A New Resource

I found a great new book for use in prayer and meditation. It's called Manual for Spriritual Warfare by Paul Thigpen. It's available at Amazon and Tan Books.
Despite the rather scary title it's really very helpful. Approaching the spiritual life as a battle and providing the tools for combat, the book can help when struggling in prayer or with life's stresses. Some of the topics covered include:

• Scriptures for the Battle
• Help from the saints
• Prayers, Devotions, and Hymns for the Battle

Here's a quote from the book  on suffering from St. Louis de Montfort:

God Watches His Soldiers With Satisfaction

If you're to have the right approach to suffering, you must form the devout habit of thinking about the eye of God. What I mean is this: God is like a great King, who from the height of a tower observes with satisfaction his soldier in the midst of the battle, praising his courage.
What is it on earth that attracts God's attention? Is it kings and emperors on their thrones? No; he often looks at them with nothing but contempt. Is his attention focused on the brilliant victories of a nation's armies? On precious stones? On any such things that are great in the sight of men? No: "What is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of the Lord"(see Luke 15:16)

What then does God look upon with pleasure and delight? .....It's about the one who's fighting for him against riches, against the world, against hell, even against himself; the one who's cheerfully carrying his cross.  

 

 

A Vocation of Love

There are days when I struggle with feeling useless. My kids are grown and since my diagnosis I've had to face the fact that I'm not launching any grand careers. Although I do volunteer work and try to be a support for others, part of me feels like I missed the boat. I battled this issue when I was a stay-at-home mom with small children and it was easily conquered whenever a flu bug hit home or my kids needed help with an art project.

But now as an empty-nester it's harder to get my usefulness fix. Add to that the frequent image of the cancer survivor as some sort of superhero who's better than ever!! They run marathons, start businesses, and create non-profits. I started getting sucked into that mentality when I hit the first year mark. As part of my celebration my husband and I hiked 5 miles on a local state park trail. After that I decided to join a local hiking group and train to participate in 10-14 mile hikes and maybe even join their group that was preparing to hike the 2,000 mile Appalachian Trail!!

I don't think so...

I ended up seriously injuring my knee and quitting the group. I came to realize that more is not always better. But I felt like I had to keep up. I ended up revamping my workout program and I'm working out less but more often. My body is grateful.

Well, I recently found an antidote to my need to be important. It's a book entitled, The Way of Trust and Love  by Jacques Philippe. It provides a wonderful explanation of St. Therese of Lisieux's little way. As it turns out she also was afflicted with a dissatisfaction in her state in life:

Therese explains that although she knew her vocation....and was very happy in it,nevertheless she had a certain sense of dissatisfaction. So ardent were her desires to love our Lord and serve the Church that she would have liked to have all the vocations there are---just one wasn't enough for her!! She would like to be a priest to celebrate Mass,...a preacher...a missionary..and even a Papal Zouave to defend the Pope! (p.57)

So what was her answer?

My Annual Ritual

Every year around this time I re-read one of my favorite books: He Leadeth Me by Walter Ciszek.  It's the story of a priest who spent twenty three years as a  prisoner in Soviet prisons and labor camps during the cold war. He was actually trained by the Vatican to serve in "Russian missions" but wound up in Poland during World War II. When the Red Army took over Poland Fr. Ciszek  wound up entering the Soviet Union. Disguised as a worker he accompanied Polish refugees with plans to serve as their pastor. Unfortunately, his true identity was discovered and he was arrested for being a "Vatican Spy."  First subjected to five years of Solitary confinement, he was then sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in Siberia. Once released he lived as a Soviet citizen under constant surveillance until he was freed during a US/Soviet prisoner exchange. During this entire ordeal of starvation, brutal work conditions, and endless harassment (for being a priest) he still managed to maintain his faith in God and secretly provide many people the sacraments. He would often have to say mass in secret in the woods with a guard on watch. Prison officials would place him on the toughest details with the smallest rations simply because he was a priest. But through it all he never lost hope and was a beacon of light to all around him  This guy was a Saint.

So what does this have to do with surviving a cancer diagnosis?

Actually a lot. One of the most powerful messages of this book involves a simple truth: sanctity can be found by simply accepting everything that happens as the will of God. All that happens is ordained for our redemption and we need to accept it.

His will for us was the twenty-four hours of each day: the people, the places, the circumstances he set before us in that time. Those were the things God knew were important to him and to us at that moment, and those were the things upon which he wanted us to act, not out of any abstract principle or out of any subjective desire to "to do the will of God." No, these things, the twenty-four hours of this day, were his will; we had to learn to recognize his will in the reality of the situation and and to act accordingly. We had to learn to look at our lives, at everything that crossed our path each day, with the eyes of God; learning to see his estimate of things, places, and above all people, recognizing that he had a goal and a purpose in bringing us into contact with these things and these people, and striving always to do that will--his will--every hour of every day in the situations he had placed us. (Pg. 38)

There are days that I can't see the point of my life. I'll be dealing with some new medical issue or some really obnoxious person and all I can think is : are you kidding me?  But that's when I need to follow Father Ciszek's advice. It's the Little Flower's 'little way'" on steroids. All suffering has meaning and can lead us closer to God.

What I like about Father's book is the brutal, gritty environment in which he applied this philosophy. He found God in the interrogation room, work brigade, and miserable living conditions. Here's a short video about him:

                                                             

My New Job

I think the hardest part of suffering is the meaningless associated with it. When I'm suffering with medical issues I often feel like my life has no purpose and I can't see the point in it. But I think the main reason for this is due to a lack of purpose or goal. It's as if I'm on a journey without a destination.
But contrast that with suffering for some concrete purpose and I'm gung-ho. While in college I was willing to submit to all sorts of miseries because I had an end result: my diploma. The birth of my second child was ten times easier to endure because I was fully aware of the finish line: a beautiful baby. But illness is more difficult since there's a lack of any tangible or immediate pay-off. In addition, many diseases progressively get worse so one feels like a failure in not being "cured."

 So, what is a person to do?

I've discovered a wonderful book which helped me reorient my thinking. It's entitled, The Apostolate of Suffering by Robert. B. Eiten, S.J. It's basic premise is two-fold:

1. Suffering has meaning beyond the usual reasons; it can be an actual participation in Christ's redemption and be used to build up the Church and it's members.

Here's an explanation:

"Suffering and the cross are hard for all of us. We pine under their weight. We are constantly forced to seek new and striking motives for bearing them. At one time perhaps the motive was self-preservation or "keeping spiritually fit" made a strong appeal to us. Again we might have turned our eyes to the past and seen many personal sins. Right order demanded that these sins be expiated;hence the motive of expiation for our personal sins made us seek the cross of suffering.....

No doubt other motives such as fear of hell, the acquisition of self-control, the thought of eternal reward, at one time or another exerted an appeal on us. Yet sooner or later most likely all of these motives lost much of their appeal...It is characteristic of Americans to want to do things. We like external activity, the apostolate of the active life, because it enables us to see things accomplished. This spirit often hampers our prayer-life and dulls our appreciation of suffering.

 We see prayer and suffering, not as passive things, but as tremendous instruments for carrying out the great work of Redemption". (page x)

How does this happen? By our connection via the Body of Christ:

"In his touching discourse at the Last Supper, Christ told us that he is the vine and we are the branches. Now we all know how closely a branch and the stock of a vine are united. They are one, each of them working together and helping the other....Thus we can conclude that we are in some wonderful way one with Christ, and united with him. We might be called the extension or prolongation of Christ as the branch is the extension of a tree trunk. So too, because of the union or solidarity between Christ and us, we can make our own His merits, His blood, and all that goes with them. 

But Christ has gone father than this mere sharing of his merits with us, for He has not only wished to have us share in or be associated with the fruits of His superabundant reparation offered to His Father, but He wished to have us as his active associates, co-helpers, and in some secondary way, as co-redeemers....All this is possible through the gift of sanctifying grace whereby we share in God's Divine Nature and inner Life.(p. 8)

And therefore, just as we can say when we possess sanctifying grace that we possess a Godlike or divine nature, so too we can say of our actions and sufferings: "these are Christlike or divinelike actions, these are Christlike or Godlike sufferings and ones endowed consequently with Godlike efficacy and power." (p. 9)

So, the next time I have to endure an unpleasant procedure or wait for lab results,  I can help save the world!!  Because all the suffering in my life can be connected to Christ's suffering. I don't have to feel like a hamster on a wheel going nowhere. It all has purpose. 

Most importantly, my participatory suffering can even be considered my personal vocation....