life, his fame of sanctity exploded in an unusual popular acclaim after his death, calling for his immediate elevation to the altars. He was beatified six years after his death and canonized within a decade. His long pontificate has left a vast body of teachings, which have been expounded and treated in a prodigal manner in recent decades. However, there are still perspectives to be explored. This article proposes one of them, presenting this holy Pope as a promoter of the search for truth, goodness and beauty as a way to re-Christianize culture, inspiring it from a Christocentric humanism.

A polyphonic organ for an anthropological symphony

The intellectual and pastoral figure of Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II has not ceased to grow over the years, as evidenced by the numerous publications that continue to appear after his death. His main endeavor-as a priest and university professor first, and then as pastor of the universal Church-can be summed up in the mutually enriching dialogue between Christian Revelation and modernity (or rather, postmodernity), especially in the fields of anthropology, ethics and culture. This challenge will fully coincide with the concern manifested, in this same sense, by the Second Vatican Council, as can be seen in the first numbers of the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et SpesThe then young Archbishop of Krakow was actively involved in the drafting of the book.

Moved by this challenge, Karol Wojtyła set out to elaborate a personalist and transcendent anthropology that, starting from a solid Aristotelian-Thomistic foundation and enriched with a phenomenological approach, would respond to the demands of modernity-subjectivity, freedom and autonomy, conscience-from a Christian perspective. On this basis, he developed an ethics of the person and of culture, in which his theory of human action (the person projects himself in his actions; human action has a transforming, that is, humanizing, effect) was also reflected.

Later, during his Petrine magisterium, he continued his commitment to clarify the Christocentric reality of man and the world, thus proposing a new and regenerating humanism, in line with the directives of the last ecumenical council.

If anything has been brought out by some scholars of Wojtyła's life and work, it has been the profound unity and coherence of a thought, present in a personality as powerful as he was multifaceted: poet, playwright, philosopher, theologian and pastor. As Massimo Serreti wrote in the initial years of his pontificate, "this multiformity of thought - quite unusual now in our cultural panorama - allows Wojtyła to approach the truth about man and the truth about God from disparate visual planes and angles, but surprisingly confluent in the end."

Esta misma opinión otro experto en su figura, Lluís Clavell, para quien las obras de Wojtyła «proceden del interior del sujeto único e irrepetible, pero según varios registros, tales como el sonido de un órgano a lo largo de un concierto». Se trata de una metáfora muy acertada. El propio san Juan Pablo II la utilizará en una carta al profesor Giovanni Reale, responsable de la edición crítica de sus obras filosóficas en italiano. En ella defendía cómo la verdad sobre el ser humano y sobre el mundo puede explorarse tanto a través del arte (música, poesía, pintura) como de la reflexión filosófica o teológica, de modo que, entre todos estos modos de expresión podemos obtener «una suerte de singular ‘sinfonía’ antropológica, en la cual la vena inspiradora que fluye del perenne mensaje cristiano (…) orienta a todas las culturas para mayor gloria de Dios y del hombre, inseparablemente unido al misterio de Cristo».

And he added: "I thank the Lord, who has granted me the honor and joy of participating in this cultural and spiritual enterprise: first, with my youthful passion, and then, as the years went by, with an approach progressively enriched by the contrast with other cultures and, above all, by the exploration of the immense doctrinal patrimony of the Church".

The way of the transcendentals

This anthropological and ethical proposal that Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II puts forward can be analyzed from various points of view. One of them consists in illuminating it from the prism of the transcendentals of being -in particular, of the verumthe bonum and the pulchrum-. Certainly, this holy Pope has not dealt with them in a monographic way; however, his constant reference to them is striking, particularly when he has referred to the anthropological and ethical foundation of the person, as well as to their projection in the cultural and social sphere.

To what extent are the search for goodness, truth and beauty essential in the teachings of this thinker and pope? We can bring up a couple of statements of his, as revealing as they are unknown. One of them took place during one of his pastoral visits to a Roman parish (Santa Maria in Traspontina), where, after being received by a children's choir, he took the opportunity to speak of the importance of education in beauty.

In the impromptu colloquium that followed, in response to a question, St. John Paul II revealed something that was deeply engraved in his heart: "One of you asked me what the Pope would have done if he had not been Pope (...) Even if I were not Pope, my main task would be to preserve, protect, defend, increase and deepen this aspiration to the good, the true, the beautiful".

A review of his interventions on the occasion of meetings with representatives of culture, artists and communicators shows that this was not a one-off comment. For example, barely a month and a half after being elected Successor of Peter, in an audience with representatives of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan on the occasion of the centenary of its founder, Father Agostino Gemelli, the newly elected Polish Pontiff clearly stated that "the human person finds full self-fulfillment only in reference to the One who constitutes the fundamental reason for all our judgments about being, good, truth and beauty". From then on, there will be numerous explicit references to these three transcendentals in speeches and addresses addressed to those who work in the field of culture, art or communication.

The "eternal stigma of God" in the world and in man's heart

In fact, starting from the mystery of man as a person, created in the image of God, Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II proposes an ascending itinerary towards God, because, as he affirms, "what is human carries in itself the eternal stigma of God, it is an image of God." Truth, Good and Beauty are but other names of that Supreme and Personal Being whom we call God, and to them we aspire; they are the object of our spiritual powers (intelligence, will, affections). From this conviction, Wojtyła would follow his particular intellectual and artistic path, based on phenomenology and illuminated by faith, which he had the opportunity to describe in those sermons addressed to the Curia in 1976 and collected in the book Sign of contradictionThe itinerarium mentis in Deum emerges from the depths of creatures and from man's innermost being.

In this journey, the modern mentality is based on the experience of man and on the affirmation of the transcendence of the human person (...). The transcendence of the person is closely linked to the reference to the One who constitutes the fundamental basis of all our judgments about being, about the good, about truth and beauty. It is linked to the reference to the One who is also totally Other, because He is infinite".

The way of the transcendentals thus responds to the anthropological need of human beings to be open to the infinite, to which they aspire by their own rational and spiritual nature. These categories or dimensions of being (truth, good, beauty) constitute the main threads of the web that unites man (creature, participated being) with God (creator, being by essence), thanks to his condition of imago Dei. Wojtyła himself has tried to traverse this threefold path through art, philosophy and theology, convinced that, indeed, everything that is truly human reflects the imprint of God. Thus, as Wojtyła himself notes, "the. itinerarium mentis in Deumas a "way of the thought of the whole man", ends up becoming a true "way of the thought of the whole man".itinerarium hominis".

This path of truth, goodness and beauty is uniquely suited to recovering the Christian foundation of a society and a culture that have drifted away from God and from man himself, and to a certain extent have fallen into self-destruction and despair. Faced with the crisis of metaphysics - and the consequent dispersion or disunity among the transcendentals - brought about by modern philosophy, St. John Paul II has once again recovered the metaphysical foundation of philosophy and proposed a personalist and transcendent perspective, from which in turn derives an ethical proposal equally anchored in the human person and in his transcendence. In this sense, Pope Wojtyła has wanted to take up this enormous cultural and anthropological challenge referred to by the Second Vatican Council and has constructed a solid anthropological and ethical response to the questions raised by modern thought.

A life and teaching project

Karol Wojtyła/John Paul II has dedicated his life to this path, with constancy, conviction and firmness. Initially pointed out in his stage as a philosopher and professor of Ethics from a more anthropological point of view, it acquires greater development and maturity throughout his pontificate, during which he also approaches them from a theological perspective (Christological and Trinitarian). More specifically, he insistently reiterates the need to base cultural, artistic and communicative expressions on the transcendentals of being. "Culture is the incarnation of the spiritual experiences of a people," he will say on one occasion, "and gives concrete expression to truth, goodness and beauty. Indeed, the search for the true and beautiful good leads man to an encounter with God and with the deepest reality of his own being.

To the extent that the person projects himself in his work, he can help to ensure that this itinerary is also followed by those who contemplate what has come from his hands or is the fruit of his intelligence or creative talent. Hence, cultural and artistic manifestations, and the contents disseminated through the means of communication and entertainment, are an ideal channel for "a more vigorous cultural irradiation of the Church in this world in search of beauty and truth, of unity and love". This anthropological search also becomes a Christological encounter, since Jesus Christ is the Model according to which man has been made, and as Way, Truth and Life he is also the full manifestation of Beauty, Truth and Goodness.

"I carry your name in me"

Throughout his life, this saintly Pope has personally walked these three paths of beauty (through the cultivation of poetry and theater), reason (in his philosophical facet) and faith (as a theologian), steadfast in his commitment to find the divine traces present in the human person and in creation (the pulchrumthe verum and the bonum) to elaborate, from there, that anthropological "symphony" that he interpreted with his life, as part of the evangelizing mission in which God invited him to participate. Here, too, he has honored his role of pontifex ("builder of bridges"), because he has brought together the two shores of faith and culture, which are sometimes opposed to each other, and has also embodied the ideal of the Christian humanist, encouraging him to place at the service of the Gospel each and every one of the means of communication, as well as the various cultural and artistic expressions.

A major part of this endeavor has been to rediscover the path of the transcendentals, those traces or stigmata of God present in the heart of man. He would refer to this again in the collection of poems he wrote in the twilight of his life (Roman Triptych), in which he writes: "Yo llevo tu nombre en mí, / este nombre es signo de la Alianza / que contrajo contigo el Verbo eterno antes de la creación del mundo (…) / ¿Quién es Él? El Indecible./  Ser por Él mismo. / Único. Creador del todo. / A la vez, la Comunión de las Personas. / En esta Comunión hay un mutuo regalo de la plenitud de la verdad, del bien y de la belleza"

In the letter he wrote to Professor Giovanni Reale at the end of his life, St. John Paul II expressed his gratitude to Divine Providence for having made him capable of carrying out such a "cultural and spiritual enterprise" - an entire life project - at the center of which "man as a person (...), image of the Subsistent Being, (...) the object of an incessant philosophical and theological analysis" is always found. In our opinion, it can be affirmed that he has more than achieved this objective. Not in vain, as Rino Fisichella affirms, "each successor of Peter is called at the right time and with his personality corresponds to the needs that arise on the tapestry of history".