Generously Helping Others
This month the Pope asks us ‘that our experience of suffering may help us better understand the pain of many people who are alone, sick or aged, and stir us to generously help them.’
Murt Curry S.J.
A year and a half ago, I began treatment for colon cancer. This involved an operation, radiotherapy and six months chemotherapy. While this was a very difficult time for me, a major regret I experienced was that I had never understood what it might be like for others.
A very close friend of mine, a few years earlier, had suffered from breast cancer and had similar treatment. But I had never appreciated the depth of the pain, the isolation, and the psychological and spiritual disturbance that she went through. It hurts me now to think of the simplistic and almost casual way I had interpreted what she told me. It was a time when I seriously missed giving love and support to a friend in need.
We know intellectually that life-threatening diseases raise fundamental questions about our life-vision and life-expectancy, but until it happens to ourselves the questions are mostly only theoretical. The pain and discomfort, day after day, wears away at our patience and our resolve. We question God’s goodness. We ask, sometimes with anger, if this is our reward for all our attempts at living a faithful life. We wonder if this is God’s punishment for our sinfulness or weakness of effort. The loss of power and mobility puts our whole future into doubt.
Emotionally we fear loss – loss of family, of friendships, of life itself. Sometimes we fear, but we don’t quite know what it is that we fear. We can be overcome by sobbing and tears, without being able to say why. We fear the ending and the departure into the unknown. And all the time, our faith is telling us not to be afraid, that somehow God is looking after us, and that He has promised us that after death we will live with Him in happiness for ever. But still the fear persists!
A deeper realisation dawns on us also. That is that we are no longer in control of our own life. We have known this all along, but now it has a special edge to it. Whether the cures will work or not, or how long before the disease comes back, is outside our control. The damage done by the radiation and the chemotherapy may never totally be repaired. The meaning of my life – of all that I have done and of all my hopes for the future – has to be re-evaluated and become an integral part of a new and future outlook.
And during all of this, the aloneness is pervasive. No one else can see the future as I can, no one else can accept what has happened except myself, no one else can deal with the questions that keep coming, no one else can face the death that may be the final act in this turbulent drama. Sometimes, this aloneness turns into loneliness, and this can be a very desolate place.
Is this what it’s like for the many people who are alone, sick or aged, as mentioned in the Pope’s intention? I don’t really know, but I strongly suspect many of these feelings are experienced by them. Certainly there will be unease and pain in various amounts, depending on the situation involved.
But my experience is not all dark or despairing. I have had enormous support in all kinds of ways from my family and friends. When family members travelled long distances to be with me, to hear what I was trying to cope with, to assure me that they loved and cared for me, these were the things that mattered most and that kept me hoping through the bad periods. When fellow Jesuits and friends came to visit and to enquire – with a supporting and caring attitude, not a condescending or paternalistic one – I realised how much they loved me and how they saw my life in a hugely positive and supportive way. They came to give me hope and support. They didn’t come to tell me how to cope or what my attitude or faith should be. They came basically just to be with me in a very difficult time.
So all this experience, of illness and caring, of aloneness and of support, of a dark and doubtful future giving way to one of hope and acceptance, this is what is stirring me to try to give those in similar circumstances all the help and support that I can. I want to allow them to talk about their experience, to weep or not without being embarrassed, to let me see their pain and reduced powers, to share their fears and doubts, to alleviate their aloneness, and thus somehow to give them hope. I can do this by a letter or a phone call, an email or a text message. But most of all, I can do it by visiting, while respecting their dignity and their willingness to be with me and to communicate with me in whatever way they feel able. I need to be able to tell people how much I love them, when they need it most.
Jesus didn’t sympathise with people about their illnesses. He accepted them as the reality, without condescension; and he gave many of them what they needed most – a cure, peace and hope.
We all have personal experience of suffering, whether it be physical, or psychological, or spiritual. We hope that our experience will stir us to reach out to others. This is the core of the Pope’s intention for this month. Let us pray that it become more operative in our lives!