Meeting the Terminally Ill Patient with the Jesus of Holy Saturday
Kathryn Sheldon D'Rozario, MA in Systematic Theology, Seton Hall University, Graduate Presidential Fellow, Saint Louis University, Joint PhD in Theology & Health Care Ethics
Can a meditation on Jesus’ experience of Holy Saturday imbue new meaning into the experience of the terminally ill?
For the Christian, the world is enchanted because of the Incarnation, God with us, through the person of Jesus Christ. Oftentimes when faced with the terminally ill, the Church will offer the metaphor of the crucified, dying Jesus in the form of an invitation to the sick person to “take up one’s cross” and in so doing find solace. But for the terminally ill person, this image is not always easily relatable, because although Jesus endured an agonizing death, he died heroically and quickly as a healthy person.
I contend that a far more powerful theology for the Church to offer is that of Holy Saturday, specifically as developed in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter. Here the terminally ill are encountered with the oft-forgotten image of the dead Jesus, stripped of his identity and power, existing silently, passively, abandoned, isolated, experiencing in his own body the totality of all that is unhealed in humanity. The terminally ill patient, too, finds herself stripped of identity, one of countless persons wearing the same hospital gown, attached to an identical IV pole, entirely isolated in the individual experience of her unhealed body. She knows intimately the silence, passivity, and abandonment of Jesus on Holy Saturday: and Jesus intimately knows her and meets her where she is.
The Church, in particular Christian health care providers and clinicians, must once again give her world meaning by preaching God with her, God with every terminally ill patient, as the good news and true Christian hope offered in the Incarnation. We must do this through our teaching of Holy Saturday, that the terminally ill patient may come to rest in the love that has taken on absolutely everything in humanity– including her sickness, isolation, and death – has healed it, and restored it back to the loving embrace of the Father. This vision offers the terminally ill patient a special dignity in sharing in the humanity of Jesus, the comfort of experiencing Jesus with her in her unique position, and a deeply transformative allegory by which to accept her own suffering and prepare for her death.
Can a meditation on Jesus’ experience of Holy Saturday imbue new meaning into the experience of the terminally ill?
For the Christian, the world is enchanted because of the Incarnation, God with us, through the person of Jesus Christ. Oftentimes when faced with the terminally ill, the Church will offer the metaphor of the crucified, dying Jesus in the form of an invitation to the sick person to “take up one’s cross” and in so doing find solace. But for the terminally ill person, this image is not always easily relatable, because although Jesus endured an agonizing death, he died heroically and quickly as a healthy person.
I contend that a far more powerful theology for the Church to offer is that of Holy Saturday, specifically as developed in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter. Here the terminally ill are encountered with the oft-forgotten image of the dead Jesus, stripped of his identity and power, existing silently, passively, abandoned, isolated, experiencing in his own body the totality of all that is unhealed in humanity. The terminally ill patient, too, finds herself stripped of identity, one of countless persons wearing the same hospital gown, attached to an identical IV pole, entirely isolated in the individual experience of her unhealed body. She knows intimately the silence, passivity, and abandonment of Jesus on Holy Saturday: and Jesus intimately knows her and meets her where she is.
The Church, in particular Christian health care providers and clinicians, must once again give her world meaning by preaching God with her, God with every terminally ill patient, as the good news and true Christian hope offered in the Incarnation. We must do this through our teaching of Holy Saturday, that the terminally ill patient may come to rest in the love that has taken on absolutely everything in humanity– including her sickness, isolation, and death – has healed it, and restored it back to the loving embrace of the Father. This vision offers the terminally ill patient a special dignity in sharing in the humanity of Jesus, the comfort of experiencing Jesus with her in her unique position, and a deeply transformative allegory by which to accept her own suffering and prepare for her death.