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Priest's Easter Message Focuses on Colon Cancer
April 21, 2009
By Fr. Mike Byron
Church of Saint Cecilia, St. Paul, MN
An old friend of mine, Brenda Elsagher, is, among other things, a professional stand-up comedienne. I first met her at the parish in Richfield where I was sent as a newly-ordained priest. Many years ago I was honored to preside at her marriage to Bahgat (one of only two real live Egyptian guys that I personally know). Shortly after their marriage, while still in her thirties, Brenda became caught up in a horrendous bout with colorectal cancer that threatened her very life. Since then she has been a tireless advocate for the cause of cancer awareness, and she has integrated that cause into her comedic work. She sends out a monthly e-newsletter from her web site at www.livingandlaughing.com. The title of her web page is “Bringing Joy Through the Journey and Laughter With a Message.” I think she’d be the first to approve of an Easter Sunday church bulletin reflection dedicated to colons and rectums. Her newsletter this past month called attention to a lobbying campaign in congress called, “Get your Rear in Gear.”
I think of Brenda today because of that motto: Joy Through the Journey…On this most holy and glorious day of the year, Easter, we Christians are invited again to hold both of those things—joy and journey—in a necessary balance. For the past six weeks we’ve been on our annual journey of penitence and preparation. We have been invited to ponder again our all-too-ready allurements into sin and selfishness. It has been a call, I hope, to honesty, repentance, and re-dedication. There is no enduring joy for us except through the journey of honest self-examination, and the Easter joy is what makes the journey bearable.
Among the things I’ve learned about colorectal cancer over the years, from Brenda and from others, is that it is the very most treatable of all cancers—IF people dare to look into the possibility of trouble before the symptoms indicate that it is already too late. Or, as Brenda said last month, “The worst part about (a colonoscopy) procedure is drinking the salty prep the night before. It’s not a night for salsa dancing; it’s more like, pull the TV into the bathroom with you for a few hours.” Maybe it’s a little crude as an analogy, but being made to scour our system is ultimately a life-giving, life-saving endeavor! Easter is the cause of such joy precisely because the threat of the alternative is so awful.
More from Brenda on this: “I was getting makeup put on me to appear on a TV show about colorectal cancer awareness. The woman putting on my makeup told me a true story. Her husband had gone in for his colonoscopy and when he walked into the examination room he noticed many photos of colons. He turned to the gastroenterologist and asked him, ‘Do you recognize anyone by their faces anymore?’”
So there you have it: the first, and probably the last Easter church bulletin ever devoted to reflecting upon joy and life through the lens of, well… May it be a day and a season full of gratitude for the gift of salvation that is our through the resurrection of our Lord.
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