{"id":6669,"date":"2006-07-29T01:12:14","date_gmt":"2006-07-29T01:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/christ-come-quickly.html"},"modified":"2006-07-29T01:12:14","modified_gmt":"2006-07-29T01:12:14","slug":"christ-come-quickly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/christ-come-quickly.html","title":{"rendered":"Christ, Come Quickly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Mossa, SJ, has a moving remembrance of a fellow Jesuit, whose own thoughts on his own dying are in the most recent issue of America, (not available online) – but Mark provides generous quotes.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Talking is more and more difficult, and this is confirmed by others\u2019 having more and more difficulty understanding my guttural attempts at speech. God never closes one door without opening another, they say. So all this has been felt as numbness, not pain, though doctors warn that pain may come. Who would have thought that dying felt like midmorning and midday exhaustion? Well, perhaps one who has had more experience than I. But in any case, just to be left alone to sleep seems a great blessing. The doctor recommends that I speak with the oncologist. But even to speak with him requires paperwork that I can do only with difficulty\u2014hence, I rely on the kindness of a Jesuit superior who will do it for me.<\/p>\n

Such is the quality, or non-quality, of life these days that I am like the nun in Gerard Manley Hopkins\u2019s poem \u201cThe Wreck of the Deutschland,\u201d crying out: \u201cO Christ, Christ come quickly.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Mossa, SJ, has a moving remembrance of a fellow Jesuit, whose own thoughts on his own dying are in the most recent issue of America, (not available online) – but Mark provides generous quotes. Talking is more and more difficult, and this is confirmed by others\u2019 having more and more difficulty understanding my guttural…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nChrist, Come Quickly - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/christ-come-quickly.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christ, Come Quickly - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mark Mossa, SJ, has a moving remembrance of a fellow Jesuit, whose own thoughts on his own dying are in the most recent issue of America, (not available online) – but Mark provides generous quotes. Talking is more and more difficult, and this is confirmed by others\u2019 having more and more difficulty understanding my guttural…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/christ-come-quickly.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-07-29T01:12:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Christ, Come Quickly - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/christ-come-quickly.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Christ, Come Quickly - Via Media","og_description":"Mark Mossa, SJ, has a moving remembrance of a fellow Jesuit, whose own thoughts on his own dying are in the most recent issue of America, (not available online) – but Mark provides generous quotes. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}