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Catholic Convert, Cancer Patient, Pens Little Guide for the Dying

by Dawn Eden 

News stories about health issues often note fluctuations in “mortality rates,” but, as writer James Taranto often observes, except for one notable exception, the mortality rate in fact remains stable at 100 percent.

That all of us must die is modern society’s most inconvenient truth. One of the few bulwarks of the culture that acknowledges it is the Catholic Church, but, even so, when was the last time you heard a homily on mortality?

My friend Jeffry Hendrix, who was a Methodist pastor before being received into the Church in 2001, was reluctant to think about the “last things” – until the day he learned he had bladder cancer. The shock of the news caused the 55-year-old husband and father to explore the meaning of Catholic teachings on suffering and death. Now, a year and a half later, he is the author of the first self-help manual for terminally-ill pewsitters since St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Preparation for Death. A Little Guide for Your Last Days (Bridegroom Press) has earned praise from the likes of Mark Shea, Joseph Pearce and Father Dwight Longenecker.

In writing Little Guide, Hendrix, who teaches at a Catholic middle school in northern Virginia, drew upon the experiences he underwent in April of last year, after hearing what no one wants to hear from their doctor. “With those words, ‘You have cancer in your left kidney,’ suddenly my whole life became the only spiritual resource I had to face the reeling reality that confronted me,” he says.

 Initially, during the two weeks before he had emergency surgery to remove lesions –which cost him a kidney and a ureter – Hendrix went into what he describes as a
“battlefield triage” mode.

“It was only eight months later,” he says, “when I was told that lesions had returned and I would require chemotherapy that I had the time – and time comes from God – to process the fact of the gift of my life to that point, and discern how the Holy Spirit had been present throughout my life.”

Such discernment, he says, would not have been possible for him had he received his diagnosis while still a practicing Methodist.

“I can hardly tell you how much I admire non-Catholic Christians,” he says. “They make do with so little and squeeze out so much spiritual benefit from it. ... But for me, I absolutely, positively needed the fullness of the Catholic faith. I have no idea what I would do, facing humanity's least appreciated friend – ‘Mort’ – without the sacramental grace of Mother Church.”

Indeed, in writing Little Guide, a major concern for Hendrix was to encourage the suffering to partake in the sacramental graces that had become an indispensable part of his life: “I can – and more often than not do – live without the basic food groups. I quake at the thought of being deprived of the eucharistic grace of panis angelicus. And more people need to realize the utter need of us all for the Church's sacraments. Why not remain in a state of grace?" 

He places particular importance upon the sacrament of Anointing, noting that it carries a plenary indulgence – enabling the dying to enter the next life free from the burden of sin.

“I really fear for non-Catholics who face these realities without the benefits that Our Lord gives us through His Church,” says Hendrix. He himself is currently doing well with the help of chemotherapy, but adds he is always grateful for prayers.

If a reader suffering from illness were to learn one thing from Little Guide, the author would like it to be that “death is no more an absolute loss of all you love most than that first injection you got at the doctor's office that you dreaded when you were four years old.”

“In fact, the more spiritually mature you become in facing death, the more you add to the commonweal of Our Lord’s salvation,” Hendrix adds, echoing the message of such papal encyclicals as John Paul II’s Salvifici Doloris and Benedict XVI’s Spe Salvi. “Redemptive suffering – ‘offering it up’ – is the last, greatest gift you can give your loved ones. It is Marian chivalry, saying Yes, like Our Lady, to the most basic fact of our mortal existence. If we have to go, why not do it boldly?”

 

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)