Witness to faith

Last month, a blogger wrote, "Today I found out the worst news of my life that both my parents have cancer. They have chosen not to have chemotherapy. I cried my little heart out because I love them both so much and what would I do without them? I recalled them after I stopped crying and they told me me they needed my strength and what was happening to them was God's Will. I will be a very strong person and be like the people during Lent suffering on the inside and not show it on the outside so I won't put any burden on anyone else. All I ask is that pray for me so I can be strong for my parents. I will be going up to Emmitsburg where there is a garden to get holy water. Maybe that will help."

Anon, I am very sorry to hear your news. I am praying for you, and ask others on here to do the same. Anon, good will come out of this! You may not see it now, but God has a Plan with all of this. A friend of mine from the seminary, Fr. Darin Didier, lost his battle to cancer shortly after being ordained a priest last year. God's Plan for Fr Darin had to do with him doing good as a priest briefly on Earth and eternally in Heaven (there have already been a few reports of ill people getting better after asking for his intercession).

The following are excerpts of a post that I wrote about Fr. Darin, "Living next to a saint":

"Darin and I were friends, classmates, and neighbors. I would hear him coughing through many a night in his last year of seminary. He rarely (if ever) complained about the cancer, and lived his simple yet joyful life as normally as ever. Darin was very athletic, intelligent, kind, enthusiastic, and loving. To me and many others, he was a saint. For nine months, I had the great honor of living next to a saint!

When he was first diagnosed with the cancer, he underwent radiation and chemotherapy, and had to leave the seminary. After a while, the doctors told him that the treatments were not working properly. Eventually, he was told by them that there was nothing more that they could do. So, Darin turned to natural supplements, a strict diet (he was already a health nut), and to priests. He had a few priests pray over him in the hopes of a healing. Basically, he put his whole life in the hands of God.

Amazingly...he was well enough to return to the seminary and resume his formation for priesthood. He continued a rigorous natural and supernatural diet... He was an heroic witness to the virtue of faith to so many people at and around the Mount, not to mention elsewhere. What courage!

The amazing gift for Fr Darin, obviously, is priesthood. He was cured long enough to be ordained. When a man is ordained a priest, it is forever. Fr Darin is a priest forever! I believe he is like John Paul II in the sense that he had a very short stay in Purgatory, and is now in Heaven. He endured the Cross in huge ways; now, he enjoys the fruits of Paradise with Almighty God and all the angels and saints."