What terror grips the soul when the body threatens to fail! Yet know this: the sickness of the body is often permitted by God to heal the sickness of the soul. For when the flesh suffers, we turn at last to the Physician who alone can cure both. Consider the paralytic whom our Lord restored: after the healing, He warned, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come to you.” The greater danger is not the tumor in the breast, but the tumor of pride or sloth or unbelief that may lodge unnoticed in the heart.
Do not merely beg to escape cancer. Beg rather to escape the cancer of sin, which eats away the immortal part. Make this trial an occasion to cling to Christ with a love so fierce that neither life nor death can tear you away. If health returns, receive it as a loan from the Lord, to be spent in good works. If He allows suffering to continue, know that the furnace purifies gold. He does not abandon those who trust Him. Did not the three youths walk in the fire and come forth without even the smell of smoke? So will it be with you, if you refuse to worship the idol of bodily comfort.
And do not think that a favorable report tomorrow is the only sign of God’s mercy. The truest healing is the forgiveness of sins, the peace of a conscience cleansed, the strength to say, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be His name.” Many who received a cure later grew cold and fell into deeper ruin. But those who embraced their trial with thanksgiving gained a glory that outshines all earthly health.
Therefore, pray boldly, but also pray wisely. Say with all your heart, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass; yet not my will, but Yours be done.” Go to the biopsy as one already risen, for baptism has already united you to Christ’s death and resurrection. Let no doctor’s hands terrify you; they are but instruments in the Creator’s grasp. The same Lord who knit your body in the womb can command every malignant cell to be still. But even if He does not, He remains good, and your true life is hidden with Him.
Come, then, tomorrow not fretting but praying. While they examine the flesh, let your spirit examine the heart. Cast out resentment, lust, envy, and sloth. Receive the Lord’s own Body, and let that leaven transform your whole lump, until nothing remains that fears the grave. For whether you live, you live to Christ, or whether you die, you die to Christ; so living or dying, you are His. That is the healing which no cancer can undo.