Wednesday Fourth Week of Lent
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1 Sam. 16:1, 6-7, 10-13, Psalm 23:1-6, Eph. 5:8-14, John 9:1-41
There is a story in the Bible about Jesus healing a blind man. Let me share the beginning with you as found in the Gospel of John. It goes like this, “As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
Now the story I’m want to tell you has nothing to do with me being physically blind. It has everything to do with seeing things through new eyes and seeing the world in a whole new way. If you can imagine watching TV and going from a standard quality picture to one of high definition, then you get the idea.
In 1988, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I had a cancerous mass in the center of my chest around the size of a large grapefruit. I also had a mass the size of a large plum, with grape-sized nodules around it, in my neck. Since I was in the military, I was sent to William Beaumont Army Medical Center. I would end up spending several months there living in the cancer ward. There was no outpatient treatment for many of the cancers back then, so you had to be admitted and stay until they let you go home. I was even there for Christmas time. How beautiful and yet, how sad.
Back in those days, there were no PET scans. For the doctors to stage you, they had to cut you open from your sternum all the way down to your bladder. Then they pulled out all your internal organs and examined everything by hand. When they were done, they stuffed all your organs back in, as close to their original positions as possible. When my wife went into the recovery room, she found me half-naked, shivering from the cold and covered in blood. Needless to say; she was very upset at the sight.
I lived in a four-man room and I made good friends with all the patients on my floor. I had 49 different roommates during my stay, most of them, military retirees. I watched so many come and go. After undergoing treatment, many were sent home to die and I saw many of them wither before my eyes. It was heartbreaking. I still think about so many of those men. After 8,800 rads of radiation, I was sent home. I left the hospital weighing only 89 pounds, but praise the Lord, I was still alive to see my wife and kids.
Later in life, I would battle prostate cancer, skin cancer, and advanced-stage lung cancer. Concerning my lung cancer, I was given a 3 to 13 percent chance of surviving five years. To stay alive, I underwent immunotherapy, major thoracic surgery and two different types of chemotherapy. It was quite a fight. For a long time, my body was in excruciating pain. It hurt me to sneeze, cough or even laugh. And yet, in the end, I’m still here. I may be missing half my right lung, but thanks be to God, I’m still here.
Now where is the part about being blind you ask? Well, it’s like this. With every diagnosis, I grew closer to the Lord. I did not shrink or run away. I put my full faith in God. I put his will before my own. Maybe He was using me to show His power, just as He did with the blind man. And like the blind man, I was helped. Through his kindness, Jesus opened my eyes. And through new eyes, I saw his power and might. I saw His love and compassion. I saw how beautiful and precious life really is. I saw His healing, and at times, when He saw fit, I saw His loving invitation to bring His children back home. And like the blind man, thanks to Jesus, I can proclaim, “I was blind but now I see!”
Robert T. Romanelli is retired from the U.S. Air Force and married to wife Lisa. As a Holy Family parishioner, he serves in many capacities such as a catechist, head lector, Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, and volunteer prison chaplain.
