The Toronto Weekly

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The Weekly Word

I just got a call from a very close friend. With a heavy heart, he told me that he had just been diagnosed with stage for colon cancer. It was heartbreaking for me because I love him. Amazingly though, he then began to tell me how, in the midst of his fear and grief, this cancer was changing his life. He told me, for example, that in the past his wife would try to express her love to him by offering to rub his feet, rub his back, but he would never accept. He had to be in control, he had to be the provider. He now realized how closed he had been and that he was being offered love all the time from his family and friends, but he hadn’t been able to see it. 

He told me that cancer had broken open his heart and allowed him to feel. And this was what he wanted to spend the rest of his life doing, loving others and accepting the love others as much as he could. Stage four colon cancer had revealed to my friend the deepest purpose of life- we are hear for love. And as Neitzche said “He who has a why to live, can bear almost any how”.

And yet, my friend also told me that he had been misdiagnosed. In the past year, he had seen many healers, acupuncturists, and doctors. They all had diagnosed various things but not cancer. And even when he had suggested that he get tested for cancer, they would play it down and encourage him in other directions. 

If he wanted to, my friend would be totally justified in his blame of the various healers and doctors for his illness especially because it was now at stage four. If he wanted to, he would be totally justified to feel himself a victim and bitter. But he didn’t. He chose to take full responsibility for his karmic destiny. 

Dear friends, at the core of each and every human heart is the capacity to become truly human. Just like my friend, we are all called to transform through our sufferings to find the will to love, we are all called to overcome our blame with the will to take responsibility for our own destiny. Every time a human heart finds the light of love in the darkness of pain, every time the human spirit says to its life ‘yes, this is my task’ no matter how unjustified, our true humanity grows. For as John the Baptist says,  “The being of love must increase, my egotism must decrease.”