Day 3: The Cross of Illness

The third day of the Saint Peregrine Novena turns to the central Catholic theology of the devotion: the cancer (or any serious illness) is a cross to be carried with Christ. The Catholic faithful do not approach serious illness as a meaningless evil; they approach it as a participation, in the body, in the redemptive Cross of the Lord Jesus. Today we deepen this Catholic understanding.

Today's invocation

O great Saint Peregrine, you have been called the Mighty, the Wonder-Worker... (the full opening prayer)

Today's meditation

The Catholic theology of suffering is articulated in many magisterial documents, but most centrally in Pope Saint John Paul II's apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris (1984), the principal Catholic magisterial treatment of the meaning of human suffering. The Pope wrote, drawing on the Letter to the Colossians: "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church" (Colossians 1:24). Saint Paul does not mean that the redemption of Christ is incomplete (the Catholic doctrine has always held that the merits of Christ's Passion are infinite and superabundant); he means that the Catholic faithful are invited to participate in those merits by joining their own sufferings to the Cross.¹

The Catholic patient with a serious illness, in this teaching, is given a particular vocation. The illness, if accepted with patience and offered to the Lord, becomes a means of grace not only for the patient but for the wider Body of Christ. The illness becomes redemptive suffering: small, hidden, often unrecognized by the world, but theologically real. The Catholic Church has consistently taught that the prayer and offered suffering of the sick are among the most powerful spiritual works of the entire Catholic life.

This does not mean that the Catholic patient should not seek medical treatment. The Catholic Church has always supported the medical care of the sick (the Catholic hospital system is itself one of the great Catholic apostolates of the modern era), and the Catholic patient is morally obliged to seek reasonable medical treatment. But the medical treatment is not an alternative to the spiritual offering; it is part of the same Catholic response to illness, in which medical care, prayer, the sacraments, and offered suffering work together.

Today's intention

Today, in addition to the petition for healing, offer the suffering itself to the Lord. Lord Jesus, I unite my suffering (or the suffering of the patient I am praying for) to Your Cross. Whatever You ask me to bear, I bear it with You. Through the merits of Saint Peregrine, who bore his cancer in faith, may my own suffering become a means of grace.

The traditional Catholic act of offering, useful at this point in the novena, is the Morning Offering:

O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer You my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day, for all the intentions of Your Sacred Heart, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world. I offer them for all the intentions of our bishops and of all Apostles of Prayer, and in particular for those recommended by our Holy Father this month. Amen.

Reflection

The Catholic patient with cancer is sometimes tempted, in the middle of the disease, to despair. The disease feels meaningless, the suffering feels wasted, the future seems closed. The Catholic doctrine of redemptive suffering is the answer to this temptation. The suffering is not meaningless; it is, in the Catholic understanding, the most spiritually valuable time of the patient's life, when the soul is being most directly conformed to the Cross of Christ.

The novena's third day is the appropriate moment to make this Catholic theological recovery. The cancer is not a meaningless catastrophe; it is a cross. The cross is not a sign of God's abandonment; it is the most direct sign of God's love. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). The Lord whose Cross redeemed the world invites the Catholic patient to share in His Cross, and through the sharing, to share also in His Resurrection.

Closing prayers

Conclude with the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Lord Jesus, may my cross be united to Your Cross. Saint Peregrine, pray for us.

Footnotes

1. Pope Saint John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris (apostolic letter on the Christian meaning of human suffering, 11 February 1984). Available at vatican.va. ↩