The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [36]
But in general, we do not turn to God in suffering because we suddenly become irrational. Rather, God is able to reach us because our defenses are lowered. The barriers that we erected to keep out God—whether from pride or fear or lack of interest—are set aside, whether intentionally or unintentionally. We are not less rational. We are more open.
Remember my story of being on that operating table and realizing—with blinding clarity—my desire to be a priest? That is one reflection of this same phenomenon. The desire was always there, as was God’s call within that desire. But with my defenses lowered, it was much easier to see it.
When he was in his late fifties, my father lost a good job. After a long while, he found a new position but one that he found unsatisfying. As many people know, it is difficult to find work and start a new career later in life, at an age when many people are looking forward to retirement. It was hard for him and for my mother.
His job required an hour-long commute from our home in suburban Philadelphia. One dark night, in the parking lot of his office, far from home, my father had a dizzy spell, lost his balance, and fell. He ended up in the hospital. Tests showed what everyone feared: cancer. Cancer of the lungs had spread to his brain, which had caused the fall. (My father had been a heavy smoker for much of his life.)
During the next nine months, my father’s physical condition went steadily downhill, despite chemotherapy. Soon he was bedridden and began to rely on my mother to care for all of his physical needs at home. The last month of his life, when my mother could no longer help him out of bed, he said, “I think I should go to the hospital.” So we moved my father to a subacute care facility.
But while his physical condition declined, his spiritual condition seemed to improve.
Near the end of his life, my father started to talk more frequently about God. This was a complete surprise. While he had been raised Catholic and graduated from Catholic grammar school and high school, and while he attended Mass during important feast days, he had, as long as I had known him, never been overtly religious.
But as he neared death, he asked my Jesuit friends to pray for him, he treasured holy cards that people sent him, he mused about which family members he longed to see in heaven, he asked what I thought God would be like, and he made some suggestions about his funeral Mass. My dad also became more gentle, more forgiving, and more emotional.
I found these changes both consoling and confusing.
One of the last people to visit him was my friend Janice, a Catholic sister, who had been one of my professors during my theology studies. After his death, I remarked that my dad seemed to have become more open to God. In response, she said something that I had never heard but seemed to have already known.
“Yes,” she said. “Dying is about becoming more human.”
Her insight was true in at least two ways. First, becoming more human for my father meant recognizing his inborn connection to God. All of us are connected to God, though we may ignore it, or deny it, or reject it during our lives. But with my father’s defenses completely lowered, God was able to meet him in new ways. Whatever barriers that had kept God at a distance no longer existed.
This, not desperation, is why there are so many profound spiritual experiences near death. The person is better able to allow God to break through.
But there is a second way that Sister Janice’s insight made sense. My father was becoming more human because he was becoming more loving. Drawing closer to God transforms us, since the more time we spend with someone we love, the more we become like the object of our love. Paradoxically,