This piece is titled The Dusk of July 2024, and it seems to match the mood I find within me. My illness has reasserted itself. Once again, I am crashing into a wall. This is the struggle of the past 25+ years, and it has been very frustrating and sometimes humiliating. Meanwhile, I’m getting older, and I'm feeling even more vulnerable to all the ways that Late-Stage Lyme screws up one's body. .
I’m scared.
Yet, listen to what Pope Benedict XVI says, only a few days before resigning the papacy. This is what I want to take to heart.
“God is a Father who never abandons his children, a loving Father who supports, helps, welcomes, pardons and saves with a faithfulness that surpasses by far that of men and women, opening onto dimensions of eternity. ‘For his steadfast love endures for ever,’ as Psalm 136 [135] repeats in every verse, as in a litany, retracing the history of salvation. The love of God the Father never fails, he does not tire of us; it is a love that gives to the end, even to the sacrifice of his Son. Faith gives us this certainty which becomes a firm rock in the construction of our life: we can face all the moments of difficulty and danger, the experience of the darkness of despair in times of crisis and suffering, sustained by our trust that God does not forsake us and is always close in order to save us and lead us to eternal life” (Benedict XVI, General Audience of January 30, 2013).
