Dear beloved Pope John Paul II....I miss you!

Two years ago, I was in my sewing room with the computer on across the room. I had found a live feed to the Vatican's square where a gathering of people had come to pray for the pope under his apartment window. I remember the heartbreak in my chest when he tried a few days before to speak to us from his window in vain. The disappointment in his face that I had never seen before in all these years of watching him guide us through time. What a man, what a spirit, what an example of courage, patience, and love!

Roman Tryptichby
Pope John Paul II

The End is as invisible as the Beginning.

The universe came forth from the Word,

and returns to the Word.

In the very center of the Sistine Chapel, the artist

depicts this invisible Ending the visible drama of the Judgment --

This invisible End has become visible as the

height of transparency:omnia nuda et aperta ante oculos Eius!

Matthew's words are here transfigured in the painter's vision:

"Come, you blessed . . . depart from me, y ou accursed . . .

"And so the generations pass --naked they come into the world and

naked they return to the earth from which they were formed.

"From dust you came, and to dust you shall return";

What had shape is now shapeless.What was alive is now dead.

What was beautiful is now the ugliness of decay.

And yet I do not altogether die,what is indestructible in me remains!

May you be our guide and intercessor forever! May you be in His love and onimpotence forever, and may you always remain in my heart as the papa maxim.