Cardinal Francis George: A Friend of Mine

You could say all friendships start with a heavenly origin, and you’d be right, but Cardinal Francis George and my friendship especially is. I met him at his funeral, which I grant you, is an odd place to meet someone. I had never heard of him before the funeral, but I came home from class that day and turned on EWTN because a friend to all, Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, was giving the homily. There in those twenty minutes was the beginning of a friendship between Francis George and me.

We weren’t born in the same town. I don’t know if we shared the same hobbies, apart from a love for writing. From the outside, you probably wonder why or how I wanted to get to know this Chicagoan churchman, who was known for his sweet smile. When I learned about him in the broadcast of his funeral, one thing about him resonated deep with my soul: his suffering.

When Francis George was thirteen, he contracted polio. He knew God had called him to be a priest since he was a little boy, but when the time came for him to enter the seminary, they wouldn’t take him because of the polio. The tenacious spirit of Francis George persevered, and he got in touch with the vocations director of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, who came to see him and told him if he could walk across the floor, he could be an Oblate.

What does this have to do with me, an eighteen-year-old girl at the time of his death? I was born with cerebral palsy. Though a mild case, and not exactly the same, it and the effects of George’s polio are similar. He wore braces. For the first ten years of my life, I did, too. He limped. So do I. He fell every once in a while. I do, too. He was in a gnawing amount of pain every day, and so am I. Herein lay all the knowledge I needed to want to be friends with him.

Lest you think this is a “misery loves company” situation, it is the complete opposite. I recognized in him the same spirit I desired to have. Francis George’s life was truly an oblation, a sacrifice, to God, and he was keenly aware that his sufferings were united to the cross of Christ. His faith was the foundation of his life, and he lived in the unshakeable conviction that, in the words of Sr. Marian Sartain, O.P. “Jesus is beautiful, and Jesus is everything.” It was the Cardinal’s suffering that gave witness to the world that Jesus is, indeed, beautiful because his life, devoted to God, will bear fruit beyond my lifetime, and there’s only one thing to say: thanks be to God.

In my own suffering, God has given me insight into the cross that I would never have asked for willingly, and it is the sweetest gift. Only my Catholic faith makes sense of this paradox. For so many years as a Protestant, I understood suffering on a level that only my Catholic friends understood, and I always wondered why. That is, until I learned about redemptive suffering. To use Mother Teresa’s words, “ . . .it is the kiss of Jesus.”             In that limp is the truth that God alone suffices. Redemptive suffering was my beckoning home to Holy Mother Church, but so was the Eucharist. Not only am I united with the Lord Jesus in His suffering on the cross, but I put that suffering in the chalice as it is held up at Mass and offer it back to God as the purest act of love and unmitigated devotion. As a Catholic, I finally know why it was given to me: to give it back to God. As sweet the gift of suffering is, sweeter still is the gift of receiving the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist, the source and summit and strength of my life. When the priest and says, “The Body of Christ,” and I say, “Amen,” it’s not just “amen” to the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, also “yes” to the sacredness of my suffering. Nourished by the Eucharist, I can continue each day to say “yes” to the life the Lord has given me. Francis George, nourished by the same sacraments, did the same.

Francis George contracted polio when he was thirteen and he therefore knew an earlier life free of physical suffering and pain. That memory is a cross all of its own, and I will never understand that sacrifice. However, as I know our crosses are fashioned for each one of us, he carried his well. I can only hope to do the same.

Fr. Thomas Roscia, the CEO of Salt and Light Catholic Media, related to Francis George that in all the circumstances the Cardinal had been in and the difficulties he had been through in the web and flow of the sufferings in the Church, that his fire, his ardent love for the Church, remained. George told Fr. Roscia that Jesus Christ was his hope, and one of the great joys of him being Archbishop of Chicago was all the saints he met in the archdiocese and beyond. I agree with him—it is so much easier to keep the flame burning when you know you have a friend in the fight with you. It will always be the honor of my life to say that Francis George is one of mine.

Francis George told the parishioners of his beloved Archdiocese of Chicago they were his legacy. I like to think, as his friend, I am grafted into that legacy and I ask for his prayers every day. One day, we will meet each other, free of polio and CP, and I’ll have the opportunity to hug him and thank him for helping me get there, but until then, there’s much to be discussed.