It may seem ironic, but I sincerely believe it. What is more, it may be that some may call me cruel, but I sincerely do not want to be so, but on the contrary, I want to give meaning to what we have to live. When people are trying to justify taking the life of those who suffer from a serious illness (and illness also ends up being age), disguising it as humanism, I see in illness an added value.
I do not wish illness on anyone, I would like no one to suffer, to suffer, to feel anguished or sad..., I would like it! But it is impossible, pain, illness, age..., appears as the Goliath who confronted the young David, threatening and arrogant. And faith teaches us that this illness, these physical, psychological and moral limitations, these pains and poverty, can be reversed in our favor.
A sick woman, a friend of mine, described her degenerative illness, incredibly, as a talent that the Lord had given her. This talent, living it with the Lord of all consolation and with the desire to make of it an offering united to the Cross of Christ, for people, for evangelization, for those who live in despair, becomes a talent that bears abundant fruits of love, of salvation, of consolation..., of mission!
On the 11th of last month was the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, patroness and refuge of all the sick. We entrust them to her. And to her we pray for those sick people who, with precious generosity and immense love for God and mankind, have become missionary sick people, offering to the Lord their pains and ailments for the sake of the missionaries and the mission of the Church. With this conviction, the Church made her own the intuition of Marguerite Godet to create a Union of Missionary Sick, linked to the Pontifical Mission Societies, to help make every sick person a missionary! a great missionary!
