Telltale spots of rash, could mean only one thing, I\'ve been struck again, with a bout of poison ivy on the skin. Why my Lord do you permit me to suffer such? Have I not turned my life around enough? Isn\'t it true a serpent leapt out and bit Saint Paul on the finger and an assassin\'s bullet struck and passed through the body of Pope Saint John Paul II, two mighty warriors of the Church? We feel like we are invincible, because of our many practices of piety, but oh how soon we forget, the value of suffering and reparation, for the sins of our past, and for the sins of the whole world. While I prayed I begged you for an answer, oh why me Lord, don\'t I serve you well enough? You were sure to send me back an answer, because you always do, I tell, and sure to form what I\'ve witnessed, time and time again, your answer was suddenly there, right before me, oh well. A new marker on the columbarium, just outside of daily Mass, the name of a child that I never held, alas! A child whom would never be touched and admired, for her healthy beauty and soft skin. Suddenly I knew, no suffering you could permit, would ever feel like enough, to make up for the loss of someone, so helpless and so pure. I should count my blessings from above, and thank little Helen Marie, for thinking so lovingly enough of me, to send an answer to my prayer. I may not have been the one, to drive the nails into my Lords hands and feet, some 2000 years ago, but indeed some 30 years ago, I wrote the check that drove, the instruments of death, toward that someone, certainly, just as innocent. Now without complaint, this poison ivy of the skin, I do suffer and offer, for my sins and for those sins of the whole world.
- Gary Edward Geraci