In the Piazza

The crowd and me at Mass in St. Peter’s Square, April 1999.
Image credit: Tom Phillips (also scanned by Tom at the last minute – see below!).


I was there once, with Tom, in the Piazza. One April – 1999, I think – for Mass on a Sunday morning. And it was wonderful: the Pope (John Paul ll); the people; Communion. All bathed in sparkling sunshine. I’ve never been so happy – or looked so happy – and we have the photograph to prove it.

But I don’t have a scanning machine. So, if it’s not at the top of this post, it means I haven’t been able to find – the use of – one either, and I’ll be very sorry…

Even moreso, because it seems I’ll never be able to take another.

Every Tuesday night, I go to sleep with EWTN TV [Sky: 589] on - my profiling bed (raises legs and head) is in the sitting-room and I usually do go to sleep with at least the Bible [24/7 on satellite radio; Sky: 0134] being read quietly in the background. But Tuesday night: EWTN. Has to be. And why? Because then I wake up to see our Holy Father, Benedict XVI hold his Wednesday audience; in the Piazza; in front of the gorgeous St. Peter’s Basilica. I can imagine being there. And do share the Blessing. And it’s a good start to the day. I’m thankful…

But, hey, how about I, literally (physically), try to get to Rome again? Pray hard, and work hard, towards it? Wooh! That’d be a goal to aim for wouldn’t it? And something I could include others in (unlike my writing which I think – in the human family, anyway - I’m alone with!). I could try to actually see/meet Our Holy Father. Couldn’t I?

Well, this was the gauntlet I threw down for myself the other week. Not a thing has been done, since, towards it. Except, perhaps, it was mentioned and ignored as just another one of Mother’s mad ideas. Cast aside – even by me. I mean it would be almost impossible to achieve: I haven’t got a passport any more (out-of-date) and, though I did find a photographer (expensive) now my teeth are falling out (gaps in the front) and body-wise, I’m more skinnny and decrepit than ever. Not a pretty sight for la bella città!

What I’d love to do is go to Italy in a camper-van, because then I could lie down all the way, if necessary, and not show myself to anyone. Other than the Pope, of course, and a few of his good people (maybe the odd Swiss guard!). Tom, or whoever was driving, could get the fabulous Italian food and bring it to the van (couldn’t he? Do I sound spoilt?). But Tom has given up the driving-lessons he began before he (so disasterously - for me!), left home last year [see Travels with Lucy]. My brother, Blob (nickname), on the other hand, has driven a lorry…

Ah well, it’s just dreaming. What else you-going-to-do on a miserable Saturday morning, when the ’phone won’t ring and, although people are around, they won’t come to see you?

And I think someone (Tom?!) opened my Windows last night and let a Trojan horse in […to computer]!

I’m drafting this on Word and am ready to find a scanner for the photograph, which I’d love you to see. Otherwise – and, again, I’ll be sorry – a Google image to at least remind me of what we saw!

Oh, just in case the former fails I’ll describe the ‘me’ in that picture…

I was standing – looking over heads to Tom with the camera. And beaming. It really was one of the best days of my life. I’d never been to Italy before (I’m a quarter-Italian and always wanted to go – had learnt the language at home and college for a couple of years) and had only been Catholic for six years (converted with Tom, 1993 – hope to tell you “my journey” one day). And that was it, really: standing (not well but on my legs) and loving everybody. It was the most complete feeling – and one I’ve only ever known through the Church – I imagine there is, this side of Heaven (God willing, I get there!).

I hope everyone knows that feeling, at least once in their lives.

By 2000 I was using a walking-stick and 2001 (year of diagnosis and second trip to Italy, though, unfortunately, not to St. Peter’s), poor Tom had to push me in the wheelchair outside. Great fun on the ancient cobbles!

And that’s the way we measure the progress of this primary progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS), by looking back and comparing [it] to a time in the future. I guess, right now, if I could manage to get to the Wednesday audience, it would be with the familiar (for people like me) blanket, even on a hot day (always cold) and sitting at the front, right opposite our dear Pope.

Now, that would be an honour.

And what a climax to a life!

God bless you all.

Virginia

P.S. Please pray for Tom, who still visits and helps daily. I know he’s finding this (MS, me) hard. Thank you.

Ash Wednesday (and the MS "end stage")

[Note: if you don’t see this on Wednesday, 25th February, I’m sorry. I drafted it then but it can take me a while to get to Blogger!]

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” And, at least today, everyone else will be thinking about it. Well, that’s how it seems, anyway, having just watched EWTN’s Mass and two priests smearing ash crosses on scores of poor, penitent foreheads.

Not secularites obviously, no atheists or agnostics; not even Muslims or Jews; but for Catholics the world over, and anyone vaguely calling themselves Christian, Ash Wednesday will bring them to reflect on death…

The beginning of Lent and the Gospel tells of Christ’s leaving His disciples, to go alone into the Wilderness for forty days and forty nights. To be, physically alone, to be tested to the extreme; tempted, eventually, by the Devil, and, at last, to envision and accept His death to come. It is the time poor Jesus would begin to feel the emotional agony He will cry out from in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And which, therefore as Christians, we are called upon to share, at least empathise with, at this time of the Passion – season of Easter – which starts, liturgically, on Ash Wednesday.

‘Poor penitents’ – of which, of course, I am one, though without the literal ashen brow as I no longer get to Church (I’m sure the local Priest would have come here if I’d asked but I didn’t, he’s so busy – I expect to see him before Easter Day) – will offer up their own sacrificial suffering (their penance for sins) to unite with Christ’s sacrifice of Himself for the sake of the world.

It is what Catholics are encouraged to do at any time of suffering in their lives and why they love the term “offering it up”! It is why on a Catholic crucifix there is always a Corpus (body of Christ).

For me, as someone with progressive MS – a degenerative neurological disease – in chronic (meaning constant) pain, it (the Passion of Christ) has become a blessèd raison d’être. The entire and only meaning of my life.

And for this, I am incredibly, and humbly because I know it is a grace, grateful. It is not for no reason that the word ‘Eucharist’ is Greek for ‘thanksgiving’: body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus, Son of God, in the bread and wine of the daily Church offering.

Oh, golly gosh, I love being Roman Catholic!

Anyway, back to the reason for this piece: Ash Wednesday. I feel less alone today because I know there are others thinking about their own mortality and their future, eternal, life to come.

And because I hope they may think of all those like me and say a prayer that God gives us, or in my case, continues to give, the strength to go on. That we might show the same courage and fortitude as displayed by dear Jesus in the Wilderness and throughout His journey to, and suffering of, the Crucifixion. “Take up [your] cross and follow me.” [Lk 9:23] May we keep hearing those words.

I don’t know if it’s the same with all – what Tom (son) and I sometimes call - “long-haul illnesses”. I imagine it is, if, for any continuous period, for any reason, someone is immobile. That is, that they, like progressive MSers, will come to what is known as the “end stage”, where even your internal organs start (?) to weaken and, finally, no longer support life.

Well, it looks (even the MS Nurse agrees - but mostly I keep it to myself, I don’t see doctors [see MS blog]!) as though I’m reaching that point. And it’s a scary time. My heart goes out to anyone else going through this and my redemptive prayer (offered up) is for all of us.

My lungs are what I think will go first (as they often are, of course, with pneumonia or something similar – you can read about this and my herbal remedies/tonics for everything lung related, again, in my MS blog!). Or it could be the heart. Who knows? God knows, or will know. And that’s all that matters.

I just thought I might write about that – my end, as it were – and about how it’s going (!), here, with Jesus. And with you who I love because I know I should, if you’re actually reading!

God bless you.

Amen