Tłem niniejszych badań są dwie wielkie sprawy. Pierwszą z nich, w perspektywie bliższej, jest kanonizacja papieża Jana Pawła II (27 kwietnia 2014 r.). Drugą – w perspektywie dalszej – stanowi ogłoszony już przez papieża Franciszka i planowany w Krakowie Światowy Dzień Młodzieży w 2016 roku. Oba wydarzenia scala osoba papieża Polaka; oba są adresowane do ludzi młodych. W tym kontekście warto więc skierować uwagę na przesłanie Jana Pawła II do młodzieży – przesłanie, w którym Bóg Ojciec jawi się jako Wymagająca Miłość.

DEMANDING LOVE. SELECTED ASPECTS OF THE THEOLOGY OF GOD’S PATERNITY IN THE JOHN PAUL II’S MESSAGE FOR THE YOUNG PEOPLE

Summary

John Paul II calls God Demanding Love and he puts this truth in the centre of his message for the young people. He does so since he experiences, in his own life, the very presence and actions of God the Father, who loves and demands. The Pope builds the science about Love basing on the Bible. In the light of selected texts from the Old Testament, he directly binds Love with Commandments. Demanding Love becomes a synonym of the Decalogue. In line with the message from the New Testament, he emphasizes that the commandment of love is the continuation and supplementation of the God’s Law and that its only rightness is God’s Love. The article devotes much attention to the Pope’s perception of Jesus. There are good reasons. John Paul II calls Jesus the Nature of God’s Love and keeps underlining that the Son of God points to God the Father with His whole existence and each and every action, thus reflecting His Love. In order to explain the specificity of God’s Love, the Pope reaches for biblical images, referring to the scene when Jesus talks with the young man, to the Parable about the merciful father and recalls young John resting on the Master’s chest. In his teaching about God’s love, John Paul II emphasizes the very nature of God’s Love, always preceding human love, Its ability of continuous forgiveness and intensification of Love as the answer for men’s sins. Demanding Love constitutes a hermeneutic key of the Pope’s whole message for the young people. It is the most essential truth the Pope intended to pass to them. It is the key that explains the unexplainable,solving the irresoluble, pening what has remained closed before many young men.