Saint Stanislaus Papczynski — The Life and Writings

hope, and charity, his way of living the Gospel and proclaiming it to the world, also highlights the authenticity of his devotion to Mary, and invites us to adopt a similar approach. This is the way that St. John Paul II walked, who said to Mary “ Totus Tuus ” — “I’m all yours.” This is the way also followed by the Servant of God Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, primate of Poland, who was for many years the spiritual shepherd of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere. 4. Father Stanislaus’ concern about the fate of man found its expression in the goal that he included in the mission of the Congregation he founded: to pray and offer sacrifices for the dead, for the souls in Purgatory. This concern of his puts man at the center of our attention, man created in the image and likeness of God, and therefore created to live forever in God, in His kingdom. A characteristic sign of our times is that many people forget about the sublime and ultimate vocation of man, living as if God did not exist. In this way they narrow the hori- zon of hope by assigning themselves, as it were, only to earth, and yet we are only pilgrims on the way to eternity. The earth is our task. This is where we are born. We work there and try to conquer it; there we do good and embrace our neighbor with love. But all this is only the beginning of the reality awaiting us, which we call Heaven. Saint James reminded us today of how fragile is the fate of man. The Apostle wrote thus so that we would not make de- tailed plans for the near or far future, because not everything depends on us, and we do not know what will happen tomor- row. “you have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow. you are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears. Instead, you should say, ‘If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that’” (see Jas 4:14-15). Therefore, true wisdom consists in entrusting our fate to God and placing God at the center of our lives, our problems, our hopes, and dreams. The old Polish proverb says, “Without God, you won’t even make it to the doorstep.” Our fate is in His Documents and Homilies from His Canonization 193