Fr Jack SJ MD: Feast of St. Luke

We read in Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, “Luke the beloved physician sends you his greetings . . .” Though the evidence is slim, tradition holds that Luke was a physician. That tradition suggests the overlap in the vocations of priests and physicians.

Few books capture the reality of the demands, sacrifices, and pain that are part of the vocations to medicine or priesthood. Among the small number that do is a 1947 novel written that proved prophetic when covid emerged.

While relevant to all who had to cope with the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual crises driven by that pandemic, it holds particular import for physicians and priests.

The Plague by Albert Camus, should be required reading for anyone studying medicine or preparing for ordination. It limns the anguish of confronting the most vexing problem in the universe and the most painful cross under which our vocations converge.

Dr. Rieux recognized the infection spreading through Oran as bubonic plague. He approached it courageously and with unflinching commitment to his patients. Midway through the book we hear Rieux speaking with Tarrou, an enigmatic character who became a friend. At the end of a long conversation that cannot be summarized easily we read: “Tarrou asked ‘Who taught you all this Doctor?’ The was immediate, ‘Suffering.’”

If we allow it, suffering instructs physician, priest, patient, and others. That teaching takes time, demands courage, and requires a willingness to recognize and endure one’s own pain, impotence, and rage so as to help the other. None of us emerges unchanged from the confrontation with suffering. In time we learn the truth described by Aeschylus,

“He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep,

pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart,

and in our own despair, against our will,

comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”

Benedictine Basil Cardinal Hume, the late Archbishop of Westminster, was the son of a physician. He accurately described the overlap between the vocations of priest and physician in a short meditation: “The physician and the priest have much in common. Both are concerned with people and their well-being. Our starting points are different but inevitably we discover that our interest converges. The experience of people tells us, priests and physicians, that many are still bewildered, indeed haunted, by the perennial problems of pain, suffering, and death.”

As it was for the characters limned by Camus, so it is for us today.

The late Ned Cassem, SJ, MD was the consummate physician. Chief of Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital for thirteen years, Ned possessed tremendous empathy for, and sensitivity to, the suffering of others. Among his papers was one titled CREED. Three tenets of creed fleshed out Cardinal Hume as if Ned were writing midrash:

"As clinicians our responsibility is to always protect the patient."

"The secret of care for the patient is caring for the patient."

"The core of the doctor's healing role is loving the patient as the doctor loves himself."

One can address these to physicians or priests with equal relevance.

Today, every physician has multiple options to sin through destroying life in the womb, desecrating and mutilating the human body for bizarre purposes, by impairing a child’s physical, mental, and cognitive development through puberty blockers, and by participating in the planned execution of the sick elderly. When commenting on his opposition to euthanasia to solve the problem of suffering, Robert Twycross a British hospice physician wrote, “Any physician who has never considered killing a suffering patient is either very new to the profession . . . or singularly lacking in empathy.” He went on to explain why euthanasia must never be an option. The same applies to priests.

Priests and physicians suffer in concert with the patient unless, as suggested by Twycross, they are totally devoid of empathy. Each is consumed by the awful and angry protest why. Each may nurture the desire to end the perceived meaninglessness immediately. Physician and priest look toward the heavens. Both scream WHY? But the answer never comes. The answer never will come. We can only slog away trying to diminish suffering as much as we can, in whatever manner we can, and when we can, one patient at a time.

John Paul II wrote in Salvifici Doloris that: “(suffering) is a universal theme that accompanies man at every point on earth: . . . it co-exists with him in the world, and thus demands to be constantly reconsidered.” He goes on to note: “Man suffers in different ways not always considered by medicine, Suffering is wider than sickness, more complex . . . more deeply rooted in humanity itself. A certain idea of this problem comes to us from the distinction between physical suffering and moral suffering.” Camus outlined and elaborated that distinction.

Neither physician nor priest can answer the why of suffering, but each is obliged to offer understanding and care rather than death to the one who suffers, each is called by his vocation to share in the burden of suffering in whatever way possible.

Just as the plague was ending and the city gates were to open, Tarrou died of an atypical presentation of the disease. Knowing the inevitable outcome if it truly were plague, Rieux took Tarrou into his own home. In a few words describing the doctor looking down at his friend’s body, Camus summarized the anguish that physicians and priests encounter throughout their lives.

“The doctor could not tell if Tarrou had found peace, now that all was over, but for himself he had a feeling that no peace was possible to him henceforth, any more than there can be an armistice for a mother bereaved of her son or for a man who buries his friend.”

When confronting suffering both priests and physicians find themselves praying as Jesus did in Gethsemane, that the cup be taken from them. But like Jesus, and like Dr. Rieux, if they are to truly live their vocations they must drink the cup to the dregs.

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Photos are from the Hospital of the Good Samaritan in N'Djamena. It was quite the challenge to adapt to the heat, lack of electricity, water, or tech.