Ch 9, 11, 12

While learning about history, people cannot help but remember all the dark times.  The first fights, the first conquests, and of course the first of the big plagues.  The black death is something that I have always remembered from my history classes growing up.  I remember learning about in high school and when they said that it spread from a flea on a rat, I stayed away from rats and grew a fear in them that I never had before.  Now learning through this class that the spread of the black death also intensified because of the spread of the Mongolian Empire was something I did not know before.

Now in reading about the black death and religion in Western Europe was really interesting.  I have befriended many Catholic priests and nuns, and when they hear that someone is near their death, they rush to their side to do the last of the sacraments and to show care.  One of my friends is the police and fire chaplain for the city of Santa Clara.  He was late to a funeral of a friend of mine because he got called to a death by car accident where the victim was covered in bleach in the car.  He crawled into the car and perform the rite then and there, coming to the funeral late and smelling like bleach.

My friends say that it is an honor to be their at the end, no matter what the cause of death is.  This has changed my views on the subject of death and that is probably why I spend a lot of time with people at their last stages with different incurable diseases.  Like my friends, they say they do this so they won't have to be alone.  In the reading it talks about the priests who would even do confession and one of the most important, the anointing of the sick.  This really stuck to me, but in learning from last weeks class about the medieval ages in which the state and religion were working way too close to each other causing a power struggle, that it fell away from the real teaching of Jesus was really something that stuck to me.  I am glad to learn about the past so it does not continue on to the future (hopefully) and every past mistake in history is something that we can take as a life lesson, and that is something I feel like I am seeing with Pope Francis.