Dear brother bishops, priests, and deacons, esteemed physicians and nurses, healthcare professionals, my dear friends in Christ.
For the past year, I have been privileged to serve as the episcopal advisor to the Catholic Medical Association in the United States. Your guild, the Saints Cosmas and Damian Guild, is one of the most active in the country, and I'm glad that you invited me to celebrate Holy Mass with you today.
In today's Gospel, the Blessed Mother is visiting Elizabeth, her cousin. Elizabeth knows upon seeing Mary that the Lord has done something great in her life. Elizabeth feels unworthy even to receive Mary, the mother of the Lord. To respond to Elizabeth's joy, the Blessed Virgin Mary says something extraordinary: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.”
There is probably no phrase in Scripture that represents the fullness of the Christian life more than this. Is there a higher aspiration than having a soul which proclaims God's greatness?
The Blessed Mother was given the grace of the Immaculate Conception. She was without sin from the very first moment of her conception. She was chosen to be the Mother of God. Of course, her soul most beautifully proclaims the greatness of the Lord. But our souls can do the very same thing. We’re called to reflect God's goodness—this is what holiness really means.
In lifelong Christian discipleship, God desires to make us holy—to transform us into reflections of his goodness, so that our souls will proclaim his greatness.
Working in a Paris laboratory in 1958, Dr. Jerome Lejeune made a startling discovery. He was examining the cellular composition of local asylum patients, at the time called “mongoloids.” In the first sample, he noticed a cellular abnormality: a third chromosome of the twenty-first pair. He reviewed more samples, and more, and more, and discovered in each one the very same chromosomal abnormality. By July 1958, Dr. Lejeune was ready to prove it was trisomy 21—and not maternal syphilis, or a difficult pregnancy, or prenatal neglect—that caused the condition we now call Down syndrome.
Soon after, Dr. Lejeune discovered the chromosomal cause of Fragile X syndrome. His work also led to the discovery of trisomy 18.
We know now that those discoveries were groundbreaking. And Dr. Lejeune would have likely been content to continue laboratory research and ordinary patient care. But the Holy Spirit spoke to him, calling him to more. Armed with new knowledge he opened the first clinic for people with Down Syndrome, treating patients from around the world. And he helped to form thousands of physicians in new ways to treat those with significant chromosomal abnormalities. His correlation between genetics and intellectual disability initiated a new era in treatment and advocacy for the intellectually disabled led by Dr. Lejeune, who in 1994 became the first president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. I met Dr. Lejeune in the summer of 1990 when I was living in Europe, and spent a whole day with him. I knew then I was in the presence of a saint.
The soul of Dr. Jerome Lejeune proclaimed the greatness of the Lord.
Giuseppe Moscati completed his medical training in 1903. He was twenty-three years old. He was the wealthy son of an Italian lawyer. He began the practice of medicine in a hospital, working especially as a surgeon; and in 1912, he was appointed to a prestigious post at a university. In 1906, the roof of his hospital caved in, and he dragged patients to safety, one at a time. In 1911, cholera broke out, and, with no regard for his own health, he treated hundreds of patients. Those experiences transformed him. While Dr. Moscati might have been content teaching and practicing medicine, the Holy Spirit spoke to him, calling him to more.
In 1912, he took a vow of celibacy—a promise to remain unmarried, and to serve the poor as a physician. He used the financial freedom of his position to open free clinics for the homeless and the working poor. He slipped money under his patients’ pillows. And when they suffered, he encouraged them to offer their suffering to Christ—to share in the Cross. He encouraged patients to go to Confession and doctors to join him at Mass. He died at forty-six of sudden illness—and sixty years later John Paul II declared him a saint.
The soul of Dr. Giuseppe Moscati proclaimed the greatness of the Lord.
Gianna Molla had a family practice in the hills outside Milan. She had long dreamed of becoming a missionary physician in Brazil's tribal country, but her own ill health wouldn't allow it. So like Moscati, she practiced family medicine, often for free. She married an engineer, and bore three children. In 1961, at thirty-nine, she was pregnant again with her fourth child. Dr. Molla might have been content to raise her children, and practice medicine. But God called her to something more.
Two months into her pregnancy, her doctor found a fibroma on her uterus. She was advised to undergo an abortion and hysterectomy. Gianna refused. She knew and understood the risks. She had treated patients with similar conditions. But Gianna loved the child growing inside of her more than she loved her own life. She underwent surgery to remove the fibroma. It was unsuccessful. In April 1962, she went into labor—begging her doctors to spare her child if things went wrong. Her daughter was born healthy but, seven days later, Gianna died of septic peritonitis.
In 2004, I was graced to be present at her canonization. I met her ninety-year-old husband that day. Her family brought up her relics and presented them to Saint John Paul II at the offertory. It was a moving experience to behold.
The soul of Dr. Gianna Molla proclaimed the greatness of the Lord.
Dear brothers and sisters: each one of you is called to holiness.
Lejeune, and Moscati, and Molla were physicians in imitation of the Divine Physician—Jesus Christ. Their work was an expression of the fundamental experience of their lives: divine love.
Becoming good and holy medical professionals requires becoming good and holy men and women—requires that our lives are fundamentally defined in relationship to Jesus Christ, and to his Church. And becoming good and holy medical professionals requires openness to the hand of Providence—to the prompting, inspiration, and leadership of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
We are living, as Pope Benedict said in 2005, in a world that has largely surrendered to a dictatorship of relativism. And the consequences of moral and cultural relativism are abundant. Among your peers, this is most borne out in the consequences of the technocratic materialism that dominates our cultural worldview.
In medicine, this is particularly true. Today medicine seems to be driven by a technocratic impulse to pursue scientific possibilities with no concern for their moral, ethical, or human consequences. Your peers in medicine prescribe contraception, which robs sexuality of its beauty and purpose. Some perform abortions, taking human life under the guise of personal freedom or compassion. As our population ages, more and more physicians will consider seriously the practice of euthanasia and “assisted suicide.” Some of you come from Missouri, where the state legislature is debating an assisted-suicide bill even now.
And the corporatization of medicine means that patients are increasingly seen as customers, and the humanity of healing is replaced with the economics of profiteerism.
Health care in America is losing sight of the fundamental dignity of the human person.
Dear physicians—the world of medicine needs the Gospel. And you are called to be missionary disciples to the medical community.
In 1990, Pope Saint John Paul II said that in our culture, “economic well-being and consumerism inspires and sustains a life lived as if God did not exist.” He concluded, “what is needed now is a ‘new evangelization.’”
The New Evangelization is the work of ordinary men and women who enter into the lives of their communities, with audacity and zeal, with joy and daring—ordinary men and women, whose lives proclaim the greatness of the Lord. The New Evangelization is witness to the love of Jesus Christ in a world hungering to know him.
You, if you choose to be, are the New Evangelization. Do not be afraid to be evangelists for Jesus Christ in your medical practice. Do not be afraid to be “modern apostles.” Do not be afraid to encounter the broken world, for the sake of truth. Do not be afraid to offer all that you've been given—to pour out your lives—for the salvation of souls.
You should strive to have souls that proclaim God's greatness, because you are made for the love of God. You should strive for holiness in medicine, because the world needs the witness of doctors who know the truth about the human person, and respond to it. And you should strive for sanctity in medicine, because your patients need the love of God, poured out for them through your lives.
The Blessed Mother puts it very simply: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” The world is longing to see the greatness of the Lord. May you become holy in and through the practice of medicine. May you trust the promptings and the call of the Holy Spirit. And may you become missionary disciples, and witnesses to the healing love of God.
Biography
The Most Reverend James D. Conley is the ninth bishop of the Lincoln Diocese in Nebraska. He has a master's degree in divinity and a licentiate in moral theology. His email is shepherd@lincolndiocese.org.