Holy Spirit at work

It was March 15, 2024, and Vassula’s and my discussion about sharing the communion table had been quite intense in recent weeks. The conversation had started with the recently published Fiducia Supplicans, and we had been wrestling with the questions of intercommunion and concelebration — she was Orthodox and I was Catholic, and we were going to build a main center for True Life in God together. We had to clear the air, as Vassula put it. After many discussions, we agreed on a solution: we would follow the Second Vatican Council and its norms.

It was in connection with this that a small miracle occurred.

That morning I went out into the garden. I had not heard from Vassula in several days. It was one of the first real spring days in Sweden — the ground dry, cold, the air clear and bright. I was digging the cable trench for the electricity to “Vassula’s house,” the main center’s first building. And as I dug, I called out somewhat cheekily to John Paul II:

Ha! It seems I’m supposed to have a place for you in the center!

Then I went inside for a coffee break. My phone was on the table. It lit up. Vassula had sent three pictures.

A pen. The same pen, from three angles. Apparently a cardinal in Rome had given it to Vassula. It was the pen John Paul II used to sign his documents — his encyclicals, his apostolic letters, his decrees. The same pen that signed Redemptor Hominis, Veritatis Splendor, Ut Unum Sint, Familiaris Consortio, and more.

I wrote to her immediately — that I had been standing outside in the garden saying that John Paul II would have a place in the main center, at the very same moment she sent the pictures. Her reply came instantly:

“Holy Spirit is at work!!! 🥳”

The following day, Vassula sent me a longer reflection. I quote it in full, because every word matters:

“Any center of TLIG that will be established will follow the ecumenical rules of Vatican II, an image of unity in diversity, just like Christ wants and just like Pope Francis is working hard for unity, following the steps of John Paul II who sweated to perform a step forward towards unity.

I was in Romania at the same time Pope John Paul II was, and as I watched him together with the Romanian Orthodox Patriarch and the immense crowd calling out to them, ‘unitate!’ — so at that point, John Paul II turned his head to the Patriarch and said, ‘Well, why don’t we just do it!’ Returning to Rome he talked about it to the crowds, hoping to hear the word unitate — but there was silence.

While you were thinking in the field of having a small corner inside the center given to John Paul II, at that same time I had sent you a picture of the pen of John Paul II… Is this a coincidence? No. I never took a picture of that pen ever. Is this a sign? Yes. Perhaps he wants his pen to be in the exhibition room where he will have a small corner for himself? You see, I follow signs.

I have this pen with me for more than 28 years. I know that Pope John Paul II is watching over me, because he knows how I struggle for unity according to the desires of Christ. I had prayed to him a few years back — long after his death — complaining a bit to him and saying: ‘Why don’t you just give me a hand now that you know that Jesus has chosen me to work for unity? So if you have heard my prayer, give me a sign that you are supporting me.’

And he did. That night I saw him in my dream, and he was smiling at me, very vivid — and he lifted his hand and blessed me.”

Our work on the main center sometimes met with resistance from various quarters. But resistance comes with the work — even if we always receive encouragement as well. The sign of the pen reminded us of that. Vassula had complained to John Paul II in her work for unity and asked him to give her a sign that he wished to help her and that he was behind her. He answered with a smile in a dream and with his hand raised in blessing.

In the same way, we too received a sign from him — Vassula and we: we were on the right path with the main center, rooted fully in TLIG’s spirituality and riches, but with his teaching and ardent pursuit of unity as the theological foundation.

And that is enough. A calling does not always need to be confirmed by great signs — often it is confirmed by small ones: a pen photographed on a spring day and a coincidence in a garden.

The sign that John Paul II gave us — his pen that signed Veritatis Splendor and Ut Unum Sint — is not only a call to lay his teaching as a foundation. Perhaps it is a signature on the shared vision that Vassula and I had when we formulated the main center: an Orthodox mystic and a Catholic couple. The pen was present when John Paul II’s magisterium was set in print — and it signed our joint project, the main center.

John Paul II’s teaching permeates the Messages, and he chose to give us a sign that a main center for TLIG should rest on precisely that foundation. Therefore, John Paul II’s presence should not merely be relegated to a corner of a small center in Sweden — a TLIG center blessed and approved by Vassula in 2023–2024 — but rather as a cornerstone and interpretive key for the spirituality of TLIG.

It is meant to be a center signed by her herself, a few days before her death, and signed by a saint whose words were shaped by an entire life in service of precisely what we are trying to build: unity in diversity, fidelity to tradition and the law of the Church, and the home as Church — as the heart of the Church.

True Life in God is nothing other than this: to begin living the content of the Messages within the Church. That Pope John Paul II was permitted to sign our project is not a coincidence. Nothing is a coincidence, as Vassula often said.

True Life in God and John Paul II’s pontificate are intimately united in so many respects — in time, in their shared ecumenism, in his teaching, which True Life in God fulfills in a prophetic and mystical way, completing his entire personalism. And John Paul II is the saint most frequently mentioned in the True Life in God Messages. But also, as has been said, the weight given to the union of the Two Hearts, which John Paul II never ceased to emphasize.

Therefore John Paul II asked to have the center blessed, when he inspired Vassula one spring day to sign her own significance for the Swedish center.

As a promise, perhaps, that the two of them hold their hands over the Swedish center.

And probably with a smile:

“Why don’t we just do it!” — John Paul II

“Holy Spirit is at work!!!” — Vassula Rydén, March 15, 2024