Totus Tuus - Totus 2us

As well as being a philosopher and theologian, Saint John Paul II was a prophet, and from the beginning of his pontificate he had great vision into the reality and depth of the crisis that man was undergoing. He understood that in rejecting Jesus Christ, man was not just in a spiritual, theological crisis but was experiencing a profound crisis as to his own identity. As he wrote in his first encyclical, Redeemer of Man: "Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer "fully reveals man to himself"... The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly - and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being - he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ."

Hence within a year of his papacy Pope St John Paul II had begun a series of catechesis on man, male and female, and their identity, nature and vocation in the love of God. John Paul II understood how great was the need (especially in the Western world) for this teaching on human love in the divine plan, teaching that has been coined 'Theology of the Body'.

The 129 catecheses were given in the Wednesday General Audiences between September 1979 - February 1983, a pause during the Jubilee of the Redemption, then from May - November 1984.

_{Mike, from England}       

<sub>Mike puts his conversion down to learning about Pope St John Paul II's Theology of the Body on a retreat.

His John Paul II quote is: "I can only respond to an abyss of evil with an abyss of love."</sub>