Salvation Through Suffering

Earlier in my priesthood, I pastorally ministered to a man who had cared for his adult son during his son’s battle with cancer. As I came to know the man, he shared with me the account of his son’s life and holy death. When the son was first diagnosed with cancer, no one realized how serious it was. As the medical team did more tests, it became clear that the cancer was terminal, and that the young man’s physical life was nearing its end. In response to this news, the father told me, he retired early, merged savings and investments, and did everything he could do in order to accompany his son through his illness.

Before his son’s cancer, the father said, he would have described his family as “a normal Catholic family.” By that expression he meant they periodically went to Sunday Mass—but they didn’t take the Faith too seriously. They didn’t view life through a lens of God’s providence. They practiced no personal dedication to Jesus Christ. They didn’t make life decisions based on the truths of the Faith. There was little family prayer and no commitment to the local parish, and no real service to others outside of the family. Sadly, the father was right: his family was pretty “normal” among Catholics in Western culture today.

As the father sacrificed his career and accepted a simpler life, he rolled up his sleeves and cared for his son: giving shots, tracking medicines, adjusting meals, cleaning up vomit, changing adult diapers, cooperating with doctors and hospice workers, caressing his scared son and giving him the constancy and consolation of a father’s love.

And as the cancer worsened, something else happened: the father’s dormant faith woke up. He realized that an aspect of his son’s care had been missing and that something spiritual needed to be done. Not knowing where to turn, he picked up the Bible and started reading the Gospel books to his son. As he read them, he was at once encouraged and shocked, comforted and unsettled—and inspired to greater faith. He hadn’t realized who Jesus was and what he was calling us to do.

This made the father somewhat angry, in fact, because he felt that no one had preached this gospel to him or challenged him or his family to live by it.

As the father was telling me his experience, he told me that while he was reading the Gospels he felt an overwhelming new conviction, brought on by a few simple questions that were whispered into his soul: What if Jesus meant what he said? What if salvation is something we must really work on? What’s going to happen to my son after he dies?

Everything was different from that point. The father arranged for confession for the entire family and for the anointing of the sick for his son. He asked for Holy Communion to be brought to his son on a regular basis. He started praying with his son and family, and he admitted to me how hard it was to do at first, wondering, “Why was it hard to pray with my family? They’re the most important people to me in my entire life.” Slowly, he evicted the secularism that had invaded his home. He spoke about the Lord Jesus with his family, the hospice workers, and even a few delivery guys. He looked for ways to show patience and kindness, and started donating to the poor. He began asking other people to pray for his son and promising to pray for their own intentions. He finished the Gospels and went on to read the rest of the New Testament to his son.

During this blessed time, the most difficult hurdle for the father was the conversation he needed to have with his son about redemptive suffering and death. No one in the family wanted to talk about his looming death, and certainly not with him. But finally, the father accepted this cross, sat down, and started talking with his son about dying and death. Together they cried holy tears.

There was a pause, and the son patted his father’s head, buried in the blankets as he crouched alongside the bed, and told him, “Thanks, Dad . . . I’m glad we can talk about this.”

But the conversation wasn’t over. The father began to witness to his son. He repented for having been such a bad Christian in the son’s youth and shared his zealous faith with him. The son laughed, and told him, “Yeah, I figured something happened. It’s gotten a lot different around here.” The father laughed too, and then told his son, “But, son, you have some really hard work to do. The Lord has given you a cross. I wish it were my cross, but he’s given this one to you. And you need to embrace it and start carrying it. This is how you’re called to follow the Lord right now. This is how you’re going to get to heaven and help a lot of other people get there too.”

Again they wept. “I’m not crying because you’re going away and won’t be here anymore,” the father insisted. “I’m crying because I’ll miss your smile, your hugs, and having you around. I’m crying because I won’t be able to see you grow up or have children. I’m crying because I’ll miss you. But I’m not crying because you’ll be away or lost forever. I know you’ll be with me, and I know we can be together, with your mom and sisters in eternal life, but we have to do our part. We need to accept the cross. Son, you need to do this work because I can’t imagine heaven without you. This is very serious.”

The father told me that his son was moved to repentance. He asked to see the priest again and began to offer up his pain and sufferings for his family, other people who were dying, the poor and hungry, those without a family, and for other intentions. The son allowed his death bed to become his Calvary, and a great share in redemption was accomplished through it.

When the hour came for the son’s death, the father told me, it was a holy death, even marked with the famed smell of roses.

Now, as the man finished his story, he told me, “I miss my son every day. Each day there’s something that reminds me and my wife of him. I thought I wouldn’t see his smile or feel his hug, but I see his smile in a dozen places, and I feel his hugs in a dozen others. I know he’s with me. I especially feel him at the Mass. I call it our ‘altar reunion.’ I can’t wait to see him face-to-face again. But I need to keep carrying my cross now and let the Lord make me ready.”

This encounter has been one of the most life-changing and spiritually renewing experiences of my priesthood. I would think about it often, especially as I and my family ministered to my own father as he was dying and preparing for eternity.

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