By Sebastian Condon
WHILE undertaking our studies for the priesthood, we often joked among ourselves that 33 was the age of male theological perfection – for obvious, Jesus-related reasons.
I had my 33rd birthday in September this year and the following day had an appointment with an oncologist, who told me I needed to undergo four rounds of chemotherapy.
I had mulled over imparting to him the theological irony of this development, but my girlfriend – who is a doctor – intimated in no uncertain terms that sharing this detail would be unlikely to endear me to the specialists.
I had undergone surgery the month previous for what the doctors had presumed was a small benign tumour around my thymus gland, in my mediastinum.
Following the excision, it was discovered that the tumour was neither small nor benign – in fact, it was so large they had to keep widening the incision and I now sport a rather dashing gash on the right side of my chest.
I choose to believe that this distinctive feature adds to my physical resemblance to Christ; complete absence of Semitic ancestry notwithstanding.
Sitting in his consulting room, the oncologist seemed surprised that I did not immediately sign on the dotted line, then and there, and agree to chemotherapy.
He did not seem as concerned as I was about the horrific, debilitating side-effects, which include infertility and – potentially – a secondary cancer.
After all, my scans were clear: there was no detectable cancer within my body once the surgery had concluded.
While it could be microscopically, undetectably, present, I was not sure that the benefits outweighed the risks of treatment.
The female oncology fellow stated that the adjuvant chemotherapy was mainly for ‘peace of mind’.
I stopped her there.
‘Death is not what I’m afraid of,’ I said.
‘You should be,’ was my girlfriend’s response, sitting next to me. She works in the ICU at a large hospital in Sydney and sees plenty of it.
My response was rather emphatic: ‘I spent many years in religious life, daily contemplating my death; that is not what concerns me. What concerns me is becoming an infertile, crippled thing in the corner, as a result of this treatment.’
That’s because there is an obvious distinction between discovering that you happen to be infertile, either as a couple or as an individual, at some point in the future – which can perhaps be accepted as one of the many circumstances of life over which we have limited control – and having infertility, or destroyed lungs/heart/eyes imposed upon you as a result of elected medical ‘treatment’.
I was toying with the idea that I might have been given the opportunity for an early mark.
After all, my favourite line from St Paul – oft cited in articles that I have written over the years – is, ‘All things work to the good for those who love God.’ (Romans 8:28)
But, in all honesty, I was struggling to find the good in all this, or even work up a decent amount of love for God.
I was, in a phrase that I have learnt since dating Inez, rather ‘emotionally dysregulated’.
2022 had been going spectacularly well until this moment. I had met this amazing girl in January and we had been happily dating ever since; I had been promoted multiple times at work; and I had even bought an apartment in March.
For someone who had left poverty-vowed religious life less than 12 months before, my trajectory was looking pretty rosy.
Yet, as Bertie Wooster is want to remind us, it’s always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.
As unexpected and, frankly, unwanted, as this whole experience has been, it has served as a reminder to daily renew my appreciation of the infused Christian virtue of hope.
After all, as Benedict XVI once wrote, ‘Those who despair do not pray anymore because they do not hope.’
St Thomas Aquinas even says that prayer is the interpretation of hope. (ST II II, q. 17, a. 4)
I have to keep reminding myself that our prayers throughout the course of our Christian lives increasingly become an expression of our hope that Christ will come again to liberate us finally from the painful realities of life that daily confront us – O come, O come, Emmanuel.
‘In this hope we are saved.’ (Romans 8:24)
Over the next few months in the lead–up to Christmas, around which time my treatment should be winding down, I will try to do my best to emulate the lesson articulated by the anchorite Julian of Norwich.
After a lifetime of contemplation on the ways and means of God, she thought it could all be summarised with this phrase – ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’
