It was annotated by the Second Vatican Council which referred to the universal vocation to holiness. But Karol Wojtyła was always convinced of this, from his youth. He has been convinced of this since the tailor and catechist Jan Tyranowski helped him to discover Carmelite mysticism and began to repeat to him the phrase of a priest friend: “It is not difficult to be a saint.”
There are various ways and not only holiness lived in a heroic way by martyrs, great believers. There is holiness that can be lived in everyday life, even in silence, even in humble conditions. And, yet such holiness can equally bear enormous, wonderful fruits. It is not a holiness that is always recognized in the eyes of man, but certainly in the eyes of God.
Well, I think that such a testimony of everyday holiness, both in small and great things, in dealing with others, in “fulfilling the will of God every day”, as Mother Teresa of Calcutta constantly said, and then the holiness lived primarily in suffering, in sickness, in the near end – that such holiness was one of the most precious gifts that Karol Wojtyła left us.
With the permission of Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz – “At the side of the Saint”
St. Stanislaw BM Publishing House, Krakow 2013
