Striving to be angels of hope

This week marked the 33rd World Day of Prayer for the Sick. 

I was not aware of this particular Commemoration – but I’m grateful for our pastor mentioning it at Mass this Sunday as it led me to Pope Francis’ message for the occasion, titled “Hope does not disappoint (Rom 5:5) but strengthens us in times of trial.” Pope Francis connects the theme of this Jubilee year with the real challenge of holding on to hope in the midst of sickness: 

“These are comforting words, but they can also prove perplexing, especially for those who are suffering. How can we be strong, for example, when our bodies are prey to severe, debilitating illnesses that require costly treatment that we may not be able to afford? How can we show strength when, in addition to our own sufferings, we see those of our loved ones who support us yet feel powerless to help us? In these situations, we sense our need for a strength greater than our own.” 

The Pope goes on in this short meditation to offer pastoral care that speaks to all of us. 

For each of us knows what it is to be sick. Some of us battle chronic illnesses; others of us have short-lived ailments that serve to remind us that our health is not to be taken for granted. Others of us have had to watch on – feeling powerless – as loved ones suffer illnesses from which they do not recover. 

Sickness (as with all suffering) can turn us inward, and isolate us from those around us. And sickness can also be an experience of suffering that helps us to embrace our fragile creatureliness, that turns us towards others for help and support. 

This is the transformation Pope Francis articulates – that through our trials we can come to discover we are not alone, we are even conduits of grace: 

“We realize that we are “angels” of hope and messengers of God for one another, all of us together: whether patients, physicians, nurses, family members, friends, priests, men and women religious, no matter where we are, whether in the family or in clinics, nursing homes, hospitals or medical centres.”

This week is a time to hold up those in our midst who are suffering with sickness; a reminder that our mission as discerning deacons is always at the service of the works of mercy. 

We pray for parents caring for children who are battling illnesses of the mind and the body
For those in our network facing cancer treatments and uncertain prognosis
For those carrying medical debt and the added strain of financial stress
For everyone who is in the thick of it right now – wondering how to make it through 

Let us together seek the intercession of Our Lady, Health of the Sick, and strive to be angels of hope, carrying the presence of love to one another. 

I think of the many chaplains in our midst who attend to the sick each day as they make their rounds in hospitals. Or the doctors and nurses and medical professionals – like Lydia Tinajero-Deck, who helped care for my own baby Oscar after he burned his little fingers in a bowl of boiling hot pasta when we were in Rome last fall for the Synod.

Lydia was an angel for our family – and she continues to be a witness in the wider world, caring for pediatric patients in a clinic in Oakland and bravely, humbling, sharing the dream of her heart to be received as a deacon in our Church. 

In a recent story for Religion News Service, Lydia joins in a chorus of discerning deacons witnessing. Their lives span generations and wide ranging ministries from campuses, to prisons, to parishes. Their fidelity to the Church and to their sense of call by the living God is a sign of what might yet be in our Church. 

We are so grateful for these public testimonies:  

• Gladys Whitehouse, whose unwavering and prayerful support of Discerning Deacons feels like an anchor in a storm. 
• Kathryn Getek Soltis who juggles leadership responsibilities, family commitments, and a steadfast presence to our brothers and sisters in prison. 
• Kelly Adamson, who grew engagement in synodality and who consistently seeks to find creative ways to connect with young adults who often feel unwelcome or estranged from the Church. 
• Calista Robledo, a young woman whose love of our Church’s liturgical tradition grounds her hunger to deepen a commitment to the Church’s mission in the world. 

These women help to ground the ongoing study and discernment of women’s inclusion in the diaconate in the living realities of pastoral need and the persistent tug of the Holy Spirit.  

Bearing these sacred testimonies  – along with 24 other testimonies – a small delegation of Discerning Deacons will head to Rome next week to participate in the Jubilee of Deacons, preceded by the International Diaconate Study Conference. The team will facilitate a Conversation in the Spirit with deacon couples, as we continue to live our mission to serve the Church’s discernment around women in the diaconate. 

Please join me in praying for their journeys – that they may indeed be pilgrims of hope in this Jubilee year, carrying back home a renewed sense of faith, along with deepening solidarity with the world’s community of deacons. 

This week Pope Francis also wrote a letter to his U.S. bishops expressing concern that the new political policy of mass deportations damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.

“I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give into narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters. With charity and clarity we are all called to live in solidarity and fraternity, to build bridges that bring us ever closer together, to avoid walls of ignominy and to learn to give our lives as Jesus Christ gave his for the salvation of all.” 

I invite you to join DD on April 9 to anchor ourselves in God’s narrative as we look for ways to equip preachers to courageously interpret Scripture in light of the signs of the times.