Two days ago, one of my sons graduated from a Catholic boys’ high school. We gathered with great joy in the Cathedral, celebrated Holy Mass, and in the evening, the graduation ceremony was held in the auditorium, where each student received his diploma.
It was an unusually cold winter day, even though it was late spring. When we arrived at the Cathedral, a torrential, freezing rain poured down on all the students crossing the street from the high school to the sanctuary, and on all the relatives who ran soaking wet from the parking lot. It was the same as I walked the few blocks from the high school to the auditorium that night. When I sat down, I hated the feeling of my wet shirt sticking to my chest and my wet jacket dampening the back of my seat, but the excitement of the event helped me forget the discomfort.
I was feeling pretty healthy, but then around 10pm when I got home I suddenly developed a terrible sore throat, burning nose, body aches and an overwhelming feeling of weakness. It was as if I had been hit by some kind of illness all of a sudden. My blue suit got wet twice that day so I thought maybe I had caught a bad cold.
That night, I felt worse and worse. I had similar symptoms when I had coronavirus two years ago. Not wanting to take any chances, I took a home test. It only took 15 seconds for me to find out I had the mutated strain of COVID.
So yesterday I was in bed all day with a high fever, waking up at times with a terrible headache.
The sick person’s never-ending night
It always does when I get sick, but that night was awful. No part of my body hurt. It felt like a hammer was hitting my head rhythmically and nonstop. My throat was sore and I felt like I was choking. At times I couldn’t breathe. Every time I coughed I felt nauseous. I also had a fever and the worst part was that I couldn’t sleep at night because I had been in bed all day. There was no way I could escape to sleep to avoid the discomfort.
Suddenly, I saw the clock. 11:20 PM. I thought that a long and endless night had just begun. I looked at the clock again and it was 11:41 PM. Only 11 minutes had passed, but it felt like an eternity! Then the clock showed 1:10 AM. I just waited for dawn, as if all the discomfort would disappear once the sun came out and this terrible night was over.
I was reminded of the words of the repentant psalmist: “My soul seeks the Lord ” (Psalm 130:6) I thought of the sentinel who kept watch all night until he grew weary and waited for the dawn to bring him rest and peace. In the same way, my soul also waited for the dawn to come, hoping that it would make me feel better.
Using Illness as a Moment for Prayer
This brief reflection on the psalm has inspired me to pray. Surely prayer can help me relax in the midst of such suffering. I believe that prayer is one of my favorite forms of prayer. Heart Prayer,alias Jesus Prayer“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God…have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God…have mercy on me, a sinner.” This is called P.Heart rays This prayer is characterized by a rhythm that is ultimately synchronized with the heartbeat. The first part is said on the inhale, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God…” The second part is said on the exhale, “…have mercy on me, a sinner.” It is a beautiful and ancient form of prayer created by the Desert Fathers.
But to pray, I need to be able to breathe, and I couldn’t breathe because of my stuffy nose, and I couldn’t think clearly because of my headache. So, even though I wanted to pray, it was impossible.
The ability to sacrifice illness and pain for a greater good
This was not a complaint for me, because there were other ways to turn this night of pain and discomfort into a night of spirituality and encounter with the Lord: when Catholics are baptized, they are anointed with chrism in the same ceremony as priests (and prophets and kings), so that all that we do in life, all that we suffer, can be offered as a sacrifice to God.
So I decided to unite my pain with that of Christ on the Cross and offer all that nighttime discomfort as a sacrifice to my mother, who suffered from an illness that was difficult to treat and caused unavoidable physical pain. I offered all my pain to help my mother recover and asked God to help me not to despair during those endless nights.
Finally, dawn broke. The clock struck 5:30 a.m., and sunlight was already streaming through the window. The exhaustion from enduring the pain all night overcame me, and I fell into a deep sleep.
It is important to know how to transform every moment of our life into a personal encounter with the Lord. Recalling his words in the Bible and understanding the different ways of prayer that are part of our spirituality will help us to achieve this. Thus, our life will take on a different meaning.
When we get sick, we have the choice to complain, despair, and curse the pain. The other choice is to make sense of our suffering by transforming it into prayer and offerings to God.
