A new book on Pope John Paul II made headlines last week by describing how seriously, and physically, the beloved late pope took penitence. According to the postulator of his beatification cause, Pope John Paul II was known to spend entire nights on the bare floor and sometimes ? and this was the headline grabber ? even whip himself with a belt.

The book, “Why He’s a Saint,” written by Msgr. Slawomir Oder and published thus far only in Italian, surely offered many reasons why this holy man already widely known as John Paul the Great is enjoying eternity with God. But the reported extent of his practice of self-mortification (a spiritual practice of “putting the flesh to death”) no doubt surprised, and even disturbed, many Catholics.

Life brings enough pain, we might argue ? loss, disease, stress, aging ? that to inflict it upon ourselves seems, well, wrong and not something God would ask of us. Yet Pope John Paul II, according to the author, used the practices “both to affirm the primacy of God and as an instrument for perfecting himself.”

We know from our more simple mortifications such as fast and abstinence that there is much spiritual gain that can be had from exercising mastery over our physical desires and identifying with both the suffering Christ and the needy around us. We trust that Pope John Paul II, if he indeed took self-mortification to greater extremes, did so ? as have holy men and women throughout the centuries – with a knowledge gained through prayer of what was fruitful and what was harmful.

What does God ask from us? We believe, like our diocese’s own sainthood candidate Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, that sanctity has much more to do with self-sacrificing love and service than self-inflicted pain. In his last Good Friday homily in 1979, Archbishop Sheen said God will judge us by asking the following:

“Show me your hands ? have you a scar from giving? Scars from sacrificing yourself for another? Show me your feet ? Have you gone about doing good? Were you wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love? And that’s the way he will know his own.”

Pope John Paul II had plenty of those scars. So did Archbishop Sheen. Have we? ? Thomas J. Dermody