A Few Titbits While Dealing With a UC or Cancer Patient

Experience teach you many things in life.  Struggling and coping with ulcerative colitis has taught me a number of lessons which otherwise would not.  Books and experiences of others inform you many things. Seldom, we make them our own.

One of the blessings that I have received with my prolonged illness is a lot of sympathy and kind words and sometimes good deeds.  When a person is ill for a long time, many come to see and would like to talk to the person while in agony.  Often such talks become unbearably painful, irritating and even distressing when a visitor unable to read the mind of the patient.  I appreciate always visits by those whom I know and who are somehow connected with my life.  I’m not at ease with those people whom I do not know and have to do anything either with my life or life of my friends or my mission/apostolate.  Moreover, I find myself very difficult to answer those people whenever they have questions on my disease or on my life itself.  Everyone should practice some do’s and don’ts while visiting a person who is suffering from illness for a long time and all the more when the person is young. 

Every one has good intentions while visiting the sick person but it would be extremely good how the visiting person could be a better help than a hindrance in alleviating the pain and suffering of the patient.

I would suggest following things which you might help concretely and pragmatically.

Things may not be easy for you but you can do loads of things and these tips might help you.

1. Good to know who the patient is and what kind of terminal disease s/he is suffering from.  Sick person does not like to show himself/herself as sick but instead likes same things as before.
2. Please don’t ask but just do seeing the needs: Often people give tips to the patient what he should do and shouldn’t do including suggesting a different doctor or hospital without knowing the patient’s sickness.  The best thing you can do is instead of asking “how can I help you” just provide the food the patient likes, books to read, music the person might enjoy, take the person out for some sight seeing, a movie or to a park and so on.
3. Do not spiritualise his/her sickness: Don’t say “God has given you this sickness to purify you,” “to make you holy” or “God has great plans for you”.  Please don’t be God’s advocate. Bible says “My (God's) thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my (God's) ways" (Isaiah 55:8-9). 
4. Don’t preach like charismatic to a sick person especially saying that sickness is a result of your sin or the curse handed down though your ancestors, work of the devil in your life, etc.
5. Remember every sick person prays silently to God, if that is not visible then please remember that his/her body prays silently.  If God has given you life then he gives grace to fulfil it too.
6. Everyone is a theologian in sickness. S/he knows make sense of his/her terminal illness. On of the Church Fathers of the Eastern Church Evagrius Ponticus says “if you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian”. - Treatise on Prayer, 61
7. Speak with the person his topics of interest like, politics, economics, literature, music, films, art, spirituality, history, science, cosmology, new technologies, etc. and please not your topics. The patient intentionally wants to divert his/her attention from sickness s/he is suffering from. Perhaps you might like to recall wonderful things that you did together when the person was in good health, or narrate part of a happy incident.
8. If you have no time visit the person, one of the loveliest things you can do to the sick person  is pick up the phone and call him/her.  That may be right moment the person is waiting for some sort of solace or consolation.  Or else send a text message or a card saying that “I am with you”, “ I am thinking of you”, “I’m remembering you in my prayers,” etc,.
9. You can’t cure the terminal illness: Please don’t say “you have tried this”, “you have done enough of medications “ “now no use”,  etc.
10. No solutions please.  Don’t try to lead the discussion to the terminal disease the person suffering from.  Always try to divert to other topics.
11. If possible have some laughter with the person. Crake a suitable joke or narrate a numerous incident that took place.

- Olvin Veigas

  29 Oct. 2018

Sin of Spiritualising our Woes and Illnesses

(Cross of Cardinal Michael Czerny, SJ)

More than ever, there seems to be a sense of interconnectedness at the wake of Corona infection crises. No other time of history of humanity has seen such a vast impact on every individual on earth the consequences of an infection. The magnitude of the corona pandemic and the fears surrounding it are vociferous. There is an unprecedented panic in the world about the present, future and also about the past. We do not know when we would be able to get back to normal life, when our schools opened, markets are free to do business, work places are safe to work, travel is made easy because infection will not happen.

Even though, we are aware that we are all interconnected because we breath the same air, drink the same water, get blood transfusion when necessary by the same human body, rarely we are really aware this symbiosis that happens. In spite of our differences, in our colour, race, langauge, geographical location, religion and rite, yet we are all part of that common whole. We are so much interconnected biologically that human regeneration is possible with people who don't even understand each others' langauge or temperaments.

Pope Francis' ecological encyclical Laudato Si' made us aware how we are interconnected with the earth chemically. We are part of a common home. Each atom within us is connected with the universe atomically. Every cell of our being has to get adjusted to the different environments either it is for the minus 45 degree celsius of temperature of Siberia or 46 degree celsius hot temperature of Jaipur. 

However, in recent years, in spite of qualitative education there seems to be rise in ignorance. Sadly, this ignorance is stemming out of incapacity to analyse the things critically that seem to be very close to us. This happens to be in our spiritual realm. Often people do not understand what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the great  palaeontologist and Jesuit priest said long ago “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” A good number of people even though still locked up yet are stuck with this virus of spiritualising things. This is what I call the sin of spiritualising. Every religion is suffering with this sickness of spiritualising. The problem of today is that we are unable to understand human problems honestly and humanly. 

The sin of spiritualising occurs when we fail to get things right. When we do not get the answers that we like to get for our queries, we find comfort and solace in spiritualising. Just because you have felt the loss of sense of self worth before the Creator, it does not mean that corona infection has come from an evil spirit. Tragedies have occurred in the past and will happen in the future. tsunamis have occurred in the past and will occur in the future too. Illnesses and accidents have happened in the past and will happen in the future too. This lokaniyama (universal rule) cannot be ceased by our human intellectual or physical capabilities. One of the greatest humanists of 19th century, the Russian literary figure Leo Tolstoy once said  “To sin is a human business, but to justify sins is a devilish business.”

There are things of the world which the mind might not comprehend adequately. The messiness of our life is complicated to fix things up even though whatever human capacities might be. Therefore no one can become the spoke person either of God or to the mystery of human existence.  The Swiss Catholic Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar put it so thoughtfully, “what you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.”  You as a creation of God have every freedom and possibility to act and behave the way you like within your capacities. Becoming a gift to God is a grace which has to be nurtured and cultivated especially in these times of pandemic weariness.

The current problem of today with regard to our health is a serious one. It can be contained if all cooperate and work on it. If not it can kill us miserably. Therefore, we cannot call this killer virus corona as a punishment of God. Instead, we have to say to ourselves, we have created it and its our duty to fix it. There is no any reason to spiritualise it saying oh, God is punishing us because.... bla bla bla. The right way of addressing this issue would be not making ourselves fools or so pathetic and wretched  before God. 

I am sure God must be watching us how best we are trying to contain corona spread. He must be also looking at our fragility and nothingness. But certainly He is blessing all our sincere efforts. This is the time to show solidarity with one another, to sow the seeds of love and compassion to those whom we never dared to show. God does not want to come in between the freedom that we have. It's our duty to fix our problems within the freedom that we have. Amit Ray, in his "Meditation: Insights and Inspirations" puts it so bluntly, “it does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters.” More than ever, the Covid pandemic calls us to see the other person in much more humane way than unnecessarily disqualifying the beautiful word 'spiritual'.

- Olvin Veigas, SJ

07 May 2020