As I finish my third year of College Seminary and move on to senior year, I want to reflect on a blessing that I have experienced in the College Seminary in my three years: making new friends. Most of the time, these new friends find me. How peculiar does this sound? These friends who find me are the saints. I recently began a close friendship with a young Italian soon-to-be saint, Blessed Chiara Luce Badano. Chiara’s silent, courageous response to her diagnosis of osteogenic sarcoma with metastasis struck me. Her response was this, “Jesus for you; if you want this, so do I!” She was 18 years old when she passed. Still, Chiara’s silence and courageous response to her suffering (which would give her so much joy) inspired me towards the latter half of the fall semester.
Chiara’s mother, Maria Teresa, described the moment when her daughter gave her yes to God. After the doctor diagnosed her cancer and left the room, Chiara shut her eyes and prayed for 25 minutes. Maria Teresa said, “She had said yes to God many times, but in happiness, now she had to say it in her greatest suffering.” This response to God’s call to say yes in affliction was silent and courageous.
How can you and I respond as Chiara? By saying “yes” each day. From waking up to going to bed, the day is a yes to be with Jesus in our prayers, works, joys, and sufferings. Responding to challenges with a prayerful and silent “yes” to God turns suffering into acceptance and acceptance into joy.
By making our yes in silence and with courage, we imitate our Lord. With silence in the face of his persecutors, Christ accepted his chalice and cross. He does so with courage beyond any other, unlike any that came before and unlike any that will ever be again. This yes that we make can be silent, a little secret between God and us. In that silence, we receive his love as a gift; so that we can joyously receive suffering as our friend Chiara did. So let us pray for each other and repeat, in silence and with courage, as a response to our vocations and our affliction, “Jesus for you; if you want this, so do I!”
Theodore Deluhery
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