Saturday, January 15, 2011

Quiet days with snow and John Paul the Great...

...snowbound in Alabama!

It has been beautiful.

With the EWTN studios snowbound for the first days of my stay, I rested and read and read...given free access to a good range of Catholic books, I decided that I'd find out more about John Paul II, having recently read the new tome on the subject by George Weigel. From rows of stacked and catalogued shelves of books, I chose William Oddie's John Paul the Great - a collection of essays by a number of well-known British and other Catholic writers including Leonie Caldecott, Dr Tracey Rowland, and Fr Aidan Nichols, and then added Oddie's unusually prophetic Roman Option. I also picked up Peggy Noonan"s John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father and added a newly-published book that had evidently just arrived: The Pope's Maestro by Gilbert Levine.

When the weather finally allowed things to return to normal at EWTN and we could start work on my new series, I was almost sorry: the peace and the books and the beauty of the snow and the pine trees had been a joy. But it all felt absolutely right. The new broke that John Paul II is to be beatified: the date is May 1st, the feast of Divine Mercy. I started work, and the week's filming has gone magnificently. I have never had a week like it: everyone has been so helpful, the broken arm slowed me down and made me work at a sane pace, we did everything without any problems and I even had free evenings and time to rest, and meals with friends. With daily Mass and the wonderful friendships that EWTN seems to forge, it has been a time of great delight.

1 comment:

Elizabeth said...

I enjoyed your interview on EWTN Live and I'm looking forward to your new series. I followed the old series and it brought back lots of memories of the way we used to do things. I've just finished reading George Weigel's "The End and the Beginning", how Christ shone through John Paul in his life and in his teachings. He is such an inspiration.
I was interested to hear that your husband is a convert and you mentioned once that he's also Australian. It's funny he seems so Catholic and so very English, you would never know! (I saw the series on the Crusades and listened to Catholicism at the heart of Europe). What a great idea Mother Angelica had to start EWTN, it has changed my life.