How trial transforms us:

Care for the sick and dying drives home what it means to bear Jesus in our bodies

Father Linh Nguyen














Q: The Church says that suffering has grace in it, but what does that actually look like in practice?

A: John has terminal cancer and has been on treatment for many years, through many painful sicknesses with radiation and chemotherapy. He recently decided to end all treatments and accept the inevitability of death. I came as his pastor that day to bring comfort and do the things that we were ordained to do, namely anointing and Communion.

Yes, we know and understand through learning, the suffering and Christ’s death and resurrection, but when we come to face it in real circumstances, it is completely ever new. During the visit, God’s grace was truly profound. While it is difficult to comfort someone who is dying, the serene hope in Christ’s resurrection had permeated and transcended in a profound way.

After deciding to stop treatment, John began to feel lost and fearful. An overwhelming burden and anxiousness have dominated his mind and heart. The thought of no longer seeing his wife, children and friends again was extremely saddening. Every instinct given in faith is overrun with grief. The belief in Christ is halted, to stand still, as though faith is being paralyzed in the darkness of doubts. Years of living the faith seem to go to zero in a second. John’s world was crushed and paralyzed like his own body had been by the cancer that aggressively invaded it.

I came to John as the minister of Jesus Christ facing this devastating circumstance. It is easy to administer to a person who is already unconscious and bedridden, but completely different with someone who is very alert and clear. I thought of the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s book, “The Gift of Peace,” when he faced his own terminal cancer and ended treatment. He embraced his priesthood in Jesus Christ in ministry for the sick until he died. I entered conversation with John with an openness to grace, mindful of the experience of Cardinal Bernardin’s faith witness in his own life and death at the end of his life.

Together, we identified John’s fear and doubt with the very experience of Jesus in Gethsemane. We walked together through the Triduum celebration of Christ’s Passion, from crucifixion to the tomb, and finally to the glory of Resurrection. There was a comfort to John knowing that he is truly sharing in the death of Christ for the first time. It was no longer the thought of Christ as he died for me, but a permeation of sharing, in a unique way, the redemptive power of Christ’s suffering and death. As St. Paul said, we are “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” (2 Cor 4:10)

In some way, this moved John beyond the fear and pain; it awakened in him the recognition in faith which Pope St. John Paul II captured beautifully in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (“The Gospel of Life”): “This natural aversion to death and this incipient hope of immortality are illumined and brought to fulfillment by Christian faith, which both promises and offers a share in the victory of the Risen Christ: It is the victory of the One who, by his redemptive death, has set man free from death, ‘the wages of sin’ (Rom 6:23), and has given him the Spirit, the pledge of resurrection and of life.” (cf. Rom 8:11)

With this new light of hope, John and I explored how to be a minister for others in the family during this strange time of anticipating the death itself; how to bring comfort to others to help them be aware of the certainty of future immortality and hope in the promised resurrection. I remember telling John one of my favorite lines in the movie “The Shawshank Redemption”: “Get busy living or get busy dying.” John expressed that he wants to write to family and friends to express his thanks for their love and friendship.

Afterward, we celebrated Anointing of the Sick, and John received Communion. The joy and comfort of God’s grace did completely overwhelm both of us. We truly appreciated each other. I myself was truly blessed to be able to witness such a profound experience of God’s true presence. Everything in priestly ministry that normally was routine had completely transcended with so much hope and love, despite that the awareness of pain and fear will continue to be with us. For that short visit, the promise of Christ’s love in his resurrection is forever present.

We embraced each other. We will continue to journey together with prayers, and continue to live until the Lord calls John home.

Father Linh Nguyen is pastor of Ss. Francis and John Catholic Church in Georgetown, KY.