I worked out right at noon when Pope John Paul II’s condition was grave.
The big television monitor fourth row down from the left showed devout Catholics praying for the Holy Father in Vatican City.
Surrounded in a room full of stair masters, Precor cycles, rowing machines and treadmills and all those televisions too.
The one next to the TV fourth from the left was on VH1.
On that television was VH1’s show The Greatest: 40 Hottest Girlfriends … and Wives.
Next to that television where CNN was showing devout Catholics praying for the native Polish philosopher Karol Wojtyla, was Carmen Electra posing with her ex-husband Dennis Rodman.
Is there anywhere in the world a Christian can veer from evil?
The Countdown.
VH1 rolls through hottest wives of famous rock stars. Fox News reports the pope has lost consciousness.
Down through the top 10, the women get bustier and more plastic. Husbands and boyfriends of these vixens have nose rings, their careless look an apple to the eye of the camera.
An Archbishop now reports that he is heading to Rome for the selection of the next Holy Father.
Two girls in their early teens hop on recumbent bikes, just in front of those two ever-colliding pictures coming out of TVs three and four.
The pope living the last day of his life and Rachel Hunter posing nude on a massage table on the next TV. And those two girls watching.
A friend of mine, who is a Protestant Christian as well, once said that the pope did not deserve to be defended when he was attacked vehemently by some journalist (I cannot remember who it was or what it was about). He said he wouldn’t defend the pope against any criticism.
Shocked, I told him the pope was a Christian just like us and he stood much on the same stances we did.
The Countdown is done.
An Italian news agency reports that the pope is dead.
The Vatican denies the report, there is still life in the head of Vatican II.
A lady begins on a stairmaster next to mine. She asks me where I go to school and where I work. She asks if I knew her athlete son who played football and swam.
I wondered if she knew that the pope prophesied to Ronald Reagan that the end of the Cold War would come in the pope’s lifetime.
More people pour into the room full of cardiovascular equipment. None blink at the conflicting images on TVs three and four.
A man on a treadmill talks on his cell phone.
The long-legged, high-school cheerleader talks on her phone after she greets her friend on the elliptical machine next to hers.
Know it or not, they watched the passing of a great man from the seat of a recumbent bike.
There is a Rosary Service at St. Peter’s starting at 9 p.m. in Rome.
On Oct. 16, 1978, on those same steps of St. Peters, Karol Wojtyla, from a small town southwest of Krakow, was elected as the first non-Italian pope in 455 years.
His first words as pope, “Be not afraid.”
The Countdown is over, and all those 40 celebrities’ careless fashion and careless attitudes dance off VH1 until another time.
Masses of Christians stand outside of the Vatican looking up at the window from where the pope would sometimes wave to people.
There was light, but no smiling John Paul and no speeches about liberty (the word he loved most) on this day.
John Paul saw Christians as having liberty – liberty from sin and other ways of the world that kept people entwined in a net of sin.
“The loss of the all the people he loved” by the age of 20 never kept him from pursuing his mother’s dream for him to be a priest.
In these few words, the Pope described his liberty as a saint to journalist Andre Frossard, “The saint does not act ‘against’ his will; he knows how to wish for more and higher things, beyond passing wishes and whims.

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