The Comfort of Knowing that God is Near

I knew a man who fought cancer to the end. He took to every type of possible healing. We had all been told it wouldn’t work. I know another who just opened himself to it all and wouldn’t even take chemo. These are different approaches to suffering. One fought it and the other accepted. I admired the both of them.

Many people go into hospital wondering about their illness, and worry that death might be close. That’s part of life. As for Jesus: it’s a fearful time, confusing, and sometimes draws us into more faith. We can transform our pain into suffering, and find some great graces in it. There is the challenge to find new life in it. Pain becomes suffering. Jesus doesn’t want the chalice of the garden, but he allows it become fully part of him so that his inner strength is big! It doesn’t mean a simplistic approach, rather it means an acceptance of darkness in life.

Jesus found in his passion that God the Father is near. This can be our way and we can find that through helping each other. We can help people at times of suffering – listening, being present. We find this in
our hearts, not in books – we find that we can grow through suffering and we realise on a bad day that peace invades the soul, or that there is a bright light in the darkness.

Excerpted from Gospel Reflections for Sundays of Year B by Donal Neary SJ