{"id":341090,"date":"2012-05-04T06:00:19","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T04:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/a-light-in-the-illness\/"},"modified":"2024-06-06T12:06:36","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T10:06:36","slug":"a-light-in-the-illness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/a-light-in-the-illness\/","title":{"rendered":"A Light in the Illness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u00abWhen, about four years ago, Fernando was diagnosed with ALS<\/strong> (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) a shiver went down my spine.- Maria said – I was overwhelmed and full of fear. He guessed what I was feeling and whispered to me: \u201cI\u2019m up for it. You\u2019ll see God\u2019ll give us the grace for this really important moment.\u201d I felt myself reborn. I too wanted to stick to God\u2019s plan of love for us. Like this we began the adventure we\u2019re on.<\/p>\n

\u2018After a while Fernando was taken into intensive<\/strong> care because of a respiratory problem, but our calm way of facing the illness and Fernando\u2019s attitude of love for the doctors and nurses changed all the rigidly professional attitudes into something more warm and friendly.<\/p>\n

\u2018The whole Focolare family<\/strong> <\/a>and the people we\u2019ve met throughout our lives stood by us. We found a real competition of love going on around us: I never had to use public transport, people it take in turns to get me to the hospital and to help with filling in the forms needed to access home care.<\/p>\n

\u2018When we returned home I had to face the problems of daily life caring for Fernando day and night, and I learnt to use the various kinds of life-saving equipment. At night I always have an ear open and often my sleep is broken. But, although I may be a bit tense sometimes, the look of love on\u00a0 Fernando\u2019s face always keeps me going.<\/p>\n

\u2018In the last four years I\u2019ve always felt God as a Father and he touches my life everyday in the most unexpected ways above all through other people. One morning a visiting doctor found me ill in bed and so, after she\u2019d done what she\u2019d come to do, she cooked some soup, put on a wash and fed Fernando.<\/p>\n

\u2018Little things like that happen all the time. One Sunday I ran out of medical gloves and, in that very moment, a neighbour who knew nothing about it turned up with a box of a hundred. The little daily chores get done too, because things happen like someone turns up at the door and says something like: \u2018Do you need any bills paying?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Fernando never plays the sick person. He is 87 and what you see in him is joy and openness to\u00a0 everyone. He keeps himself informed and is especially interested in politics and above all in the school of the Political Movement for Unity<\/strong><\/a>. He was the mayor of Ghilarza (Oristano) for three terms, the director of the Sardinian Regional Statistical Study Centre, and he is concerned in a special way about young people who he encourages to get involved with politics, saying: \u201cWe need to purify our way of thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The illness progresses and takes away the most simple and basic abilities, but he lives this out in a heavenly way, trying to do God\u2019s will with simplicity,\u00a0 just as he did when he was well, and his faith supports all of us around him. If anyone calls to see him and commiserates with him, he says to me later: \u201cThey speak about death, but I feel I\u2019m overflowing with life!\u201d and he doesn\u2019t hesitate to tell believers and non-believers alike of his experience and philosophy of life: \u201cI hand myself over completely to God as Jesus did. When I\u2019m scared, I\u2019m not afraid. Fear destroys life\u201d\u00bb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fernando and his wife Maria from the Italian town of Cagliari have had an experience of light in midst of the a world darkened by the shadow of death, and they have managed to overcome the fear that comes just saying a term like ALS, \u2018amyotrophic lateral sclerosis\u2019 (a form of motor neurone disease, also know as Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}