praying for valerie

We are distressed and many times even shocked when we hear people we know are struck by cancer.  We feel pity and at the same time we feel admiration for people we know who are struggling daily fighting the disease with whatever strength they have left.  We feel happy and glad and even thankful when the person we know responds well to treatment, goes into remission and even gets completely cured.  We feel despair when the person we thought was healed of cancer goes once more in recurrence.  We feel sad and at the same time relieved when after a long bout with the pain not just of the disease but even with its treatment, the suffering is ended by death and rest.

It is like that isn’t it, the human experience of people who happen to know and perhaps love a person afflicted with cancer.  Just this afternoon, as I was preparing this homily I have heard of yet again another victim of cancer, this time a recurrence.

Today we gather to pray as Valerie comes to her rest after her long bout with this disease.  She did not suffer alone.  She did not carry it alone.  As much as she wanted to keep the pain to herself, to shield the people she love, love will never allow that.  In love nothing is kept only to oneself.  Those who loved her suffered with her, her husband suffered with her, her friends were also pained with her.  And this is the reason why they came tonight.

In this gathering we come together to pray, to offer this Eucharist.  When we pray we do not just gather.  We invite God to gather with us.  We invite Jesus to give meaning to what Valerie underwent.  We invite Jesus to give meaning to her husband’s loss and to an only child’s grief.  We invite Jesus to share in our grief and sadness.

Our first reading speaks of keeping faith while we dwell in the body.  We cannot understand everything, we cannot explain everything.  We can only walk by faith, not by sight but by faith.  We cannot see what lies ahead, we cannot find explanations that will silence and drive away our confusions and doubts.  Valerie must have experienced that too with her family when she went through her sickness.  In death she was taken away from her body so that she can be at home with God.  She no longer walks in faith, but we still do, that is why we need to celebrate this Eucharist, we need to pray for we still walk by faith.  As Valerie enters her rest in God, may we also find our rest and security in the assurance that God is with us always in our joys and pains.