VATICAN - “I am forever TOTUS TUUS”

Vatican City (Fides Service) - When they asked John the Baptist ” What do you have to say for yourself?" he answered “I am the voice of one crying in the desert” (Jn 1 22-23). Two thousand years since that confession made by the precursor of Christ, another confessor of the faith who bears the same name, the Vicar of Christ on the chair of Peter seems to re-echo those words in our day. He too explains who he is, now that the world is wondering about him and about his pontificate, almost as if to say ‘What do you have to say for yourself’ and he replies: “I am forever Totus Tuus”!
This exceptional confession at this precise moment seems to say that we must not allow suffering to disorientate us, we must continue to have faith and confess our Christian identity, indissolubly linked with the Cross. Almost as if to fortify us and confirm the certainty that God never abandons at times suffering, the Pope affirms, in writing : “I am forever Totus Tuus”!
The words might seem enigmatic for those not familiar with Christ and Mary his Mother, for those who know nothing of Mary’s universal spiritual motherhood, revealed in the Gospel, and which she exercises over all who recognise her, as willed by God, as their very own mother! “Behold your mother!” (Jn 19, 27).
This extraordinary Pontiff chained to the sufferings of Christ, far from wavering in his witness to Christ from hospital indeed intensifies it in keeping with the logic of the Cross which contradicts all human logic, even the most well intentioned; at the sight of the Cross we are caught off guard. Mary at the foot of the Cross is silent, yet she is the most eloquent witness of the saving truth of her Son’s Offering, his self immolation. Perhaps we Christians of the new millennium should learn from Mary to return to the essentials of our faith, prayer and the creed, essentiality made of only a few words, but which are the most important.
Those few words written by the Holy Father are more eloquent than ever: “But I am forever Totus Tuus”. That “but” seems to reinforce the “I am” and that “forever” seems to make even more brilliant that act of love and filial trust in Mary which is his “Totus Tuus”.
“Totus Tuus”, would almost seem to be his “second name”: “John Paul II” (first name), “Totus Tuus” (second name). The second name is “forever”, like the Pope’s “Totus Tuus”. When we introduce ourselves we give our first name and our second name. On Thursday evening after his little operation, John Paul II told us once again who he is, he gave us his identity, the one he gave at the beginning of his pontificate. In the past few days many of us have said again and again, as the disciples in Emmaus: “stay with us!”. The words he wrote seem to tells us not to worry because he is “forever Totus Tuus”. In other words, he belongs not to himself but to Mary who can obtain everything from her Son Jesus as she did at Cana. The consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary taught by Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort, which the Pope has lived since his youth, entails giving oneself totally to Christ through the hands of Mary; everything is given: body, soul, joy, suffering, health, life and death. Mary is certainly not the centre of salvation, only Jesus is, but He placed Mary at his side giving her a central place in the redemption of humanity. We consecrate ourselves to Mary in order to be more consecrated to Jesus. At his side John Paul II the Vicar of Christ like his Lord has the Mother.
“My mother forever”. These words, among the most touching of John Paul II’s Marian teaching, reveal the Holy Father’s personal relationship with the Mother of God, a relationship which every Christian can and must live. The Pope said these words at Fatima on 13 May 1991 when he went there ten years after the assassination attempt to thank Our Lady that he had survived, that his life had been given back to him through the intercession of the Mother of God. Once again the Pope asks us to look to Mary and to renew together with her our trust in the saving power of God’s mercy. (L.A.) (Agenzia Fides 26/2/2005; righe 43, parole 681)