Security was tighter than last year, with more checks as participants approached the area. This week, Italian police carried out four raids against suspected supporters of Islamist terrorism, arresting seven people, including one man who was planning a truck attack.
The Colosseum, in Rome’s historic center, is one of the tourist attractions in the city where police have set up military jeeps and armored vehicles to form barriers against truck attacks. Several have also been set up near the Vatican.
...
Speaking in somber tones, he spoke of “shame because so many people, even some of your (God’s) ministers, have let themselves be deceived by ambition and vainglory, thereby losing their worthiness .. “
Quoting dictionary.com in part, vainglory is defined as "excessive elation or pride over one's own achievements, abilities, etc." [4] Yet, the most pride one can have is pride in one's own life, seeing that it is completely under one's dominion and not God's. God gives life and arranges its death. Death comes when God calls, unless one decides to reject God and God's gift of life and commits suicide.
Vainglory can thus be defined as seeing one's life as indispensable by the position one holds or by one's station in life. No matter how much security one surrounds oneself with, no matter what abilities one thinks one has, one will die. When and how one dies is in God's hands, not man's.
To lose one's life for the sake of God is to gain eternal life in Heaven. The pope is correct in saying that one who is "deceived by ambition and vainglory, [loses one's] worthiness." Is this pope deceived by his own ambitions? Is this pope deceived by vainglory by protecting his own life on earth by failing to see an eternal life with God in Heaven?
To make sure that this pope understands that his life is not in his own hands, he ought to recall his predecessor, John Paul II, who was "shot and seriously wounded May 13, 1981 at Saint Peter’s square by Turkish extremist Mehmet Ali Agca. Agca was jailed for 19 years in Italy for the attack on the Pope, which left the head of the Roman Catholic church seriously wounded," [5] but not dead. He lived to be pope for almost another 24 years when he died on "died on April 2, 2005, at the age of 84, at his Vatican City residence." [6] For about half of those remaining years, he lived with Parkinson's disease. "The Vatican kept the late Pope John Paul II's Parkinson's disease a secret for 12 years, his personal physician has revealed." [7]
Another example is a former president of the United States. "Ronald Reagan died of pneumonia, a complication of Alzheimer's disease, on June 5, 2004, at his California home. A short time after his death, Nancy Reagan released a statement: 'My family and I would like the world to know that President Ronald Reagan has died after 10 years of Alzheimer's disease, at 93 years of age.'" [8] Perhaps that is not exactly correct. "'My father . . . floundered his way through his responses, fumbling with notes, uncharacteristically lost for words," the president's son Ron Reagan Jr., said of a 1984 debate with Walter Mondale. "He looked tired, bewildered.'" [9] Perhaps Ronald Reagan had been suffering from Alzheimers for 20 or more years from its onset. "Lesley Stahl, former CBS White House correspondent, described meeting with the president in 1986: 'Reagan didn't seem to know who I was. He gave me a distant look with those milky eyes and shook my hand weakly. . . . Oh, my, he's gonzo, I thought.' Then, Reagan regained his alertness and Stahl thought, 'I had come that close to reporting that Reagan was senile.'" [10]
Perhaps a long and suffering life leading to death is the equivalent of a cleansing of sins and shortens or eliminates one's time in Purgatory. Perhaps those who die an easy death have already been cleansed of their sins and will go directly to Heaven. But neither a quick nor a slow death is an indication of one's Heavenly eternity. One will only know for certain when the moment arrives. For some, that moment may be too late to repent.
Regardless of whether one is a repentant or an unrepentant sinner, one can suppose that nearly everyone who sees death eye to eye is afraid to leave the world, especially those who are uncertain as to what lies beyond. Few are those who see God Who is Light both in life and at death. Those who do are God's chosen ones, and even some of them may have an attachment to this world and are afraid to leave right then and there when given a choice whether to continue with life. (This blogger believes that not all who are chosen are necessarily Catholic and not all Catholics are necessarily chosen. The choice is God's alone, but the choice to love purely and sacrificially in life belongs solely to one's Free Will.)
In order to be ready for death, one ought to have repented and sin no longer. However, most will need to rely on God's graces to be good and stay good, even though most will likely relapse into sin for the temptations of Satan are most difficult to resist in the areas where one is most vulnerable. To be able to have God's graces, one must have absolute faith in and be in an intimate relationship with God at all times. Having faith is easier than maintaining a relationship. To have an intimate relationship with God is to suffer, walk, stumble and fall with Christ along the way to Golgotha where by His crucifixion He made reparation for the Original Sin committed in the Garden of Eden and triumphed over Satan's temptations by His humility, obedience and above all, His Own sinlessness.
Just as the Lord Jesus Who remained sinless as man but took on Sin and all its variations upon Himself faced death, all who had been born with Sin must also face death.
With unwavering faith in God Whose only Son took on flesh Who by His pure and sacrificial love for all in life and in death, one need not fear death as to when it would arrive and how it would occur. Why this pope is so afraid of the darkness of death that he needs to be surrounded by security forces this blogger has no idea, but for those who believe in the Light that is the Resurrected Christ will believe in these words [11]:
“Do not be afraid. Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
A question for Francis I (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) could be this: Do you have true fear or true joy in your heart assuming that you look forward to the day you meet the Resurrected Christ that is Easter no matter what may bring about your death?
Can anyone think of a better time for a pope to die (naturally or otherwise) than on Good Friday as he becomes invisible to the crowds by kneeling in the shadow of Christ's cross so as to let Christ come alive spiritually by quoting the exact words Christ Himself spoke so that those who hear may have the strength for perfect contrition, repentance and conversion allowing their souls to enter Heaven?
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-religion-easter-pope-goodfriday/pope-markthiss-good-friday-amid-tight-security-urges-people-to-rediscover-shame-idUSKBN1H61QA?il=0
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/vainglory
[5] https://www.denverpost.com/2017/05/12/photos-may-13-1981-pope-shot/
[6] https://www.biography.com/people/john-paul-ii-9355652
[7] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/1513421/Vatican-hid-Popes-Parkinsons-disease-diagnosis-for-12-years.html
[8] http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/healthcare/Medical-Mystery-Did-Reagan-have-Alzheimers-while-president.html
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/bible/matthew/28:29, at 10.
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