|
The last time was in Rome. He was not the robust
athlete of earlier days. He used a moving cart and hobbled to his chair in Paul
VI Auditorium for the Wednesday Audience. The Jubilee Year had just ended, but
when he began to speak, the tears that his obvious frailty had elicited were
accompanied by a profound sense of gratitude and joy as he delivered his
meditation and heartily greeted the pilgrims from around the world.
Out of necessity I have skipped over many other
things that can and will be said about this Pope by many others. One thinks
immediately of the assassination attempt, the visit in jail to the would-be
assassin, the Solidarity Movement in Poland, his role in the fall of Communism
in Eastern Europe, and the personal interventions in cases ranging from
death-row convicts to international disputes, to name a few. But some space must
be devoted to the final phase of his earthly pilgrimage.
Throughout these last years, these last months, the
last days, and in the last moments of his life, John Paul continued to do for us
what he had always done, teach by example. I think of all those who called for
his retirement, some even said it should have been at age 75 like all other
bishops. We have learned since his death that even he contemplated resignation
as his infirmities increased. Can you imagine being deprived of the last nine
years of this Papacy!? Some of his greatest writings and work have taken place
during that time!
The blind could see, the deaf could hear, and the
mute could shout the manner in which Providence used Pope John Paul II to
address the hearts of men in his last days on earth. I firmly believe that it
was not by coincidence that Providence inserted a feeding tube into the body of
Pope John Paul II at the same time that the State of Florida had yanked one out
of Terry Schiavo, condemning her to death as world attention was drawn to both.
It was not by coincidence that he who had written so clearly and definitively
that food and water were ordinary means of care for those who were not
terminally ill, and so eloquently about the dignity of the sick and the aged
became in his last days an example of that which he had written about.
Continue article on next page
Return to start of article
|
