An Opportunity for Virtue

I have to admit, I really knew very little about Tony Snow until I began reading his obituaries and eulogies this weekend. I recognized the name and knew he had been part of the political scene, but before today, I could not tell you that he had once been President Bush’s press secretary. I didn’t know he was Catholic. I didn’t know he had a family. After reading this essay he wrote last summer, I wish I had known him better.

Picture yourself in a hospital bed. The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your feet; a loved one holds your hand at the side. "It's cancer," the healer announces.

The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to serve as a cosmic Santa. "Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything simpler." But another voice whispers: "You have been called." Your quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that matter—and has dragged into insignificance the banal concerns that occupy our "normal time."

There's another kind of response, although usually short-lived—an inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying moment of calamity has swept away everything trivial and tinny, and placed before us the challenge of important questions.

The truth of the matter is each of us has a limited number of days on this earth. Each of us is called to participate in Salvation History in a unique way. This paragraph from the same essay applies to every one of us—not just those who are suffering from a terminal illness:

Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?

The next time I feel anger, frustration, or fear, I hope I can remember that every challenge, great or small, is an opportunity for virtue.