"I also wish that you may overflow with humanity, that special and greatest of human gifts that is more important than intellectual ability, learning, art, or skill"

My dear ones, our gathering today has special significance in that it reminds us of those first meetings described in the earliest documents of the Church and of Christian history. We read about them in the Acts of the Apostles and even in the Gospels. These meetings were mainly eucharistic gatherings, just as today the first part of this meeting was also a eucharistic gathering. We broke and shared the bread of eternal life, and under the species of bread we received Christ, the eternal Word, the Son of the heavenly Father. However, we should never forget that those early Christian gatherings also had a family character, which is why they were called "fraternal love feasts" (agapes). Polish Christmas tradition is based on this aspect, which is expressed in the Christmas Eve supper at which the head of the family breaks and shares bread which is shaped like the host that is transformed into the body of Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist. When Poles share in this blessed bread, they are carrying on the tradition which the early Christians called "the table of love."

My dear ones, in a few moments I shall bless all of you who are sharing in this fraternal love feast, especially the university students who have gathered in such numbers on this occasion. However, before this blessing I want to express my best wishes to you.

These wishes are prompted by the great divine mystery of Christmas, in which the Word became flesh. You have done well in preparing yourselves for Christmas here in this parish with your priests because only by turning our thoughts to God at this time can we understand the true value of each individual person without exception, beginning with ourselves. There is no other yardstick for human value, greatness, and dignity. Therein lies the mystery of Christmas. If we are able to read the depths of our souls and participate with our deepest sentiments, then on this Christmas Eve, in the light of the Christmas mystery each person truly takes on his own special value, illuminated by the light of the incarnate God, the God who became Man.

On Christmas Eve our thoughts go out to every person, seeking to reach them all, the disenfranchised, the abandoned, the persecuted, and even those who have brought such a condition on themselves. Christmas Eve has always meant the discovery of the true dimension of each and every person, of each and every one of our neighbors. The Holy Child reveals to us the sanctity of the human person.
Our wishes must therefore go out especially to the human person, to our neighbor as an individual. In our world, which is so marked by strong social bonds and increasing socialization, the human person is more and more often becoming part of an anonymous mass. This human anonymity must be illuminated by the mystery of the incarnate Word, by the God who became man, in order for the present moment to be seen in its full significance. These are my first wishes.

My second wish is also inspired by the Christmas mystery. The Son of God, the Son of the Father, is born. He reveals the interior life of God who is three and one. The Son of God becomes man as the Son of Mary. He becomes part of the human family and thus enables us all to share in his divine sonship. He is the brother of all, and through him the new human family comes into being. In no other way could people have been united or universal brotherhood brought about, since this is possible only through the support of the one Father, who is Father without any distinction between language, culture, or race or between poor or rich or between social, economic, or political class or system. One single Father and one single family.

Christmas is seen as a family festival, and today's gathering is imbued with this spirit. The bread that you receive here and that you will take back home is for the family, for your families, parents, children, brothers, sisters, relatives, and friends, in fact everybody who is gathered together with you in your home. It is for those families who are experiencing some crisis or are in some type of difficulty; for divided families; for families where the father or mother is missing and where the remaining parent must assume sole responsibility for the children. Christmas is a great night for all of them, a light that speaks to us of God the Father who wants to see people create a harmonious family community.

These thoughts are meant especially for the families to whom you owe your lives and to whom you return during this holiday period. However, it has a wider meaning, for you have grown up and are moving into the future, in which, in accordance with the laws of life, you will soon create families of your own. In the perspective of Christmas, what else could we wish you but that you should form strong families and be deeply united in that love which binds two people together indissolubly for the whole of life? I hope that you will be able to give love a truly human and divine dimension, thus fulfilling its highest potential. Love, marriage, and the family are the most fundamentally important elements in the life of human society and in that of any country.

While sharing this bread with you on this holy eve, I give you my wishes for the formation of real, healthy families. With this end in view, do not grudge your time, do not spare your prayer and your attention, and do not shirk any responsibilities or sacrifices. Marriage is a very great state of life, and I therefore hope that you will not waste it.

I have prayed with you around the altar tonight for these intentions. We have of course prayed for your studies and examinations and for your professional careers, but, my dear ones, the vocation to marriage and the family is the most crucial one. Like the priestly vocation, it is strictly personal in that one finds one's own self and one's true value as a person in it. The greatness of the family lies in its primary orientation towards the person, and this is why whoever marries and forms a family must be mature. I wish that maturity for all of you.

I also wish that you may overflow with humanity, that special and greatest of human gifts that is more important than intellectual ability, learning, art, or skill. I wish that you may have this treasure and that it may grow within you and spread out to others.

You are gathered here together representing our university city, and I imagine you living in its buildings, in those beautifully illuminated rooms I have passed by so many times and thought of you living in them. I meet you when I come to the church of Nowa Wies at the beginning of the year or before Advent or during Lent.

What more do I wish for you? I wish that you may spread the good that you have within you throughout your homes and rooms.

Today in this world that is being more and more laicized, every Christian has a great mission. It is a world in which people are trying to impose atheism and move away from God without considering what they are losing or what priceless treasure is being buried, a world in which people are moving blindly, unaware of the cost, in the opposite direction from that of man's eternal destiny. Each Christian, with his heritage of faith, grace, hope, love, and vocation, must spread this treasure.

The windows of the university complex and the nearby streets are lit up. May your hearts and your young personalities shine forth in the same way, radiating this light. We must strive to make the atmosphere of these buildings both Christian and human. You have a great mission - and I am not afraid to use this word.

My dear ones, I wish you full human maturity. May you be true, conscious Christians, leaven in the midst of all those who live with you, so that they do not give up in advance or suffer frustration, because you are with them, you who break bread with me and have shared the body of Christ with me.

My dear ones, accept these wishes. Accept the truth they bring you - a Polish truth, rich in our Christmas tradition and deeply Christian.

Now I want to bless this special bread and each of you who hold it in your hands. Break it and share it with one another and with me and your priests and with your families at home. In this way we give new life to the ancient Polish vigil tradition in which at suppertime the father took the bread and blessed it and his family. In my position as father and priest, I bless this bread, and you and all those with whom you will share it. Go out and proclaim the good news of Christmas.

24 December 1973

* * * * *

I consider it a special grace both for you teachers and for us clergy to be gathered together here today. As we know, the Christmas season is marked by many such gatherings, beginning with the Christmas Eve supper in which the whole family joins.
Christmas Eve supper is a family affair that we spend with our loved ones, happy and sad alike, depending on the individual circumstances of each. It has a deeply religious meaning as a human reflection of the meeting between man and God which should take place on Christmas Eve.

We try to stretch the vigil spirit out as much as possible in order to gather together with different groups. Today's meeting with teachers, representatives of the great teaching vocation, is especially welcome to us and is most precious and full of meaning. Indeed, you represent a field very close to our heart and of vital importance for the Church and for the life of our people, that is, the field of education.

Schooling does of course mean instruction. However, it would be a mistake to try and instruct people without educating them. It would be a mistake to form their intellect and their ideas, methods, principles, and concepts while ignoring their interior life. The humanistic tradition, and especially the Christian one, insists that the person is seen as an integral whole. Everything in him that is fruitful and brings intellectual fulfillment must also provide formation for his heart, will, and character; in other words, it must form the whole human person. The school is thus a place of education, and in this sense it is the extension and main support of the educational work of the family. This is the teaching of the Church as regards the school and the role it should fulfill.

The school must carry out the educational role entrusted to it by the family and must help the family by educating its children in areas beyond the capacity of the family itself. This task is vital for the life of our families and of our whole nation. The Church has a fundamental concern in this task since it plays a part in the educational process from its own particular perspective. The Church is aware of its position as the community of God's children who have become such through baptism.

Thus, in a society in which most people have been baptized, the Church must necessarily make its own particular contribution to education. If all those who go to school and who will make up the society of the future have become children of God through baptism, the Church naturally has a role to play in the educational process. In practical terms there must be active cooperation between Church and school.

This cooperation has now been abolished from the administrative or official viewpoint, and we are all well aware that you are teachers in a state or lay school. However, the administrative abolition of such cooperation is one thing, and the live reality quite another. Any school that lives among people cannot avoid being the people's school and cannot avoid being at their service. And since our population is made up of baptized men and women, it is wrong to abolish cooperation between Church and school. Such a rupture would be an artificial and unfair imposition. This explains why, despite everything, cooperation between school and Church continues, not in any official or formal way, but in practical terms.

As clergy we are aware of this and feel its effects every day. This is particularly true as regards religious instruction, since, in general, catechism classes that take place outside the school are tolerated by the school and even looked on with a certain amount of goodwill. Schools try to facilitate catechism classes because there is a natural bond between school and people and thus between school and Church.

This bond has a variety of positive effects, and, although it may not be possible to list all of these, one of them is undoubtedly your presence here today. If I dared invite you (as I do in different places throughout the archdiocese) and if this invitation has been unanimously and wholeheartedly accepted, this means there is real cooperation between school staff and Church.

This cooperation springs from the fact that you are baptized, believing Christians, whose identity can never be artificially suppressed by anybody. Nobody can stop you from meeting with your bishop in his Krakow cathedral or offices or during a pastoral visit, for this is a right which springs from the fact that you are part of the community of the Church.

I am most grateful to you for your presence and am very happy with this whole meeting. In a few minutes I want to express my sincere good wishes to each one of you by sharing our special Christmas bread with you.

I hope that in your vocation as teachers and educators you may find every good thing for yourselves and for others and that in the school you may above all find personal fulfillment since you have chosen this particular way of life. We always find our own selves when we give something of ourselves to others, and you give everybody your teaching, your experience, and your work. I therefore hope that you will above all find your own selves in this way. I also hope that you may similarly discover others, that is, those whom you teach and educate. May your efforts meet with success and may your pupils listen to you without getting on your nerves! May everything you do in your work as teachers bear fruit day by day and week by week.

Moreover, I hope that carrying out your task and fulfilling your vocation, which is so important in the life of the nation and of the Church, may provide the means for saving your own souls (for this is in fact our main purpose in life) and also the means for helping others to save themselves, especially those to whom you teach the way of truth, goodness, and love. Your task is not that of proclaiming the gospel in explicit terms but rather that of proclaiming it by teaching the truth (be it the truth of literature, history, physics, chemistry, geography, or natural history) since the ways of the gospel and the ways of truth run parallel with one another. I therefore hope that you can show the way of salvation to those to whom you teach the truth and whom you educate in the truth.

I hope that in your school you and your students may be happy together and that you have a good relationship with them. Since most of you are married and have children, I also hope that your families, which are the preeminent school, may be better than those in which you work and that everything goes well within them.

After exchanging our greetings and good wishes, we shall sing some Christmas carols. I am sure that all Krakow will hear us then!

22 January 1978