Love is Won Through Forgiveness

Pope John Paul II and a Brother

Many of us may still remember the shock on May 13th 1981 when the breaking news being broadcast about Pope John Paul II assasination attempt.

I was personally still too young to recall the event although I remember a lot of images from that particular day. Especially after I knew the Lord and learned about the virtue of forgiveness, I was mesmerized with the depth of how the story developed. When we forgive, we become like the Lord, and I certainly learned from our heroic sibling, my own hero and role-model, Pope John Paul II, how to put the knowledge into action.

After the Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, shot the Pope, he was rushed into a nearby hospital to undergo surgery. He lost almost one-third of his blood and suffered a near case of bleeding to death. He underwent five hours of surgery to treat his massive blood loss and abdominal wounds. Agca was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Two days after Christmas 1983, the Pope visited the prison where his attempted killer was being held. They spoke privately for 20 minutes. John Paul II said,

"What we talked about will have to remain a secret between him and me. I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust."

Pope John Paul II dedicated his survival to Our Lady of Fatima. It was told that he was looking at a child’s shirt with the image of Our Lady when the attempted murder happened, therefore the Pope could avoid a fatal shot.

The event also took place on the same day and the hour of Fatima’s apparition sixty years earlier. The Pope believed that the hands of Virgin Mary herself deflected the bullet. In Pope’s own words:

“Could I forget that the event in St. Peter’s Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of the Mother of Christ to the poor little peasants has been remembered for over sixty years at Fátima, Portugal? For in everything that happened to me on that very day, I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet.”

During the Pope’s illness and death, Agca was deeply saddened, his brother said. He hoped the Pope lived a little bit longer.

Adnan, Mehmet Ali’s brother, told the press,

“They had declared brotherhood when the Pope visited him in prison. He was Agca's brother, would not you be sad if you had lost your brother?“

Adnan Agca added, “I feel strongly that my brother is in deep grief. We're all very sad, he (the Pope) was a great man who contributed a lot to world peace." Adnan Agca said the Pope has received relatives of the gunman several times over the past years, meeting Mehmet Ali’s mother, Muzeyyen, in 1987 and Adnan in 1997.

God is Love (1 Jn 4:8). The Kingdom of God is therefore the Kingdom of Love. Forgiveness is the only way to turn the heart’s wounds into Love. By doing so, the Kingdom of Love expands on Earth because there is an area within one's heart that becomes the territory of Love.

Our Great Pope, my hero and role-model, has shown us through his reality of action of how to bring about the God’s Kingdom on Earth. Praise be to God!

By: Bro Chan
Image from npr.org
Other source: CBS News