A couple years ago I was privileged to go to Lourdes with the Knights of Malta, where I learned the answer to a very important question, one which has been on my mind a lot lately: What does it mean? What does it mean to be sick?
I met an orthopedic surgeon in Lourdes, a newly minted Knight, whose first contact with our Order came from first being a malade, that is one of the hundreds of sick people the Knights bring to Lourdes every year..
A wildly successful and prosperous surgeon he seemed to have life on a string and it was very good….until they noticed the spot on his brain scan. A few weeks later the headaches would wake him up in the middle of the night. And all of a sudden he went from being the doctor with the highest success rate in complex hip replacements, to an old man so weak that he could not stand without the assistance of his wife.
He quickly found out what it meant to be sick. It meant he was not longer in charge. He was no longer driving the bus, even of his own life. Someone else was in charge. At first, it was just aggravating. Not having enough energy to do what he wanted to. But it progressed to needing help to get to the bathroom, and sometimes just standing there like an infant, peeing in his own pants. And then he started to tremble so much that more food ended up in his lap than in his mouth.
What did it mean for him to be sick? It meant he was in longer in control.
“But you know," he told me one night as we went out for a walk, “that’s the greatest gift I could have ever received. Even better than eventually getting rid of the brain tumor and returning to health. Getting so sick like that was the greatest gift of my life.
Cause the real sickness I had was thinking that I was in control. That the purpose of my life was being successful, respected and rich. And I was really successful, and have a whole wall full of awards and diplomas and three houses, four cars and a really big boat.
No the real sickness was not the one that started with the headaches. The real sickness was the one that tempted me to forget to pray to God and rely on my own resources, seeking my own pleasure and patting myself on the back for all my wonderful successes. I was a really sick man. Not in the head, but in the soul of me…way down deep where its only you and God.
I had forgotten what I learned from the Catechism as a little kid: That the whole reason God made me was to know him and love him and serve him in this world, in order that I might be happy with him in the next.
And it took that cancer…that blessed cancer…to bring me back to what really matters.
“I remember one night,” he told me, “when I was convinced the cancer was going to kill me. That night I went to bed and, maybe for he first time in my life, I asked myself the question: What’s this all about? My life. My career, My religion. My marriage, My kids.
“And it all came flooding in…the truth that its all about the cross, about that man up there on the Cross and about picking up my crosses and trying to love like him: a self-sacrificing, self-emptying love. That life is not about what we take, but what we give. And that all suffering, all sacrifice and even sickness itself is but an opportunity too love…to join our little sufferings to his perfect sacrifice and in so doing, to learn how to love.
He touched me. And he answered my question.
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Last week I had the flu. Not a bad way to start Lent, helpless, hacking and out of control. At first I loudly lamented to the heavens that I did not deserve this! I groaned about how unfair God was being and how much he had failed to realize how much important work I have to do.
But then I looked up at the Cross on the opposite wall. At the Christ nailed up there to suffer unto death for love of me. And I felt more than a bit ashamed and I began thanking him for the gift of the flu, of being reminded that suffering, all sacrifice and even sickness itself is but an opportunity to love…to join our little sufferings to his perfect sacrifice and in so doing, to learn how to love.
We all have moments like that, and I suspect they make Jesus smile. He understands. He understands how we tremble when we hear words like pandemic, mortality rate and “it’s all but certain.”
But even in the face of the novel Corana virus, which will probably get worse for a time, even in the face of fear and suffering and even death, we Christians are a funny lot. For we have something better than all the vaccines, anti-virals and hand sanitizers in the world: we have the Cross, in which death becomes life and suffering is changed to hope by him who offered the perfect sacrifice of praise for our redemption.
This week, once again, the seasonal flu got a lot worse…a statistic of which I am an example. But I got better, just as over 98% of those who will get the novel Corona virus will too.
But we can do a lot prevent the seasonal and COVID-19 influenza as well, which is why Bishop McManus has mandated education, good hygiene and even some temporary adaptations of our liturgical practices, as well. You can read more about that in the Bulletin and on our social media accounts.
But in the end, as the Bishop reminds us, there are spiritual lessons to be learned during this Lent of prayer, penance and influenza, “for sickness reminds us of how utterly dependent we are on God’s will for our lives.” For sickness is something more than a personal tragedy, but rather as an opportunity “to release love, in order to give birth to works of love towards neighbor, in order to transform the whole of human civilization into a civilization of love.” (Apostolic Letter Salvifici doloris, n. 30)
