Thursday, April 7
Totus Tuus
The Holy Father's will was released today. The original Polish and official Italian translation are available on the Vatican website. The Guardian has an unofficial English translation, which may be will find below with some edits I did to clean up the rather hasty translation and add the marginal notes which were left out. I left what was written in Latin in Latin, with my translations and notes in brackets like this: {}. All other formatting, including parentheticals and brackets, are as found in the Italian text.
Totus Tuus ego sum
{I am totally yours}
In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
“Keep watch, because you know not in which day when your Lord will come'' (cf. Mt. 24:42) - These words recall to me the final call, which will come to pass in the moment that the Lord will choose. I desire to follow Him and desire that all that is part of my earthly life prepares me for this moment. I do not know when it is to come, but, like all else, this moment too I place into the hands of the Mother of My Master: Totus Tuus. In the same maternal hands I leave everything and All those with whom my life and vocation are bound. Into these Hands I leave above all the Church, and also my Nation and all of humanity. I thank everyone. I beg forgiveness of everyone. I also beg prayers, so that the Mercy of God will show itself to be greater than my weakness and unworthiness.
During spiritual exercises I reread the testament of the Holy Father Paul VI. This reading has prodded me to write the present testament.
I do not leave behind me any property of which it is necessary to dispose. Regarding those items of daily use which served me, I ask that they be distributed as may appear opportune. My personal notes are to be burned. I ask that Don Stanislaw oversees this, whom I thank him for the collaboration and help so prolonged over the years and so understanding. All other thanks, instead, I leave in my heart before God himself, because it is difficult to convey them.
For that which regards the funeral, I repeat the same disposition which was given by the Holy (in this place is a note in the margin: the sepulcher in the ground, not in a sarcophagus, 13.3.92.)
Rome, 6.III.1979
After my death I ask for Holy Masses and prayers
5.III.1990
****
A page without a date:
I express the deepest faith that, despite all my weakness, the Lord will grant me every necessary grace to face, according to His will, whatever task, trial and suffering that He will wish to require of His servant, in the course of my life. I also have faith that never will it be permitted that, through some of my behavior: words, actions or omissions, I should betray my obligations in this holy Seat of Peter.
****
24.II - 1.III.1980
Also during these spiritual exercises I have reflected upon the truth of the Priesthood of Christ in the perspective of that Crossing which, for each one of us, is the moment of his own death. In taking leave of this world – in order to be born into the other, into the future world, an eloquent (added above: crucial) sign is for us the Resurrection of Christ.
I therefore read the copy of my testament of the last year, also made during spiritual exercises - I compared it with the testament of my great Predecessor and Father Paul VI, with that sublime testimony to the death of a Christian and of a pope - and I renewed in myself consciousness of the questions, to which the entry of 6.III.1979 refers, prepared by me (in a rather provisional way).
Today I desire to add to it only this, that each one of us must bear in mind the prospect of death. And must be ready to present himself before the Lord and Judge - and contemporaneously Redeemer and Father. Then I too can take this into consideration continuously, entrusting that decisive moment to the Mother of Christ and of the Church - to the Mother of my hope.
The times in which we live are indescribably difficult and troubled. Difficult and tense has become the life of the Church as well, characteristic trial of these times - as much for the Faithful, as for the Pastors. In some Countries (as, for example, in that of which I was reading during the spiritual exercises), the Church finds itself in a period of persecution that is not inferior to those of the first centuries; in fact, they surpass them in the degree of cruelty and of hatred. Sanguis martyrum - semen christianorum. {The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church} And beyond this - so many people disappear innocently, even in this Country, in which we live...
I desire once more to entrust myself totally to the mercy of the Lord. He himself will decide when and how I must finish my earthly life and pastoral ministry. In life and in death Totus Tuus by means of the Immaculate. Accepting already this hour of death, I hope that Christ gives me the grace for the final passage, which is [my] Easter. I hope, too, that it shall be rendered useful also for this most important cause in which I seek to serve: the salvation of men, the safeguarding of the human family, and, in it, of all the nations and the peoples (among these I refer also in a particular way to my earthly Country), useful for the persons, who in a particular way he has entrusted to me, for the questions of the Church, for the glory of God himself.
I do not desire to add anything to that which I wrote a year ago - only express this readiness and at the same time this faith, to which the present spiritual exercises have prepared me anew.
Totus Tuus ego sum
In the course of the spiritual exercises of this year I have read (several times) the text of the testament of 6.III.1979. Notwithstanding that even now it is to be considered as provisional (not definitive), I leave it in the form in which it exists. I change (for now) nothing, nor do I add anything, as regards the arrangements contained within it.
The attempt on my life of 13.V.1981 in some way has confirmed the exactness of the words written in the period of the spiritual exercises of 1980 (24.II - 1.III).
All the more profoundly I feel that I find myself totally in the Hands of God - and I remain continually at the disposition of my Lord, entrusting myself to Him and to His Immaculate Mother (Totus Tuus).
John Paul PP. II
5.III.1982
In connection with the final phrase of my testament of 6.III.1979 (“About place/the place, that is, of the funeral/may the College of Cardinals and Countrymen'') - I clarify what I have in mind: the metropolitan of Krakow or the General Council of the Bishops of Poland - I ask in the meantime the College of Cardinals to satisfy to the extent possible the eventual questions which are listed above.
***
1.III.1985 (in the course of the spiritual exercises).
Again - concerning the expression "College of Cardinals and the Countrymen": the “College of Cardinals'' has no obligation to consult "the Countrymen" on this matter; it can, in any case, do so, if for some reason it considers it right to do so.
JPII
The spiritual exercises of the Jubilee year 2000
1. When, on the day of 16 October 1978, the conclave of cardinals chose John Paul II, the Primate of Poland Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski told me: "The task of the new pope will be to introduce the Church into the Third Millennium." I do not know if I am repeating the phrase exactly, but at least such was the sense of what I heard then. It was said by the Man who has passed into history as the Primate of the Millennium. A great Primate. I was witness to his mission, to His total entrusting. To His struggles; to His victory. “Victory, when it will come, will be a victory through Mary” - the Primate of the Millennium was wont to repeat these, the words of his Predecessor, Cardinal August Hlond.
In this way I was to some manner prepared for the task which was placed before me on the day of 16 October 1978. At the moment in which I write these words, the Jubilee Year 2000 is already a reality, in action. The night of 24 December 1999, the symbolic Door of the Great Jubilee in the Basilica of St. Peter was opened, and following that of St. John Lateran, then that of St. Mary Major -- on New Year's Eve, and on the day of 19 January, the Door of the Basilica of St. Paul “Outside the Walls.” This last event, by way of its ecumenical character, has remained impressed in memory in a particular way.
2. To the degree that the Jubilee Year of 2000 goes forward, day by day the 20th century is closing behind us and the 21st century opens itself. In accordance with the designs of Providence, it was granted to me to live in the difficult century that is going on into the past, and now, in the year in which the age of my life reaches eighty years (“octogesima adveniens”), it is necessary to ask if it is not the time to repeat the words of the biblical Simeon, “Nunc dimittis."
On the day of 13 May 1981, the day of the attempt upon the life of the Pope during the general audience in St. Peter's Square, Divine Providence saved me from death in a miraculous way. He who is the sole Savior of life and of death, Himself prolonged this life, and in a certain way gave it to me anew. From this moment it belongs to Him all the more. I hope that He will help me to recognize the time until when I must continue this service, to which he called me on the day of 16 October 1978. I ask {Him} to call me when He wants. “In life and in death we belong to the Lord ... we are of the Lord” (cf. Rm 14:8). I hope too that throughout the time given me to carry out the service of Peter in the Church, the Mercy of God wishes to lend me the necessary strength for this service.
3. As I do every year during spiritual exercises I read my testament from 6.III.1979. I continue to maintain the dispositions contained in this text. That which then, and also during successive spiritual exercises, has been added constitutes a reflection of the difficult and tense general situation which marked the '80s. From autumn of the year 1989 this situation changed. The last decade of the past century was free of the previous tensions; that does not mean that it did not carry with it new problems and difficulties. In a special way may Divine Providence be praised for this, that the period of the so-called “cold war” ended without violent nuclear conflict, the danger of which weighed on the world in the preceding period.
4. Being on the threshold of the third millennium “in medio Ecclesiae,” I wish once again to express gratitude to the Holy Spirit for the great gift of Vatican Council II, to which, together with the entire Church - and above all the entire episcopacy - I feel indebted. I am convinced that for a long time to come the new generations will draw upon the riches that this Council of the 20th century lavished on us. As a bishop who participated in this conciliar event from the first to the last day, I wish to entrust this great patrimony to all those who are and who will in the future be called to carry it out. For my part I thank the eternal Pastor who allowed me to serve this greatest cause in the course of all the years of my pontificate.
“In medio Ecclesiae” ... from the first years of my service as a bishop - precisely thanks to the Council - it was given to me to experience the fraternal communion of the Episcopacy. As a priest of the Archdiocese of Krakow I experience what was the fraternal communion of the presbyterate - the Council opened a new dimension to this experience.
5. How many people should I list! Probably the Lord God has called to Himself the majority of them - as to those who are still found in this part, may the words of this testament recall them, everyone and everywhere, wherever they are found.
In the course of the more than 20 years that I am carrying out the Petrine service “in medio Ecclesiae” I have experienced the benevolence and even more the fecund collaboration of so many Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops, so many priests, so many consecrated persons - Brothers and Sisters - and, lastly, so very many lay persons, within the Curia, in the Vicariate of the Diocese of Rome, as well as outside these milieux.
How can I not embrace with grateful memory all the Bishops of the world whom I have met in visits “ad limina Apostolorum!” How can I not recall so many non-Catholic Christian brothers! And the rabbi of Rome and so many representatives of non-Christian religions! And how many representatives of the world of culture, of science, of politics, and of the means of social communication!
6. As the limit of my earthly life approaches I return with my memory to the beginning, to my Parents, to my Brother, to my Sister (whom I never knew, because she died before my birth), to the parish in Wadowice, where I was baptized, to that city of my love, to my peers, companions from elementary school, high school and the university, up to the time of the occupation when I was worked as a factory worker, and afterwards in the parish of Niegowic, then St. Florian's in Krakow, to the pastoral ministry of academics, to the milieu of ... to all milieux ... to Krakow and to Rome ... to the people who were entrusted to me in a special way by the Lord.
To all I want to say only one thing: "May God reward you.''
“In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.” {Into Your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.” Cf. Ps. 30:6}
A.D.
The Holy Father's will was released today. The original Polish and official Italian translation are available on the Vatican website. The Guardian has an unofficial English translation, which may be will find below with some edits I did to clean up the rather hasty translation and add the marginal notes which were left out. I left what was written in Latin in Latin, with my translations and notes in brackets like this: {}. All other formatting, including parentheticals and brackets, are as found in the Italian text.
The testament of 6.3.1979
(and the successive additions)
(and the successive additions)
Totus Tuus ego sum
{I am totally yours}
In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
“Keep watch, because you know not in which day when your Lord will come'' (cf. Mt. 24:42) - These words recall to me the final call, which will come to pass in the moment that the Lord will choose. I desire to follow Him and desire that all that is part of my earthly life prepares me for this moment. I do not know when it is to come, but, like all else, this moment too I place into the hands of the Mother of My Master: Totus Tuus. In the same maternal hands I leave everything and All those with whom my life and vocation are bound. Into these Hands I leave above all the Church, and also my Nation and all of humanity. I thank everyone. I beg forgiveness of everyone. I also beg prayers, so that the Mercy of God will show itself to be greater than my weakness and unworthiness.
During spiritual exercises I reread the testament of the Holy Father Paul VI. This reading has prodded me to write the present testament.
I do not leave behind me any property of which it is necessary to dispose. Regarding those items of daily use which served me, I ask that they be distributed as may appear opportune. My personal notes are to be burned. I ask that Don Stanislaw oversees this, whom I thank him for the collaboration and help so prolonged over the years and so understanding. All other thanks, instead, I leave in my heart before God himself, because it is difficult to convey them.
For that which regards the funeral, I repeat the same disposition which was given by the Holy (in this place is a note in the margin: the sepulcher in the ground, not in a sarcophagus, 13.3.92.)
“apud Dominum misericordia
et copiosa apud Eum redemptio”
{“with the Lord is mercy,
and with him fullness of redemption” cf. Ps. 129:7}
et copiosa apud Eum redemptio”
{“with the Lord is mercy,
and with him fullness of redemption” cf. Ps. 129:7}
John Paul PP. II
Rome, 6.III.1979
After my death I ask for Holy Masses and prayers
5.III.1990
****
A page without a date:
I express the deepest faith that, despite all my weakness, the Lord will grant me every necessary grace to face, according to His will, whatever task, trial and suffering that He will wish to require of His servant, in the course of my life. I also have faith that never will it be permitted that, through some of my behavior: words, actions or omissions, I should betray my obligations in this holy Seat of Peter.
****
24.II - 1.III.1980
Also during these spiritual exercises I have reflected upon the truth of the Priesthood of Christ in the perspective of that Crossing which, for each one of us, is the moment of his own death. In taking leave of this world – in order to be born into the other, into the future world, an eloquent (added above: crucial) sign is for us the Resurrection of Christ.
I therefore read the copy of my testament of the last year, also made during spiritual exercises - I compared it with the testament of my great Predecessor and Father Paul VI, with that sublime testimony to the death of a Christian and of a pope - and I renewed in myself consciousness of the questions, to which the entry of 6.III.1979 refers, prepared by me (in a rather provisional way).
Today I desire to add to it only this, that each one of us must bear in mind the prospect of death. And must be ready to present himself before the Lord and Judge - and contemporaneously Redeemer and Father. Then I too can take this into consideration continuously, entrusting that decisive moment to the Mother of Christ and of the Church - to the Mother of my hope.
The times in which we live are indescribably difficult and troubled. Difficult and tense has become the life of the Church as well, characteristic trial of these times - as much for the Faithful, as for the Pastors. In some Countries (as, for example, in that of which I was reading during the spiritual exercises), the Church finds itself in a period of persecution that is not inferior to those of the first centuries; in fact, they surpass them in the degree of cruelty and of hatred. Sanguis martyrum - semen christianorum. {The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church} And beyond this - so many people disappear innocently, even in this Country, in which we live...
I desire once more to entrust myself totally to the mercy of the Lord. He himself will decide when and how I must finish my earthly life and pastoral ministry. In life and in death Totus Tuus by means of the Immaculate. Accepting already this hour of death, I hope that Christ gives me the grace for the final passage, which is [my] Easter. I hope, too, that it shall be rendered useful also for this most important cause in which I seek to serve: the salvation of men, the safeguarding of the human family, and, in it, of all the nations and the peoples (among these I refer also in a particular way to my earthly Country), useful for the persons, who in a particular way he has entrusted to me, for the questions of the Church, for the glory of God himself.
I do not desire to add anything to that which I wrote a year ago - only express this readiness and at the same time this faith, to which the present spiritual exercises have prepared me anew.
John Paul II
***
Totus Tuus ego sum
5.III.1982
In the course of the spiritual exercises of this year I have read (several times) the text of the testament of 6.III.1979. Notwithstanding that even now it is to be considered as provisional (not definitive), I leave it in the form in which it exists. I change (for now) nothing, nor do I add anything, as regards the arrangements contained within it.
The attempt on my life of 13.V.1981 in some way has confirmed the exactness of the words written in the period of the spiritual exercises of 1980 (24.II - 1.III).
All the more profoundly I feel that I find myself totally in the Hands of God - and I remain continually at the disposition of my Lord, entrusting myself to Him and to His Immaculate Mother (Totus Tuus).
John Paul PP. II
***
5.III.1982
In connection with the final phrase of my testament of 6.III.1979 (“About place/the place, that is, of the funeral/may the College of Cardinals and Countrymen'') - I clarify what I have in mind: the metropolitan of Krakow or the General Council of the Bishops of Poland - I ask in the meantime the College of Cardinals to satisfy to the extent possible the eventual questions which are listed above.
***
1.III.1985 (in the course of the spiritual exercises).
Again - concerning the expression "College of Cardinals and the Countrymen": the “College of Cardinals'' has no obligation to consult "the Countrymen" on this matter; it can, in any case, do so, if for some reason it considers it right to do so.
JPII
The spiritual exercises of the Jubilee year 2000
(12-18.III)
[for the will]
1. When, on the day of 16 October 1978, the conclave of cardinals chose John Paul II, the Primate of Poland Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski told me: "The task of the new pope will be to introduce the Church into the Third Millennium." I do not know if I am repeating the phrase exactly, but at least such was the sense of what I heard then. It was said by the Man who has passed into history as the Primate of the Millennium. A great Primate. I was witness to his mission, to His total entrusting. To His struggles; to His victory. “Victory, when it will come, will be a victory through Mary” - the Primate of the Millennium was wont to repeat these, the words of his Predecessor, Cardinal August Hlond.
In this way I was to some manner prepared for the task which was placed before me on the day of 16 October 1978. At the moment in which I write these words, the Jubilee Year 2000 is already a reality, in action. The night of 24 December 1999, the symbolic Door of the Great Jubilee in the Basilica of St. Peter was opened, and following that of St. John Lateran, then that of St. Mary Major -- on New Year's Eve, and on the day of 19 January, the Door of the Basilica of St. Paul “Outside the Walls.” This last event, by way of its ecumenical character, has remained impressed in memory in a particular way.
2. To the degree that the Jubilee Year of 2000 goes forward, day by day the 20th century is closing behind us and the 21st century opens itself. In accordance with the designs of Providence, it was granted to me to live in the difficult century that is going on into the past, and now, in the year in which the age of my life reaches eighty years (“octogesima adveniens”), it is necessary to ask if it is not the time to repeat the words of the biblical Simeon, “Nunc dimittis."
On the day of 13 May 1981, the day of the attempt upon the life of the Pope during the general audience in St. Peter's Square, Divine Providence saved me from death in a miraculous way. He who is the sole Savior of life and of death, Himself prolonged this life, and in a certain way gave it to me anew. From this moment it belongs to Him all the more. I hope that He will help me to recognize the time until when I must continue this service, to which he called me on the day of 16 October 1978. I ask {Him} to call me when He wants. “In life and in death we belong to the Lord ... we are of the Lord” (cf. Rm 14:8). I hope too that throughout the time given me to carry out the service of Peter in the Church, the Mercy of God wishes to lend me the necessary strength for this service.
3. As I do every year during spiritual exercises I read my testament from 6.III.1979. I continue to maintain the dispositions contained in this text. That which then, and also during successive spiritual exercises, has been added constitutes a reflection of the difficult and tense general situation which marked the '80s. From autumn of the year 1989 this situation changed. The last decade of the past century was free of the previous tensions; that does not mean that it did not carry with it new problems and difficulties. In a special way may Divine Providence be praised for this, that the period of the so-called “cold war” ended without violent nuclear conflict, the danger of which weighed on the world in the preceding period.
4. Being on the threshold of the third millennium “in medio Ecclesiae,” I wish once again to express gratitude to the Holy Spirit for the great gift of Vatican Council II, to which, together with the entire Church - and above all the entire episcopacy - I feel indebted. I am convinced that for a long time to come the new generations will draw upon the riches that this Council of the 20th century lavished on us. As a bishop who participated in this conciliar event from the first to the last day, I wish to entrust this great patrimony to all those who are and who will in the future be called to carry it out. For my part I thank the eternal Pastor who allowed me to serve this greatest cause in the course of all the years of my pontificate.
“In medio Ecclesiae” ... from the first years of my service as a bishop - precisely thanks to the Council - it was given to me to experience the fraternal communion of the Episcopacy. As a priest of the Archdiocese of Krakow I experience what was the fraternal communion of the presbyterate - the Council opened a new dimension to this experience.
5. How many people should I list! Probably the Lord God has called to Himself the majority of them - as to those who are still found in this part, may the words of this testament recall them, everyone and everywhere, wherever they are found.
In the course of the more than 20 years that I am carrying out the Petrine service “in medio Ecclesiae” I have experienced the benevolence and even more the fecund collaboration of so many Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops, so many priests, so many consecrated persons - Brothers and Sisters - and, lastly, so very many lay persons, within the Curia, in the Vicariate of the Diocese of Rome, as well as outside these milieux.
How can I not embrace with grateful memory all the Bishops of the world whom I have met in visits “ad limina Apostolorum!” How can I not recall so many non-Catholic Christian brothers! And the rabbi of Rome and so many representatives of non-Christian religions! And how many representatives of the world of culture, of science, of politics, and of the means of social communication!
6. As the limit of my earthly life approaches I return with my memory to the beginning, to my Parents, to my Brother, to my Sister (whom I never knew, because she died before my birth), to the parish in Wadowice, where I was baptized, to that city of my love, to my peers, companions from elementary school, high school and the university, up to the time of the occupation when I was worked as a factory worker, and afterwards in the parish of Niegowic, then St. Florian's in Krakow, to the pastoral ministry of academics, to the milieu of ... to all milieux ... to Krakow and to Rome ... to the people who were entrusted to me in a special way by the Lord.
To all I want to say only one thing: "May God reward you.''
“In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.” {Into Your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.” Cf. Ps. 30:6}
A.D.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
