Tuesday, February 1, 2005

Pope taken to Rome hospital. CNN.com. Feb. 1, 2005. John Paul II has acute respiratory infection, Vatican says.

Pray for our Holy Father, that -- Lord willing -- he may make a safe recovery.

Update: CNN reports today that "Pope's Condition Stabilizes":

ope John Paul II's condition stabilized this morning after overnight hospital treatment for an acute respiratory infection, a papal spokesman said. The pope will remain in the hospital "a few days," according to a Vatican radio report. "Today there is no reason to be alarmed," spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.
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Parkinson's Lent, by Nathan Nelson. A moving reflection on the Pope's ailing health and his own experience with a grandmother who was lost to Parkinson's:

It must be the promise of Resurrection that will lead the Church through the Great Lent that we are about to experience. We will suffer with this man who we call Papa, and it will be profoundly difficult. But we have the promise of Resurrection for him. If he is, God willing, able to persevere in faith, how long will it be before he is Pope St. John Paul II? We must remember that for Catholic Christians, death is the gateway through which we pass to life, a life which is unlike any life we have experienced before. No, we will not want to see this suffering, and yes, we will miss the Holy Father when he passes -- but we know that perseverance in faith will give him life that will never see suffering again. It is that knowing which enables us to walk through these trials as Catholic Christians who believe in a God of Resurrection, a God of the living, not the dead.

As we prepare for liturgical Lent, and as we prepare for the Great Lent that we will walk through with the inevitable suffering and death of the Holy Father, let us always remember that the end of Lent is always Easter -- when death passes over us, and life comes to us in abundance.

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