A Closer Walk with God
Faith and Generosity of my friend
For 23 years a very great friend named Ralph and I shared a house together. He was a more punctilious and better informed Catholic than I was. He frequently had votive masses said for friends and family who had anniversaries, and he was generous to people in difficulties, giving them money and a sympathetic ear.
His Struggles, Pain and Fear
He was also a chronic diabetic, injecting with insulin. We did many things together, attending mass, supporting the St Vincent de Paul Society and so on. He started to suffer agonizing pain in his feet and lower legs as the circulation in them began to fail and the nerves began to die. He told me he was afraid of the possibility of amputations if his feet got gangrene, for which there is no cure.
Offering his Suffering to the Lord
After some weeks, or perhaps it was a few months, I noticed that the fear had left his eyes in the times when we had to stop in the street because the pain in his feet and lower legs had grown so bad. I asked him why he was no longer afraid when I could see the pain was a permanent feature of his life and his health was steadily declining. He said it was because he was offering it up to God. This puzzled me because I knew nothing about this old devotional practice, and I couldn’t understand how it worked, but I thought: “well, if it helps him, that’s good.” A couple of times in the next 20 years we talked about this briefly. He explained that suffering can be offered to Jesus for him to use in the redemption of someone else, now, and that we can in this way walk in solidarity with Jesus as co-workers in his redemption of the world in our time, though he is now reigning with the Father in Heaven and interceding for us there.
My friend's death and my journey of reflection
Then Ralph suddenly died, and I found myself living alone for the first time. I began to review my life in radical ways. I found myself experiencing great sorrow for past sins in my life, going back to childhood, in the way I related to my parents and in other relationships. I experienced very deep remorse. This would happen perhaps a couple of times a week, when it was so severe that I would be overwhelmed by debilitating agony of heart and mind.
My Struggles and Pain
I would stand under my wall crucifix, often weeping bitterly. I would feel the pain of regret for my sins, not avoid it, ask pardon of Jesus, then ask him to take my suffering of great remorse and grief, and use it in his redeeming grace for someone else in the world who really needed grace right now. I found that I would almost feel the burden of suffering taken from me, and I could get on with my life until the next time this would happen, so that was a blessing. This pattern lasted for four and a half years, then came to an end
My Relationship with Jesus
I still suffer sometimes, of course, and offer it to Jesus. I noticed that I had developed a passionate and tender love of Jesus, for his own sufferings. He has become someone with whom I have a close personal relationship, rather than a distant almost Cosmic Public Figure. He is very real to me. I find I want very much to avoid causing him grief by the way I live. He came alive for me, in his humanity, because for the first time I regularly contemplated his sufferings, when offering my own to him for him to use. He is now the Love of my Life, and transforms my experience every day. He pours his grace into my life in great bounty. This change happened for me because I was prepared to share his sufferings in the way I have described. He gave me a heart of flesh instead of the heart of stone that had been mine. I experience his love every day.
Max Broadbent
Parishioner of St. Mary Pro-Cathedral Parish
Christchurch, New Zealand