When illness strikes, our first reaction is very often to ask: Why me? What did I do to God to deserve this? If God is truly good, how can He allow this? Faced with the drama of suffering, it is not unusual to fall into a void of meaninglessness, to feel guilty, to experience anger and revolt. What should I do? To whom should I turn?
Why me?
Perhaps we should rather ask: why NOT me? Why should we get through life without suffering? Why should we be exempt from suffering?
The Christian faith is the only one that believes in a God who suffered, in the person of Jesus Christ, on the cross. Jesus suffered for our sins and transformed suffering into new life through His Resurrection.
Another question we should ask ourselves when we suffer could be: what will I do with my suffering? Will I allow it to stir up resentment, guilt, anger and a sense of powerlessness in me? Or will I instead find a way, through the power of the God who suffers, to transform my suffering into love? Could I not allow it to lead me to become more compassionate, more forgiving, more loving, and to accept the love and care that others want to give me?
Has God abandoned me?
One of the most human reactions to a prolonged illness, despite prayers for healing that seem to go unanswered, can be a profound sense of God’s absence. We wonder why our prayers seem to fall on deaf ears. We do not understand why God remains silent while we are suffering.
While suffering on the cross, Jesus Himself expressed such a feeling by repeating the words of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In the suffering of His Passion, Jesus cries out to His Father. There, in Jesus, we find a reflection of our own powerlessness in the face of suffering, and of our need for relief that goes unanswered.
It is part of the mystery of God that we go through periods of pain in which there seems to be no consolation, when we seek comfort and receive none. Saint John of the Cross, a 16th-century mystic, speaks of this experience as the “dark night of the soul”; he describes it as a time when all the sweetness attached to our sense of God’s presence and love disappears from our life for a while.
Although God neither causes nor desires our suffering, He permits it. In those moments when we feel alone and troubled by our illness, we can seek to discover God’s presence in the kindness of others, in the skill and care of health professionals, and in moments of grace when we feel a strength and a love that go beyond our own strength. God is ALWAYS near us, even when we do not see Him. It is perhaps in these moments, more than any others, that we live our faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1).
Jesus, the supreme physician
The Church has always cared for the sick, following Jesus Christ, the supreme physician of bodies and souls. In the New Testament we find many accounts of healings performed by the Lord: healings of paralytics, lepers, the blind, a woman suffering from hemorrhages, etc. Jesus allowed Himself to be touched by every form of illness and infirmity. He even brought a few people back from the dead, including the son of a poor widow and His great friend Lazarus.
What is more, Jesus Himself accepted our human and mortal condition. He was born in a manger among the poor and the animals, turned away by innkeepers. He had to flee with His parents and live as a stranger in a neighbouring country. He endured humiliation, rejection and threats. He knew fatigue, long walks under the sun, cold nights. He felt loneliness and the incomprehension of His own. He saw His friends sleep, leaving Him alone in the anguish of His agony. He suffered the Passion and carried the cross for our sins. He finally died in atrocious physical, psychological and spiritual suffering, wondering, He too, why God His Father had abandoned Him.
The Church, in her Catechism, tells us that illness and suffering are grave trials in which human beings experience their powerlessness, their limitations and their finitude. On the one hand, illness can lead to anguish, withdrawal into oneself and sometimes to despair and revolt against God. But it can also be a source of growth in maturity and in discerning what is essential in life. Very often, illness leads to a search for God and a return to Him.
Christ invited His Church to follow Him and to heal the sick. The Lord’s disciples healed the sick by anointing them with oil (Mark 6:12-13). The Church takes up the rite described in the Letter of James (5:14-15) in the sacrament of the sick, one of the seven sacraments, called the Anointing of the Sick, which is specially intended to comfort those who are tried by illness.
Spiritual accompaniment
A time of illness or a trial of any kind can be experienced as a hard blow, cause physical and moral suffering, and bring its share of losses and grief. One may experience a loss of enjoyment of life, a temporary or permanent loss of autonomy, a loss of control over one’s schedule and sometimes even over personal decisions. One may be deprived of a part of oneself, a loss felt on the physiological, emotional, behavioural and cognitive levels, a loss of mental or psychological well-being and sometimes of one or more parts of one’s body, etc. All these losses can in turn bring about others, each experienced as a form of grief: the loss of a job, of a social or family role, of financial independence, of certain relationships, or even of one’s living environment.
How can we accept and come to terms with these losses, temporary or permanent, which sometimes occur gradually? It is certainly essential to trust the care team and follow the treatment plan proposed by the health system; but it is just as important to take time to consider and name the losses, to grieve them or to rise above them. Our immediate circle may be very helpful and support us greatly through their love and the countless services they must provide for a shorter or longer time. It is also possible that our loved ones are overwhelmed by events as well and feel powerless. To get through this trial well, find meaning in all this suffering and do the necessary grieving, we often need help and understanding, a reassuring presence that our family and we ourselves can trust.
On the spiritual level, we generally wish to find our bearings again, regain balance in life and reconnect with what gives meaning to our existence. Spiritual needs are usually defined as those concerning a person’s spirit; they are linked to the search for meaning and belonging, in relation to fundamental values or to a transcendent being. Here is a list of spiritual needs we might then experience (an incomplete list, of course, gathering the elements most often encountered by volunteers who make visits):
- to be perceived, considered, treated and recognized as a person, that is, a human being, and not as an illness, a diagnosis or a case;
- to experience or regain a sense of belonging to a social group (family, religion, organization) and the ability to stay connected;
- to strengthen or reaffirm the fundamental values on which our life has been built: honesty, truth, justice, goodness, generosity, love;
- to find meaning in our life again within the reality we are living. The meaning of life is found in our reality, every day of our life, not only when things are going well;
- for some, to believe in the continuity of life and open oneself inwardly to a transcendent dimension (something beyond oneself, greater than oneself, a reality that surpasses us). For us Christians, the need to rekindle our bond with Jesus Christ;
- to receive religious support: beliefs, prayers, meditations, Church, rites, sacraments, pastors or companions to live through these realities;
- to regain a deep peace by reconciling with ourselves, with our life and with others.
There are community organizations and even associations of people living with the same illness (in many cases). For spiritual accompaniment, we can ask for help from the spiritual care providers where we are hospitalized. When we are at home or in a new environment, we can call on the Service of spiritual accompaniment for sick and elderly persons at home
Other resources:
World Day of the Sick
For her part, the Church, through Pope John Paul II, established a World Day of the Sick, celebrated on February 11, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. The shrine of Lourdes is continually visited by sick people who bear witness to numerous healings, several of which have been recognized as miraculous by the Church. Many pilgrims, even without regaining the health they had hoped for, have returned comforted and filled with renewed confidence, a revitalized faith or a new sense of mission in the Church. By uniting themselves to the Passion and death of Christ, through their acceptance of illness and the offering of their sufferings and prayers, they “contribute to the good of the People of God” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1499).
Illness, above all grave illness, always places human existence in crisis and brings with it questions that dig deep. Our first response may at times be one of rebellion: Why has this happened to me? We can feel desperate, thinking that all is lost, that things no longer have meaning…In these situations, faith in God is on the one hand tested, yet at the same time can reveal all of its positive resources. Not because faith makes illness, pain, or the questions which they raise, disappear, but because it offers a key by which we can discover the deepest meaning of what we are experiencing; a key that helps us to see how illness can be the way to draw nearer to Jesus who walks at our side, weighed down by the Cross. And this key is given to us by Mary, our Mother, who has known this way at first hand.
Message of Pope Francis for the 24th World Day of the Sick
Prayers
Would you like to submit a special prayer intention? Do it here !
All intentions will be passed on to the cloistered community of the Recluse Missionaries of Montreal, who commit to carrying them in their contemplative prayer every day!
The Friends of Mercy (SASMAD)
This new diocesan project brings together people who agree to pray for the intentions of the Service of spiritual accompaniment for sick and elderly persons at home (SASMAD). The Friends of Mercy pray for the sick, especially those visited by SASMAD volunteers, for the volunteers and their families, for the service’s partners, for the parishes involved in ministry to the sick and for the foundation “Les amis de Jeanne Mance.”
SASMAD is in great need of prayer, as it continues to expand and wishes to remain attentive to the signs of the times, continuing to go out to the peripheries at the call of Pope Francis and living its mission within the missionary shift of the Churches of Quebec. Religious communities are invited to commit as Friends of Mercy, as are our former volunteers who are ill or no longer active, the people we serve and all people of good will who wish to join in SASMAD’s mission and in the Church’s movement in health care ministry.
If you would like to become a member of the Friends of Mercy (SASMAD), to pray and offer your own sufferings for the sick and for SASMAD’s intentions, contact SASMAD at 514 272-4441 to register and get involved!
Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
John 6:68