January 9, 2013
I want to give all my beloved friends in the Fort Wayne – South Bend Diocese an update. I am receiving excellent care. I met this morning with my medical team. The oncologist and her associate are under Dana Farber, one of the top cancer treatment centers in the country.
I have a very rare form of cancer. Very rare. It is quick striking and came as a surprise, “like a thief in the night” as the Scripture says. I am now undergoing 15 days of radiation, which is palliative and has eased many symptoms. After that, there will be some consideration of chemotherapy. The doctors here are in close communications with my doctor in Fort Wayne.
Now, most importantly, I ask everyone for your prayers. Pray that I will accept this and whatever is to come with a full heart and a full “Yes” to God. I am grateful to God for the extraordinary life He has given me and the graces He has poured out on me. I thank God for my family and that I was born in the Catholic faith, which has always defended and defends in these troubled times the dignity of life and of the human person and the nature, which God has given us. Over everything, I am grateful for the gifts of the Holy Priesthood. I never felt worthy of it. I thank God with all my heart that I was appointed by Christ through the Church as shepherd of our beloved diocese.
Pray that God will find my heart pure and holy and pray that I will trust God and rely, not on my own goodness, but on the merits and sacrifice of Christ our Savior.
Above everything, pray for me and for my soul and that I will be found worthy to enter into the heavenly place that God has prepared for all of us, where I hope to meet my dear parents and so many loved ones.
Please pray for me.
Bishop John M. D’Arcy
