Loving Enemies and Doctors, Praying for Persecutors and Surgeons

The title of this post is alarming, but so is Christ’s teaching in today’s Gospel.  Enemies and persecutors do not exactly rouse in one’s heart the natural affections which support what we are tempted to call love.  But even the pagan philosopher Aristotle knew that the love constituting true friendship is not ultimately based on pleasure or utility---on agreeable feelings evoked or benefits given by another---but rather by one’s own effective willing of the other’s perfective good.  Thus one is not entirely shocked when immediately after essentially proposing that we are to seek what is good for our enemies and persecutors, the Lord Jesus concludes with the lapidary admonition:  “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

           

From my first visit to a doctor, I have been amazed that we seek out (and generously compensate) these people who cause us discomfort and, so often, temporary harm.  I am not speaking here about the incompetence of malpractice but of the obvious fact that oftentimes the surgeon’s knife needs to cut in order to heal.

In my orthodontic adventures, it has been an ongoing marvel to experience the painful constriction of my teeth and the daily shredding and callousing of the epithelial tissue of my mouth by ordinary braces.  When complications emerged with my jaw, there were times in which its “therapeutic” manipulation over the course of minutes left me debilitated for days.  And all of this was before the surgery, with its cutting into my lower abdomen on the fat-finding expedition for the graft to be injected into my jaw joints through the (careful!) invasion and arthroscopic burrowing into each side of my head after I had been rendered unconscious.  I shall not speak of the catheterization and its (temporary, thank the Lord) aftereffects.  Yesterday’s blog already detailed the travails of post-operative medication side-effects and continuous splint wearing (leaving me unable to sing, speak clearly or for long, lick my lips or even an envelope, blow out a candle, etc.).  AND ALL OF THIS WAS DONE BY GOOD PEOPLE USING EXCELLENT MEDICAL PROTOCOLS ENTIRELY DIRECTED AT MY ULTIMATE GOOD!!!

I go into such detail because this whole process has allowed me to contemplate better the deceptively straight-forward and obvious fact of exactly how Christ chose to save us:  He entrusted Himself to evil men, who would use evil means, to do evil things to His Body and Spirit, for purposes that were from the beginning and in the end evil.  In precisely this surgical operation of our Divine Physician, He undergoes in His Passion and Death the revelation of the depth of the Divine Benevolence.

Thus before Christ’s teaching on love of enemies is some abstract and impossible moral exhortation, it is an autobiographical revelation of His Person.  The Lord Jesus is describing through the very trajectory of His mission the surgical protocol for the operation of His Incarnate Love for the world’s salvation.  Ordinary doctors and surgeons show us that even relatively simple therapeutic interventions require a measure of pain and patience unto the shedding of some tears and blood.  These imperfect but talented and good-willed practitioners of the healing arts can point the way to the only One whose love reaches its apogee not in mere resuscitation and restoration of the body back to “normal” but in its glorious Resurrection unto life eternal.  From this grace of our miraculous recovery by Christ, we can undertake with confidence our day to day perfective therapy of extending His love to the apparently unlovable---all for the life of the world.   

Impression of the Keys, Expression of the Faith

Today [February 22] the Church celebrates the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter.  In the Gospel, it is clear that Jesus has already made---so to speak---the “right impression” on Simon Peter.  Even before the Lord’s question, “Who do people say that I am?,” He has already shaped---in the deepest sense in-formed---this fisherman’s heart to bear the correct answer.  On this basis, Simon Peter’s “expression” of faith is infallible:  “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

I suspect that most people pay their initial visit to the orthodontist harboring the hope of one day making a better impression on the world with straighter teeth and a better smile.  In my several years of adult braces and subsequent jaw surgery, I have been amazed at how many impressions have been taken of my teeth.  X-rays, CT-scans, and MRI’s have been necessary and helpful to my doctors, but apparently there is no substitute for that basic three dimensional, physical form which replicates the teeth and bite exactly---in all of their imperfections.

I was most impressed (no pun intended!) at the Piper Clinic with how these multiple dental impressions actually were used to fashion a movable, adjustable model of my whole jaw and joint structure.  The purpose of this fabricated model was to reproduce perfectly both the present condition of my jaw and joint structure as well as to allow the creation of its ideal, post-operative shape.  The splint that I now wear in my mouth was literally formed from this modeled idealization of the initial impressions.  During my surgery, this “ideally” shaped piece of plastic was inserted into my mouth to place my jaw into the optimal position, around which my joints could be repaired and in which perfected form they continue---over the course of months---ultimately to heal.

When Simon Peter was given the “Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven,” the Lord Jesus had, of course, fashioned them in part from Israel’s present hope for the Messiah’s coming.  But over the course of time, Christ had to correct---truly re-form---the expectations of the Apostles and His other followers, con-forming them to the wise and loving divine ideal which can only be realized in the “operation” of the Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection. 

I must confess that wearing this splint continuously, day after day, feels both frustratingly restrictive and increasingly natural and normal (the resilient body really does adjust to inconvenience!).  It makes me wonder how Peter’s contemplation over time of the exact form and therapeutic exercise of those keys continued to “impress” him, even---and paradoxically---through his disappointments and temporary misunderstandings of what the Lord wanted of him. In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter’s expressions of faith are clearly the fruit of the very operation of the Holy Spirit.  The Apostle possesses the confident skill of a surgeon, whose words are able to “cut to the heart” to heal.  In the end, though, beyond merely spoken words, Peter’s life will be so conformed to Christ’s that his cruciform death will mirror that of His Master; his martyrdom will become his most eloquent sermon. 

As I think about the Cross as key and my splint as a cross, I must learn St. Peter’s infallible lesson---that any true and future expression of Christ with my lips presupposes a continual and deeper impression of the form of His Passion, Death, and Resurrection on my life.

Prescriptions, Prescriptions

In His instruction on prayer in today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus gives us three prescriptions:  Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you.  The implication, it would seem, is that prayer can take the form first of a direct, personal conversation; second, of a treasure hunt or even a search and rescue mission for what was lost; and third, of encountering a barrier through which we must pass to gain entrance.

Entering the world of modern medicine, one is almost of necessity confronted with a multitude of prescriptions---not just medical counsel but actual medications.  Some of the latter are recommended as a doctor’s best guess of what might help.  Others are only symptom suppressors, which do not heal the underlying problem. Still others have side effects worse than the issue they are taken to address.  All come at a price, and the complex interaction of several taken together by a given person typically and largely remains a mystery, sometimes with life-changing consequences.

I laugh at the prospect of even beginning to detail the cocktail of prescription medicines that circulated in my body leading up to and following surgery.  I think I had seven going at one time (in multiple doses daily)---spanning an anti-biotic, (nausea-inducing) pain medication, anti-nausea medication (!), muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatories, etc.  Each, of course, had its own intended purpose, but also its greater underlying complexity of interaction in my body.  Throw in some required vitamins and supplements---in addition to the chemistry project that is the ingestion of “nutrition shakes” like Boost or Ensure---and I had a full blown science experiment going on in my interior!  In conversation with the doctor and his staff, I had also mentioned a few side effects of the surgery, and they were ready with yet more prescriptions to make things better.  I also had to figure out which meds should be taken with which foods, to maximize good effects and mitigate unhelpful ones.  Lord, have mercy!

Thankfully, I am now down to a much more manageable regimen of two medications, two vitamins, and one supplement.  I am especially pleased that the type and dosages of the medications are the same as what I had been prescribed well before the surgery.  The plan is gradually to transition off all of the meds entirely in three months. 

But in the meantime, my “duet” of prescription ingestion and eating has virtually taken on the monastic form of prayer:  Five times a day I must conform my life to what has become a ritual of physical therapies for my jaw, followed by the “drug-and-dine” combo.  The discipline has helped me understand more viscerally the importance of the Church prescribing the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours five times a day for Priests and consecrated religious, and the more general necessity of every Christian to punctuate the day with prayer.  Rather than an interruption of ordinary life, prayer is its therapeutic restoration.

Returning to Christ’s three prescriptions, it is worth thinking about why the Lord counsels and provides such variety in prayer, addressed to the specificity of our needs (which we may not even know or be able to appropriate yet).  Is what we currently ask for in prayer more of a symptom suppressor, so that we can just feel good and go about our own life on our own terms?  Or are we prepared for an extended timetable of genuine therapy, perhaps one lasting for a Lenten Forty Days or even the whole course of our lifetime?  Christ the Divine Pharmacist is near us, both with his counsel and the substance of His very Person---Word and Sacrament---as His ultimate prescription.  Who would have guessed that our every malady would ultimately have a single, infinitely costly antidote, to be taken (and given) daily:  Jesus Christ, the medicine of immortality, dispensed to us for free.      

Signs and Wonders

In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus admonishes that “it is an evil generation that asks for a sign,” and that no sign shall be given it except the “sign of Jonah”---the prophet’s three days in the belly of the fish serving as a figure of Christ’s three days in the tomb before His Resurrection. Paradoxically, St. John’s Gospel---written entirely in light of the Resurrection---explicitly and repeatedly speaks of Jesus’ miracles as “signs.”   

Perhaps the resolution of the apparent contradiction lies in the spiritual state of how one approaches the mystery of the Lord. Clearly, many of Jesus’ interlocutors were hostile or even just opportunistic. They constantly put Him to the test, seeking to leverage His power to gain some advantage for themselves, to satisfy their non-committal curiosity, or even to provoke His failure, humiliation, and death. To these no sign will be given.

But to those who will walk the way with Christ in trusting obedience, whatever the temporary anxieties, even serious ones (The wedding couple has no more wine.; How are we going to feed these crowds?; We are perishing in this storm!; Leave me, Lord, I am a sinful man!; etc.)---to those who risk the adventure of faith, every word and deed of Jesus “signifies” the very wisdom and power of God.

When the medical condition of my jaw began seriously to deteriorate, my heart would regularly be consumed by bouts of anger, which only resolved when I recovered the presence of mind to bring all of the pain and seeming hopelessness of the situation to the Lord. As I did so, I gradually and imperceptibly began to discover signs of St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s peaceful and reassuring accompaniment---unbidden and seemingly from out of nowhere.

As a Carmelite, it was in the spiritual genetics of St. Thérèse’s religious profession never to put God to the test by miracle-chasing or whining for consolatory signs. In fact she suffered terribly at the end of her life from tuberculosis, which robbed her of any earthy comfort she might cling to. And yet she famously promised: “When I die, I will send down a shower of roses from the heavens, I will spend my heaven by doing good on earth.”

In my own case, let’s just say that the Little Flower (St. Thérèse’s popular and well-deserved nickname) has had pity on me with her promised roses on multiple occasions too numerous and embarrassing to count---from my seminary days, throughout my Priestly ministry, but especially in the months leading up to my surgery (perhaps a future blog post will give the Theresian “prequel” to the story I am going to tell . . . ). In any case, in her earthly life, St. Thérèse prayed with special passion for Priests---devoting even her sufferings for them---because she knew the infinite greatness of the gifts entrusted to them for the salvation of souls and how exposed to temptations of mediocrity, inadequacy, and discouragement the clergy are.

Thanks in no small part to the Lord’s gift of this hidden friendship with le petite Thérèse, I became very peaceful from last September onward about the prospect of TMJ surgery. As I mentioned, she would make her presence felt in the most simultaneously simple and startling ways; the gestures were seamlessly incontrivable, utterly gracious, and always beautiful. But now to the story at hand:

I had about a week of pre-operative appointments in Florida before January 24, the date of surgery. During this time I jogged and walked all along the waterfront and seaside parks of St. Petersburg every day. Given the rather confined geography of this tourist paradise, I became quite familiar with the regular features and even the small, day-to-day changes in what had become my temporary natural habitat.

After the five hour jaw operation during my 24-hour stint at the Edward White Hospital, Dr. Piper released me with the instructions that even with my head swollen and gait a little unsteady from all of the medications, I was to resume some ambulatory routine right away. So, on the afternoon of January 25---the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul---I went walking. My caregiver, Larry Garatoni, accompanied me. I remember that the splint in my mouth was still very awkward and difficult to negotiate. At that time, I had only one little blowhole in it to speak through (I was later given an extra two at the Piper Clinic!), so I was practically mute. Dr. Piper encouraged me to get rid of the portable whiteboard I had been using in the hospital after surgery to express myself.

So as I am making with Larry my first post-surgical amble back into the real world in forced silence, as we were walking in the park, we passed a little sign propped up in the ground that read: “SPEAKING ROSES: We Print on Fresh Roses.” It apparently was an ad for a floral service that writes personalized messages on roses. Below the words on the sign was a picture of three examples, each reading in turn: “Happy Anniversary,” “I Love You,” and “We Love You.”

I think I was too drugged up to be shocked, but I was nonetheless surprised. As we walked on farther, I saw another one of the same signs, and then a third, and a fourth. By the time Larry and I returned from our stroll, an identical “SPEAKING ROSES” sign had been placed in front of our hotel! The last of these signs that I saw was actually outside of the new location of the Piper Clinic. I am utterly certain that none of those signs was in any of those locations before I went in for my surgery. I am also certain that the Lord delights when heaven and earth speak to one another, even through roses. And within this mystery, the Little Flower lives for her gifts to bloom again!

So what is the meaning of the florist’s sign, you ask? Beyond clever commercial exchange, it is a reminder that speaking takes many forms---a great consolation for one whose mouth is rubber-banded shut. And, romantic that I am, I like to think that St. Paul sent me his “Happy Anniversary,” St. Thérèse spoke her “I Love You,” and the rest of the Communion of Saints chipped in to communicate the prayers of all those at Queen of Peace and beyond praying for me that “We Love You.”

It is a less widely known fact that the Little Flower’s full given name in religious life was (and remains) St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. As my face heals and I am reduced to relearning some of the basic functions of life like a child (eating and drinking and speaking), I think more deeply of the miraculous sign of the Child of Bethlehem, the Eternal Word who for love of us allowed His Holy Face to suffer violence and silence so that He might---with surgical precision---save us by His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. This is the sign of Jonah we have all been given to share: Seeking and contemplating what the Holy Face of Jesus signifies and allowing our faith to have the boundlessness of a child’s love (of the Child’s love), we too can---like our little sister of Lisieux---fully and finally stake our lives on being raised up in the One who rose.

The Form of our Daily Bread

            When Jesus shares with His disciples what has come to be known as the “Lord’s prayer,” He instructs them to ask for their “daily bread.”  In the whole context of Christ’s saving plan, this earnest begging for the sustenance of ordinary life is also meant to prepare in us an openness to receive the extraordinary gift of the Eucharistic Lord Himself:  “I am the Bread come down from Heaven.”  It is no coincidence that our praying of the Our Father at Holy Mass so closely precedes the distribution of the Lord’s gift of the Sacred Host in Holy Communion.

            Throughout my preoperative days in Florida, I would celebrate Holy Mass each day in private.  I had brought along from our Parish all of the essentials for the celebration:  simple vestments, candles, a pyx and small chalice, a copy of Magnificat containing all of the daily prayers and readings, a cross made from some of the wood of the Crucifix hanging in our Sanctuary, etc.  And, obviously, I also included a small number of unconsecrated hosts, enough to receive one per day.

            On the night before I was to have surgery, I was faced with the fact that I would have to fast before the operation early the next day.  So---perhaps for the first time in my Priestly life---I consecrated just a fragment of one small host and a few drops of wine.  The piece of bread was just large enough to be delicately broken, but no larger.  In its beautiful smallness, the immensity of Christ appeared all the greater.

            I did not consider at the time that the reception of a mere fragment of the Sacred Host and a tiny sip of the Precious Blood would become the normative way I would have to receive the elements of the Lord’s Sacrifice during these first months wearing my mouth splint.  In each of the days following surgery, I would prepare for the celebration of the Eucharist by breaking off a little portion of the host (the size of host ordinarily distributed each day to the faithful), so that it could fit between my cheek and splint to dissolve there.  The few drops of wine would have to pass through the three holes in my mouth splint created for sipping and breathing.

            As the days of my convalescence went by, I remember marveling that each day I would go to the same small host to break off another tiny fragment.  I did not have need of using another one during the whole two weeks before I returned to Queen of Peace.  One small host---the identical one taken in hand yesterday and also to be used tomorrow---was always sufficient for today, as my daily bread.  I came to see in it the continuity of the Lord’s gifts over time:  always a little portion, lest we be unable to receive and digest too much.

            I am becoming accustomed to the smallness and softness of what food and drink I am allowed to ingest in the time out of my splint.  In terms of basic calorie delivery, all is good; I am back to my normal weight and so truly lack for nothing.  Yet, paradoxically, somehow I feel that the immense preciousness of Christ’s smallness has increased in me.  What can a mother possibly think in pondering the fact of a few millimeters of life weighing virtually nothing carried in the depths of her womb?

            On the final evening in Florida before returning to Queen of Peace, I celebrated Holy Mass in the evening.  Afterward, as I was packing everything up to go home, I was puzzled with what to do with the dozen or so extra unconsecrated hosts that I had brought along but not needed; they had gotten roughed up a bit in their weeks of travel.  Because the home where I was staying was located on a lovely bay connected to the Gulf of Mexico, I decided in the dark of night to unite the “loaves” with the fishes, so to speak. 

            As I quietly went out on the pier and dropped each round piece of bread into the dark bay, I noticed a single light on the next door neighbor’s nearby pier shining down onto the water.  Directly beneath that light---perhaps twenty feet from where I stood---was poised a single pelican, patiently waiting in all probability for its daily fish. While the perfect white circles floated on the surface of the water, the current moved them gently toward the bird, which rather than consume them eventually glided away into the night. 

            I couldn’t help but think at that moment of the One Whom the pelican represents in Catholic iconography.  Because the breast of this strange bird is often bloodied by the marine life it catches in the process of trying to feed its young, the pelican is often depicted on Altars (for example, those at St. Anthony de Padua Church in South Bend or St. Monica Parish in Mishawaka) as a symbol of Christ Himself.  For the pelican, it appears as if the gift of daily sustenance and the gift of its very substance are one and the same.  For Jesus Christ in the daily offering of the Holy Eucharist---miracle of miracles---it is truly so.    

   

What We Have in Common

            In His Last Judgment parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus shockingly claims:  “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.”  He says these words to the righteous, who fail to see the connection.  Then Jesus repeats these statements about Himself to the unrighteous, and they too are incredulous about the relation.  Our Divine Savior curiously enters the world of restriction---of His diet, of His being known, of His being protected, of His being healthy, and of His being free to move or even escape---regardless of our acknowledgement of it.  Why?

            Through my jaw I have been introduced over the past months to a whole new world of restriction.  As the initial symptoms of pain increased, my range of possible options to feel better seemed to decrease.  Even the focused counsel of my orthodontist to be seen by a particular specialist in Florida had something frightening about it:  Really?  Only one person---this person who is far away, someone who has developed a novel technique I’ve never heard of---is the best (only?) one who can help me?

            As it turned out, this person---Dr. Mark Piper---could help me.  In visiting the Piper Clinic I came to realize just what I had in common with the hidden multitudes who suffer with TMJ problems.  For months all sorts of people had come to me with anecdotes about their jaw afflictions, and the numbers have only increased since I had the surgery.  I never knew how common this was.  To put it another way, I never knew what I shared with so many friends and strangers. 

            There are obviously all sorts of “communities” of suffering, so to speak:  those who battle cancer, for example, or those who live with diabetes or a genetic abnormality.  One of the triumphs of modern medicine (even if a partial one) is to connect those who have similar challenges, so that they can find the simple human consolation of having something which would otherwise be excruciatingly isolating in common. 

            The outer limit of what we have in common is, of course and paradoxically, death.  As a Priest, I have witnessed the profound connections that can develop among those who have lost a child or a spouse.  It is often like the visceral solidarity of veterans of war, who have lived through the unspeakable, experiencing it from slightly different points but on the same battlefield.

            On the first day I was in St. Petersburg to prepare for surgery, I was able to meet up with Fr. Ben Muhlenkamp of our Diocese.  He was spending some days of vacation with a parishioner of his whom he had first met through the tragedy of this man losing his wife in a car accident.  I was happy to meet my friend and also make the acquaintance of Stan. 

            Over the course of the day of enjoying each other’s company and talking about his wife, Stan kept referring to a book that had helped him immensely.  He kept dozens of copies of Prayer Book for Widows by Kay M. Cozad in his trunk, because wherever he went he discovered people who might benefit from the prayers of one who had “been through” their suffering and learned to recognize the Lord at the center of it all.  He gave me a copy to share with my parishioners.

            Why does Jesus enter our world of countless abysmal restrictions except to grant us the grace of recognizing through all of them that we have Him in common; He is the living center of the most unexpected modes of holy communion, even and especially where we would feel most powerless and alone.  Through His divine omnipotence and benevolence, Christ uses His human nature---stretched to the limit and beyond the limit---to reveal the length and breadth, height and depth, of our membership in His Mystical Body.    How infinitely strange and utterly unique, to have God in common.

Being Led

            In the Gospel of this First Sunday of Lent, we hear that Jesus “was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days.”  Being led implies an act of surrender.  Moreover, the particular place to which Christ is led is not a humanly hospitable one.  But, very mysteriously in light of the duration of “forty” days, we are led to believe that the Lord is tracing and recapitulating a path traveled by many others over the span of many years, most notably the forty years of the Israelites being tested in the desert wilderness in their movement from slavery to freedom.

            I have already written about the stark truth that any chronic illness poses:  one is inescapably led into a place one would---given the choice---rather not go.  My jaw problem led me into a whole new world of pain and anatomy and specialized medicine.  It was for me bewildering, uncharted territory.

            From the outset, I had to face the complexity and impersonal character of our contemporary health care system, which is in myriad ways not only inhospitable (pardon the pun) but even pathological.  One of the first discoveries I made in this regard is that the clinic of my specialist requires cash up front.  The clinic office then fills out the necessary paperwork for the patient to submit to the insurance provider, placing the burden on the patient to do the necessary haggling and battling to be reimbursed.  The business aspects of medical care have become so onerous that many of the best doctors are just opting out of the system altogether.

            But once “inside” the specialist’s care (thanks to Bishop Rhoades’ continued support of my health), I then was amazed at being led by a whole series of very well defined protocols---for examination, diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.  I had an overwhelming sense that my path had been traveled by many others before me, and this was a great consolation.

            Even seeing the succession of people in the Piper Clinic’s waiting room as I have come to it over these past months has given me much to ponder.  Some patients are making their initial visit and are clearly as dazed and confused as I had been.  Others were farther along but still at the beginning of their path, still others farther along than me.  I even recall the haunting pleas of the woman in the treatment room next to mine (she was so loud I could not help but hear her through the walls) who in tears told Dr. Piper that she had been to twenty-three other doctors without successful treatment of her problem!

            It is staggering to contemplate how much individual human suffering and medical trial and error created the path, so to speak, of the protocols for my healing.  TMJ surgery is notoriously tricky and does not, statistically speaking, have an abundance of happy outcomes.  The generic medical websites one can consult on the internet almost unanimously recommend against having it, even when other less drastic measures have been tried.  I had many people counsel me personally not to go down the path of surgery for this problem (including the cab driver who drove me to my hotel from the airport the night before my initial evaluation!). 

            It was Dr. Piper himself who recounted to me that he discovered the fat graft technique of TMJ surgery---filling the joints not with artificial implants made of Teflon or steel, for example, but with the body’s own fat---when he had to treat patients who had suffered so many failures with other techniques that their bodies couldn’t handle any more implants.  Dr. Piper admitted to being led to realize that “you can’t do better than the body’s own Designer.”

            Immediately following my eventual surgery, I had to be led up and down the halls of the hospital by my Dad and Larry Garatoni, my caregiver.  In the case of my father, it was a particularly poignant mystery for this seventy year old man and his forty-three year old son to find such simple delight in the halting initial steps growing ever stronger and going ever farther up and down the recovery unit corridor every half hour.  May the day not come for many years when I shall have to return the favor. . . .

            On my final visit to the Piper Clinic, one week after surgery, I was entirely pleased with my healing progress.  As I entered the waiting room, I encountered a woman who was---the next day---going to have the very same surgery that I had had.  She was so visibly reassured and genuinely moved to have me answer her questions, describe my experience, and give her pointers on what to expect and what to do and not do.  At the end of our conversation, I assured her that I would pray for her (she saw by my clothing that I was a Priest), especially as she was undergoing surgery tomorrow.  She told me that she believed me.  In expressing her deep gratitude and relief, she then spontaneously made the strangest remark: “I hope that God didn’t make you go through all of this just for me.”

            What, I thought at the moment, if He had?  I was so grateful (and remain so) that I do in fact believe that one life given for another is, in Christ, infinitely worth the cost.  Of course, such are not our calculations to make.  When Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the desert, He goes to connect all human lives across all chronology and geography.  As the Divine Physician and humble patient, Christ enters our suffering by trial and without error.  And in doing so He fills what is dis-jointed and dis-integrated and dis-eased with the very substance of His own Person.  The Designer does indeed know what He is doing.  And when He and we are finally led into the mystery of the Cross together---in the holy communion of transformative charity that extends everlasting healing throughout His Mystical Body---no matter where in the desert we find ourselves, His voice leads on:  Today you will be with me in Paradise.

Call a Doctor, Call this Doctor

            In today’s Gospel, when Jesus is asked a moral question---“Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”---He curiously gives a medical response:        “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do.  I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”  Christ speaks and acts like a doctor, walking the earth as a physician makes rounds in a hospital.  He looks at the sinner medicinally, seeing through the spiritual disease to the health that needs restoration---even by radical means like surgery.

            I have always found medical exams to be odd, because I instinctively also interpret them morally.  As the dentist’s pick moves over each tooth, I do not want to get one (or more!) “wrong” on this test.  Given how quantified medical testing has become, the temptation increases to strive for the “perfect score,” be it blood pressure or cholesterol levels, etc.

            When my dentist initially told me several years ago that I should consider getting adult braces, I felt a sense of failure:  Yes, my dog ate my retainer when I got my braces off as a teenager.  But deep down I knew that I was glad Skippy attacked that plastic annoyance; I could be rid of it.  But I was now being called to account to accept responsibility for my teeth slowly shifting out of place over the course of all those years.

            Truth be told, when I went to see my new orthodontist as an adult, my concerns were more cosmetic than medical:  How long is it going to take for these teeth to get straightened?  I really didn’t have any deep interest in the interior health of my jaw bone and bite symmetry and root structure.  Still less did I have any understanding whatsoever of TMJ problems; I could barely guess from forgotten conversations that the initials stood for temporomandibular joint.  And I had no symptoms, so why should I care?

            In the course of orthodontic therapy, there was an intervention that catalyzed a cascade of problems, eventually leading my orthodontist to admit that I needed to see a specialist---and not just any specialist but Dr. Mark Piper of the Piper Clinic in Florida.  He was the best for what I needed.  And so I went this past September for my evaluation by him.

            But this time, I wanted the doctor to find what was wrong with me!  I would have been at my wit’s end if I had somehow “passed” his exam with a declaration of health according to his tests.  In terms of my jaw and its debilitatingly painful symptoms---to my great relief (to paraphrase the psalmist)---Dr. Piper “probed me and he knew me.”  I was examined literally from early in the morning to late into the afternoon. 

            Toward the end of the visit, I remember being so happy and reassured as the doctor himself talked me step by step for a whole hour and a half through the images from my CT-scans and MRI.  He gave every indication that he had seen this before and had helped other people in similar situations---what a strange relief to know that I was on some spectrum of “normal’ serious TMJ pathology!  The greatest consolation, however, was that Dr. Piper knew the particularities of my own situation and actually gave a chronology of this problem as it had been developing over the course of my whole life. 

            He noted as a caveat that the only way he would be able to know more would actually be to operate on the joints of my jaw, and yet he gave me various options short of surgery for how I might wish to proceed.  Obviously I did eventually opt for the surgery, and I was so struck after the operation when Dr. Piper said that he found “decades of damage” to my cartilage and bone and more scar tissue than he had expected.  Such was the trajectory from my initial exam to eventual healing.

            What would it mean to read every word and gesture of Christ in the whole Gospel as if the Lord Jesus is---quite simply and to the marrow---a doctor, our doctor, the Divine Physician singularly and infallibly qualified to examine us, diagnose us, operate on us, and restore us?  Lent is now the appointed time to allow Him to fill this prescription in us.  This is urgent care indeed, and there is no waiting room.

           

Fasting or Eating Really Fast---Part I

            Food and life go together, and changing the former is sure to change the latter, especially when the change in food involves restrictions.  Isaiah clearly points out that fasting does not automatically lead to more virtuous behavior or a more charitable life---sometimes quite the contrary!  In today’s Gospel, the reforming followers of John the Baptist bring their questions about fasting to Jesus, who appears to have introduced a new freedom into the discipline of eating and drinking.

            Of all of the questions people have brought to me both before and after my TMJ surgery, most were worried inquiries about food:  Can you eat? How can you eat?  What can you eat?  Does it all have to be liquefied and pass through a straw?  Will you lose weight?  If I put a plastic splint in my mouth for several months, can I lose weight too?  And so on . . .

            Leading up to the surgery, I deliberately avoided thinking about food questions, because I thought that the practical answers would only emerge from the day to day negotiations of my post-surgical life.

            My “last supper” was a wonderful one.  My parents had arrived the day before, and we met up with Judy and Larry Garatoni (who would be taking care of me after the surgery).  Together we dined at a Columbian restaurant on the great pier of St. Petersburg, in a building that looked like an upside down Mayan temple dropped from outer space.  An odd place for odd circumstances; everything did feel all turned upside down.

            My final meal before surgery and its ensuing restrictions was oddly small and simple.  Given what I was facing, I didn’t really have the appetite for anything greater.  I was more interested, rather, in talking as much as I could, even to the point of my mouth becoming sore (the joints had deteriorated by this time to the point at which extended speaking had become painful). 

            I thought of the connection between feeding on food and feasting on meaning.  The stories we shared at table were so obviously the main course, and what we ordered on the menu was utterly subordinate to it. 

            And then began the little eight or nine hour “fast” before surgery.  My last food and drink that evening was actually the Eucharist, celebrated by me alone (except for the angels and saints) in my hotel room.  This sacrificial banquet was so infinitely small and great simultaneously.

            On the day of the surgery, in the pre-operative ward, having already been hooked up to the IV solutions which would keep me going for nutrition and hydration, I was eventually joined by my parents and the Garatoni’s.  I had deliberately saved a particular extended conversation for this morning:  The pressing and desperate necessity of providing “spiritual food”---which is to say communicated meaning about the most important things---to patients in hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices. 

            In my priestly experience, it is precisely in these places where people enter a desert wasteland utterly devoid of food for prayer and even substantive reflection on their lives.  Their material needs are often provided for, and all of the physical details are minutely “managed,” but people in these situations are literally starved for good ruminative understanding of how their changed (even endangered lives) are held and prospectively healed in the “big picture” of Christ.

            For several days after surgery I endured a wretched succession of protein drinks (Boost, Ensure, etc.), all combined with nauseating (and anti-nausea!) medications that reduced eating and drinking to its most “primitively technological.”  My remaining eating adventures will be continued in a future blog post (perhaps every Lenten Friday will be a meditation on food). 

            But I now understand better why Jesus could walk around Galilee with his followers as a Bridegroom announcing a Wedding Banquet.  The crowds listened to Him as they willingly missed a meal or two (What did the Apostles say:  Let the crowds go, it is late, so that they can buy food for themselves . . .).  They perhaps didn’t quite fully realize that Christ was feeding them---the comestible miracles like the multiplication of loaves and fishes were actually the serving of dessert, so to speak. 

            I also suspect that the Apostles learned that their fasting was governed less by the dietary codes of the Pharisees and more by the evangelical mission into which the Lord Jesus was initiating them.  After all, it is virtually impossible to eat on one’s own timetable when surrounded by crowds with pressing needs.  The Apostles at times had to feel that they themselves were the ones being consumed by the hungry, thirsty multitudes. 

            That nutrition and hydration can be fitted to the demands of a medical intervention sheds abundant light on how our eating and drinking as Christians must be governed by the mission the Lord gives us.  When it comes to our alternating fasting and feasting, Christ Himself is both the measure and the meal.

           

  

Saving One’s Life

            When Moses speaks to the Israelites of a stark choice between “life and prosperity, death and doom,” he implicitly evokes the quality of time.  Prosperity is, of course, lived across the extension of many days and even years.  Doom, on the other hand, indicates the absence of a future, indeed the annihilation of the goods of time.

            When the news first hit me in the orthodontist’s chair in 2010 that I was faced with a serious jaw problem that was inescapable and “chronic,” it felt like the ending of my whole life as I had lived it up to that moment.  Temporary illnesses come and go, even though in the moment they can feel like they’ll last forever.  But the TMJ diagnosis was different:  My easy, unreflective experience of life and health was over.

            Through the experience of trying to manage various ameliorative therapies to ease the slipped cartilage discs of my jaw, I literally felt the futility of the various systems of my body trying to “save” themselves.  The muscle spasms and sympathetic nerve flare-ups, the pressure and ringing in my ears and the sharp stabbing deep in my jawbone all conspired to indicate a curiously destructive internal competition rather than any restorative cooperation, and the net effect was a pervasive feeling of being painfully doomed.

            For Jesus in the Gospel to announce that the Son of Man must suffer and die is---even at the human level---extraordinary.  Like a doctor trained to see such things clearly, Christ announces that this condition is not a mere possibility but a full-blown inevitability. He---and those He loves---will lose their lives as they know them, and do so literally excruciatingly unto the grave.

            When my orthodontist, after giving me the bad news, in the next breath mentioned that there is a clinic in Florida in which a doctor he knows---Dr. Mark Piper---treats conditions like mine, restoring patients like me to health, I was still in shock.  The offer seemed unreal and utterly abstract; I was unprepared to hear it, let alone accept it.  I also remember the orthodontist promising that his staff would give me a folder from the Piper Clinic so I could contact them.  As I got up in an unbelieving daze to leave, the receptionist apologized that she actually didn’t have a copy of the promised folder; she could offer me the Piper Clinic’s phone number and I could look them up on the internet. 

            Though I was deeply confused and shaken and angry, I took the initial steps they suggested.  Knowing what I know now---having finally encountered Dr. Piper who has over the past months diagnosed and operated on me, restoring me to health again---I understand more of exactly what depth of faith was required of the Apostles in being told they would travel the three-fold promise of suffering, death, and resurrection.  To accept the Gospel as lived in the Church is to stake one’s life on promises imperfectly understood (and all too often imperfectly delivered by professed believers awkwardly pointing the way forward).  And yet---miracle of miracles---these very promises ultimately come from and lead to the Divine Physician, Who is Restorative Perfection itself.   

            For Christ our Life to face death---and for Him Who bestows eternal prosperity to taste temporal doom---teaches us how good and beyond ordinary time this Lenten season is.  Our lives as we think we know them must end.  The conspiracies and competitions within us must give way to the Lord’s startling announcement.  This summons may strike us with the seemingly indirect and impersonal character of being handed a phone number or the oddness of an internet search on which one’s whole future happiness hinges.   But in the end (and from the beginning), it is our Savior’s very faith in us---as in the first Apostles---that allows us to stake everything on this strange new life relentlessly pursued by Christ and by all called to bear His saving name.  

  

Set Apart

            The word “holy” literally means “set apart.”  When the prophet Joel calls a fast and wants to change the whole rhythm of ordinary life for his people, he announces that the Lord’s time “sets apart” for what needs to change and ultimately be healed and transformed. 

            I’ve discovered that an ailment like a chronic TMJ problem naturally sets one apart, interrupting ordinary life and even making unhealth in general (and pain in particular) a strangely unlivable-but-inescapable new norm, a diseased form of “ordinary time.” 

            I was so relieved in September 2012 to receive a diagnosis of my condition and even happier to hear that my problem could be operated on and healed.  Having an appointment for surgery scheduled for January 24, 2013 was deeply good news for me, notwithstanding the disheartening timetables of waiting in pain for it, worrying about the costs of it, wondering what it would practically entail, and embracing a long, multi-phased recovery.

            When I arrived in Florida for the week of pre-operative appointments, I had an overwhelming sense of living in a different order of time than those around me.  I had a surgical mission to undergo, and I longed for it to come, even despite fleeting feelings of fear of the unknown and the knowledge that there was no turning back; my life would be forever changed.

            In the days both before and after surgery, I remember just marveling at the crowds enjoying themselves in the shops and restaurants and shoreline paths of St. Petersburg, so many strangers simply going about their seemingly carefree, ordinary lives in a time and a condition so utterly “set apart” from my own.

            In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of the “inner room” we are to go to---that spiritual place “in secret” where our life in all of its timing and sufferings, actions and passions, can simply be “set apart” by God for God.  What a mystery that our heavenly Father not only sees us but that this divine seeing actually creates new time---the fullness of time.  From this fullness we receive a freedom from the often crushing expectations of the world’s various demands of what passes for, and is so often ignored as, “ordinary time.”

            Lent came months and months earlier for me this year, in a form not of my choosing---but, I do believe, of God’s choosing.  My TMJ problem and surgery has interrupted my whole life, even as it has deepened it and given it new dimensionality.  Although it was not of my choosing, this gift has been and continues to be for my embracing.  The Lenten practices of prayer and fasting and almsgiving can each have aspects of suffering, little or great.  Each medicinally targets a different part of the body---the heart and the stomach and the hands.

            That God interrupts our time to set us apart is a miracle.  That our suffering has a secret place---or, rather, the very Person of the suffering and Risen Christ---to go to is a miracle.  The Lord’s Forty Days are the divinely appointed time for our surgery and recovery by the One Who has undergone our pain from within to make us holy.  Through it all, in the midst of the uncomprehending world going about its business, Lent comes unbidden:  It is truly time for us to be set apart for this miracle.