Cancer redefines faith for priest

Rev. Christopher Welch always loved a cross he brought back from a trip to El Salvador. Painted in bright colors, it depicted a joyful image of the resurrected Christ.

But during Holy Week this year, he dwelled more on a Mexican statuette given to him by a friend, the corpus from a cross that had been desecrated in the early part of the century.

"One leg was missing; you could see burn marks on it," he told The Evangelist. "I held that up and said, `This is also the Cross. This is where I'm at today.'"

Facing cancer

In February, the 34-year-old associate pastor of St. Francis de Sales parish in Loudonville was diagnosed with testicular cancer. After surgeries to remove the cancer and several lymph nodes, a round of chemotherapy and months of recovery, he expects to soon return to full-time ministry in a different parish assignment.

However, he will begin his work with a new label: "cancer survivor."

"I don't know what that means yet, to be a cancer survivor," Father Welch said. "That word has new meaning for me. People think, `He's got cancer; he's on the way out.' But in this day and age, it's very treatable. That's a new revelation -- that cancer is not a death knell."

Shock of diagnosis

When he was diagnosed, the young priest was in shock. "For a man, [testicular cancer] is similar to having breast cancer for a woman," he said. "These are parts of our bodies that are intimate, part of your femininity or masculinity. And as a priest, sometimes it feels absurd to have that kind of illness."

At times, it was a struggle for him even to pray. He paraphrased the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's book, "The Gift of Peace," in which the dying prelate said that people "must pray while we're able to, because when we're sick, we can't."

"I see the need for the routine of prayer as very important," Father Welch stated. "It was hard to pray when I was sick. I did depend on people to do it for me."

Prayers of others

And pray they did. The priest said that he has received scores of cards and letters, and had his name mentioned during the petitions in at least five parishes. People even sent cards to his family, which eased his worries about them.

"The presence of the community is very important," he said.

After his first surgery, Father Welch thought his health would return to normal. "I'm not a real detail person," he admitted. "I didn't realize it was coming; but a month later, they took blood, and it showed my markers [cancer indicators] were elevated."

A second surgery followed, and of the five lymph nodes that were biopsied, two were positive for cancer. That meant the disease had traveled through his body -- and chemotherapy was necessary.

Chemotherapy

He had the five-day treatment in June. "It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be," remembered the priest, whose tall, lanky frame is now 20 pounds lighter than it once was. "I got very tired and out of it, but I didn't get sick."

The chemo lasted just five days, but six weeks later, Father Welch began to lose his hair.

"That was probably the biggest deal --getting up in the morning and finding hair on your pillow," he said, running a hand over his bald head, where light-brown hair is just beginning to grow back. "But now that it's gone, people say, `You look okay.'" Some even think he shaved his head deliberately.

Ministry to him

During his time in the hospital and following chemotherapy, the priest found that "certain people can intuit what you need in a gentle way: `You're thirsty; I'll get you some popsicles.' Sometimes, we try to do too much for people. As a minister, now I realize people may only need five minutes."

He expected people to treat him differently, whispering and feeling uncomfortable around him. Instead, he discovered, "people allow you to laugh with them and cry with them. They've treated me as Christ first, and a priest second."

As he recuperates, Father Welch has been assisting part-time as a hospital chaplain. Even though he speaks to patients every day, he remarked that his own disease can still seem "a bit unreal. I'd like to put it behind me and move forward, but it was a great shock to realize that this was going to be my struggle.

"I try to be an optimist, but there's been some anger. At times in the last few months, I felt like Job sitting on the ash heap. There are so many things I want to do! I'm only three years out" of the seminary.

Struggling to recover

One part of the struggle is getting used to the fact that his body doesn't work as well as it once did. "I don't feel like a kid anymore," he said, indicating the scar that runs down his abdomen from his lymphectomy. "My body is no longer a kid's body. I can't do what I used to do."

Lent proved especially profound for him this year, since readings for Holy Week include St. Paul's famous line: "I bear upon my body the marks of Christ."

"I felt that God did Lent for me this year," the priest said. "I was in recovery most of Lent, and I learned about the Cross. I experienced Holy Thursday and Good Friday in a different way. I'm afraid it might not be over yet, either -- I'm not yet to Easter morning."

Learning signals

Father Welch has had to learn to listen to his body's telling him when his energy level is low, something the normally-energetic priest never dealt with before.

"It's a very frustrating thing. I want to do it all, and I can't," he said. "It's hard for me to slow down. Now that I'm feeling better, the temptation is to jump back into things, but even the Bishop has said, `I want you to take your time!'"

As a priest, Father Welch said that he also struggles to fit his illness into a spiritual context. "Part of me would like to make this part of my ministry: I'll be the `cancer priest,'" he said wryly. "But maybe planning ahead is not important. Maybe what's important is what I'm doing now. Maybe it's what I did at St. Francis de Sales for three years. We don't know what the future holds."

Future plans

He admitted that he often thinks about the decline in the number of priests available to minister in the Diocese and worries about his own role.

"In April, we lost like five priests to retirement or death," he commented. "I look at those obituaries and I think, `What will mine look like?' I don't want to look at that yet."

One thing that having cancer has proven to Father Welch is his position as "a full-fledged member of the presbyterate. I've experienced nothing but good community from my brother priests and the Bishop. It's consoling -- that's part of my family. I don't have a wife and kids, but I was anointed by four of my brother priests before I went into surgery."

New understanding

In an interview before his ordination in 1994, the priest told The Evangelist, "I've gotten a great appreciation of the Passion and the Cross." Looking toward his upcoming ministry, he stated, "I know there will be struggles and difficulties in the future, but no life is perfect."

Today, those words struck him as poignant: "I didn't know the God who takes away as well as gives. God has some tattered edges that God didn't have before.

"In the seminary, you read all these books about `there's grace in suffering,' [but] it is no fun to have a hole in your gut. It's no fun to have part of your body taken out. I've thought a lot about that line from Jeremiah, `God, you duped me.' My faith is a little more sophisticated than it was. It's not as easy to fall back on platitudes."

Humor and hope

Looking at his own mortality has proven to Father Welch that "letting go is not as easy as I thought it was. I'm not ready to go. I want the full portion -- the 80 or 90 years."

Amid that clarity comes humor: "Death is a certainty for all of us. But I'd like to do that `Star Trek' thing: `The character isn't dead; he'll be back next season.'"

Father Welch fully expects to be "back next season" in a new parish assignment, a challenge he calls "humbling and exciting." His last tests showed no cancer, and only his tendency to tire easily shows that he is still recovering. He thanked the many Catholics of the Diocese who have been concerned about his health.

As he awaits word on his new ministry, the priest is literally practicing a new perspective on faith: "I'm learning what it's like again to sit in a pew, and that's a freeing experience. When I say Mass, sometimes I can't really pray as I'd like to. I'm too worried about details!"

(08-21-97) [[In-content Ad]]