Have you ever stopped to think about the connection between our physical bodies and our souls?
I’d never really thought about it until my monthly Well-Read Mom discussion last week.
We were discussing Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. I love how the group often introduces me to new favorite books I might never have picked up on my own.
One of the discussion questions from the Well-Read Mom Reading Companion stopped me in my tracks:
The physical body suffers substantial illness and injury during the novel. These instances reflect the harsh realities of being corporeal. What connections do you see in the book between the physical suffering and the spiritual state of the characters? Have you ever experienced a situation in which your spirituality was either saved or injured by a physical ailment or injury?
This question felt much bigger and broader than just the experiences of the fictional characters in the novel.
As I stopped to think about it, I realized that quite a few saints were known for their holiness while suffering some kind of physical illness or injury. In fact, sometimes their illness actually helped draw them closer to God!
Curious? Here are 5 saints whose physical suffering played a role in their holiness.
1St. Ignatius of Loyola
St. Ignatius was a troublemaker known for his fighting spirit when he was gravely injured in battle when he was about 20 years old. A cannonball ricocheting off a nearby wall fractured his right leg.
Back home at his father’s castle, he underwent several surgical operations to repair the leg, with his bones set and rebroken -- all this in an era before anesthetics. The operations left his right leg shorter than the other, leaving him with a lifelong limp and ending his military career.
Doubtless this was a dark time for the young soldier, but God had bigger plans for him. While recovering from surgery, Íñigo underwent a spiritual conversion and discerned a call to religious life.
To pass the time during the weary hours of convalescence, he asked for the romances of chivalry, his favorite reading, but there were none in the castle. Instead, his sister-in-law brought him the lives of Christ and of the saints. These books changed his life, inspiring him to devote himself to God and follow the example of Francis of Assisi and other great monks.
2St. Anna Schaffer
You can read more about her story here, but Anna Schaffer was severely injured while working at a laundry as a young woman. Despite more than 30 surgical operations, she became completely immobile and lived with constant pain for the rest of her life. She was forced to abandon her longtime dream of entering a religious order.
Schäffer never lost her optimism and became even more devoted to her faith while undergoing constant suffering. She was often unable to sleep, but continued to express her adoration of Christ and her veneration of Mary. Her beatific attitude made her a beloved figure in town and people would often visit her to hear her comforting words of faith. She was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.
3St. Camillus de Lellis
St. Camillus de Lellis was a soldier known for his unruly temper, but a stay in a Catholic hospital and service with Capuchin Franciscans introduced him to another way of life. He tried to enter religious life, but was rejected because of his chronic illnesses.
Not to be deterred, and knowing all too well what care of the sick was like at that time in the 1500s, he decided to establish an Order whose members were to bind themselves by a fourth vow, to the charitable care of the sick and dying. His own experiences motivated him to make this his mission and the charism of his religious order.
Despite his multiple chronic illnesses, he completed his studies for the priesthood and spent his time visiting the various institutions of the sick and dying that his Order had established throughout Italy. He was the first to use the symbol of the “red cross” with which we are so familiar today, for his Order of the Ministers of the Sick. Camillus de Lellis was canonized by Pope Benedict XIV in 1746.
4Bl. Benedetta Bianchi Porro
A brilliant and popular medical student, Porro diagnosed herself with a rare degenerative condition that would ultimately rob her of all five of her senses. Yet even as she faced increasing disability and repeated surgical operations that did nothing to help, she persisted in her witness to God’s love:
Over the next seven years, she lost her hearing, then her sight, then the use of her legs. Eventually, she could move nothing but her left hand and receive communication only through letters signed on her cheek. She struggled mightily with spiritual darkness and the temptation to despair, but found joy in the end, saying, “I do not lack hope. I know that at the end of the road, Jesus is waiting for me … I have discovered that God exists, that He is love, faithfulness, joy, certitude, to the end of the ages. My days are not easy. They are hard. But sweet because Jesus is with me.”
She died in 1964 at age 27. In the years before her death, many people visited her as word of her holiness and gentle understanding of love of God spread.
5St. Maximilian Kolbe, OFM
While he is best known for his selfless act of giving his life in place of a married father in the Auschwitz concentration camp, St. Maximilian Kolbe laid the groundwork for this heroic sacrifice long before, in the years of physical suffering he endured from chronic tuberculosis:
[At] the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, tuberculosis first afflicted him, and he was plagued by terrible symptoms which would never leave him. Like everything else in his life, however, Fr. Kolbe took inspiration from his illness, seeing it as “an opportunity to suffer for Mary.”
Each of these saints reveals in a unique way how the physical and the spiritual can work together for sanctification. I’m grateful Well-Read Mom drew my attention to this phenomenon and will look to these saints for inspiration in whatever hardships and suffering might come my way.
Have you had an experience of physical health affecting your spirituality? We would love to hear about it in the comments.
