Gregorini Demetrio / Wikimedia Commons (Left), Amazon (Right)
CV NEWS FEED // October 20, 2024, marks the 30th anniversary of Crossing the Threshold of Hope, a groundbreaking work by Pope St. John Paul II that made history as a pope’s personal reflection rather than an official magisterial document, papal biographer George Weigel wrote in an article in First Things.
The book, which became a global bestseller, addresses a wide range of topics, including the nature of God, Christ’s divinity, the problem of evil, salvation, prayer, world religions, Christian ecumenism, Vatican II, the right to life, and Marian devotion. It was translated into 40 languages and sold millions of copies within four years.
According to Weigel, the book likely contributed to Time magazine’s naming John Paul II as Man of the Year in 1994 and still stands as a testament to his intellectual depth and humility.
Time editors praised the Pope for offering moral clarity during a turbulent period, writing that “in a year when so many people lamented the decline in moral values or made excuses for bad behavior, Pope John Paul II forcefully set forth his vision of the good life and urged the world to follow it.”
According to Weigel, Crossing the Threshold of Hope was born out of a canceled television interview intended to mark the 15th anniversary of John Paul II’s papacy. Journalist Vittorio Messori had planned to ask the Pope a series of questions about his historic pontificate, but the interview was canceled due to the Pope’s relentless schedule.
Messori thought the project had been abandoned until months later, when the Pope’s press spokesman, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, contacted him with a message from the pontiff:
Even if there wasn’t a way to respond to you in person… I kept your questions on my desk. They interested me. I didn’t think it would be wise to let them go to waste. So I thought about them and, after some time, during the brief moments when I was free from obligations, I responded to them in writing. You have asked me questions, therefore you have a right to responses.
These responses became the foundation of Crossing the Threshold of Hope.
One of the most discussed sections of the book concerns John Paul II’s reflections on Islam.
“In Islam all the richness of God’s self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitely been set aside,” John Paul wrote. “Some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran, but he is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us. Islam is not a religion of redemption. There is no room for the Cross and the Resurrection [emphases in original].”
The Pope also reflected in the book on the relation of Christianity to Judaism: “[T]he New Covenant serves to fulfill all that is rooted in the vocation of Abraham, in God’s covenant with Israel at Sinai, and in the whole rich heritage of the inspired Prophets, who, hundreds of years before that fulfillment, pointed in the Sacred Scriptures to the One whom God would send in the ‘fullness of time’ (cf. Gal. 4:4).”
