On this day, 25th July — the Feast of St James, in 1986 I submitted my DPhil thesis in Chemistry. I don’t remember the date of the viva which followed (somewhere in mid-August to allow me to enter the Jesuit novitiate in mid-September) but I do remember the submission day — not as a calendar date but by the Feast. I remember being amused at first and then moved when I saw the first reading of the day (2 Cor 4:7-15) — how apt it felt after all the struggle to write and the many setbacks! Indeed, I used it as a dedication to the dissertation. Here it is in the NAB version:
Brothers and sisters: We hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us.
We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not abandoned;
struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.
For we who live are constantly being given up to death for the sake of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.So death is at work in us, but life in you. Since, then, we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke, we too believe and therefore speak, knowing that the one who raised the Lord Jesus
will raise us also with Jesus and place us with you in his presence. Everything indeed is for you, so that the grace bestowed in abundance on more and more people may cause the thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God.
It resonates in a different way now as I read it from a place of diminishment due to chronic ill-health. I have just seen my new GP in Oxford. He happens to be the GP I had when I was a student all that time ago. He is — unfortunately — readjusting my medication routine according to his principles. He has every good intention but by adjusting drugs, changing dosages and removing others he is making my life more unpleasant. I am seeing old symptoms I haven’t seen for years. They aren’t going to kill me, they just wear me down a bit more. It is frustrating to be powerless to protect my well-being.
This experience of being at the mercy of others is not uncommon to people with ME or, from what I hear, people with chronic illness in general. Do I find meaning in it? Can I proclaim with Paul that I am ‘constantly being given up to death for the sake of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in my mortal flesh’?
Not really — or at least not directly. I don’t find nobility or anything like that in being ill. I don’t find I can helpfully align my sufferings with those of Christ. I don’t even truly believe that my being ill is God’s will (except in the way that everything that happens is) and certainly he has never intimated that it is his desire. I struggle to abandon myself to trust in providence — after all does God always get what God wants?
But ill or well he does intimate. Become intimate. Show up tenderly. I don’t think he does so more generously because I am suffering. But this is how I am and this is how he meets me. If anything because of my problems with attention and concentration I am aware of him far less than I used to be. But ‘I greet him the days I meet him and bless when I understand’. And that seems enough for him even when it isn’t for me. He is the generous one in this relationship. And the one with the lighter heart.