We wait in joyful hope...

Mary ann Etling
Medical Student and Missionary for Christ

Photo/Image courtesy of Mary Ann Etling

​“Your scholarship to learn at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kenya this summer has been canceled due to COVID-19. We’re so sorry.”

My heart sank. Logically, I completely understood. I was a first-year medical student, so we were learning about the highly contagious and potentially dangerous nature of the novel coronavirus. Emotionally, l I felt robbed. I slipped on my sneakers, opened the door to my apartment, and started running into the cold, rainy March morning. 

In my mind, I was running through the hospital wards in Uganda. Before beginning medical school, I received a research grant and moved to the small country in Eastern Africa. Years prior, I had traveled to a Catholic hospital in the northern region, and I was determined to return to do public health research in partnership with the local leaders I had met. 

Photo/Image courtesy of Mary Ann Etling

Each day, I would wake up in the Catholic hospital with more purpose than I had ever experienced in my life. I spent my days traveling by motorcycle with my translator to villages, interviewing caregivers of children with disabilities. I spent my nights in the hospital wards, shadowing, and learning from the young Ugandan doctors. The whole hospital community, physicians, and patients alike would gather together daily for mass in the early morning and rosary in the late evening. I would joke to my family and friends back in the US that if you chose a random 5-6 Spiritual or Corporal Works of Mercy plus 1-2 Holy Sacraments, you would have my “typical schedule” for the day. For the first time, it felt like I was no longer living for myself, but rather, for the good of another. My missionary spirit was finally home.
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"Those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."
- Isaiah 40:31

After my year-long project ended, I struggled to leave the hospital in Uganda, but there was peace for two reasons: I knew I needed medical training, and I knew I would be back soon. Upon my return, my life quickly turned into long hours studying in the medical school library. Still, I was determined to learn everything I could for the patients and caregivers I had met in northern Uganda.

As I reached the vacant parking lot outside the adoration chapel down the road from my apartment, I stopped running. I knew that it was closed due to the pandemic, but at least I could stand outside and be near Christ.

I pleaded, “Jesus, this is the one thing I cannot wait for. If I can’t go back to Uganda, why am I in medical school? My heart is made to be there. I don’t belong here. That is my vocation. I just want to serve. That’s the whole purpose for all of this.”

And in that moment, I realized that the foundation of my faith was no longer in my relationship with Christ. I was startled. Over the last year, I had slowly replaced my identity as a beloved daughter with my identity as an aspiring physician. My future vocation, while good and holy, had become an idol that I had placed even above the Lord. When my plans crumbled, so did my entire identity.

We are embarking on Holy Week in the midst of a pandemic. Today, on Palm Sunday, we place last year’s palms on the makeshift altar that is our coffee table and we listen from our living rooms to the Passion of Christ on our television. I have found myself meditating on the 10th Station of the Cross, where Jesus is stripped naked (Matthew 27:28-30). I always used to focus on humiliation and shame, but there is more. In “An Examination of the Medical Evidence for the Physical Death of Christ”, Dr. Bret Thompson and Dr. Brad Harrub describe each moment of Christ’s Passion from a medical perspective. They explain, “Each time Jesus was stripped or made to wear this robe, the fresh wounds would reopen and bleed, inflicting still more pain.” As they ripped the garment from his tender skin, his healing wounds would be reopened. His cloak would have been his very last earthly possession, stripped away. In these last few weeks, it feels like some of the things we hold the dearest here on Earth have been stripped from us. These are things we would never want to surrender on our own, for it would be too painful. Christ knows this excruciating pain more than anyone. Dr. Thompson and Dr. Harrub continue, “And yet He continued on towards the cross, even though He had the power to stop the pain and agony at any given second. (John 19:17-18) ” Oh yes, the cross. I am reminded that our journey in this world as Christians may be marked by suffering, but Jesus shows us that it does not have the final say.

Photo/Image courtesy of Mary Ann Etling

I always pick a word for the year. I know it is silly and I typically change it or get sick of it by February, but my word for 2020 is hope. We have hope that even in this season of sickness and isolation, our God is alive and working. We have hope that as we are stripped of the things we hold the most dear, God will enter into our broken hearts. We have hope that even in this sea of cancellations and uncertain futures, God has a plan for us that will bring beauty to the world. We have hope that our suffering is not meaningless, but when united to Christ’s, it can redeem the world.
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"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."
- Romans 15:13

I used to dream about the day that I returned to the Catholic hospital in Uganda in my white coat, prepared to serve alongside and learn from my Ugandan colleagues. If I am being honest, I still do. But today, I am dreaming about the morning that cathedrals around the world are opened up again, and we can run to receive the Eucharist. I am dreaming about the day when we can sit before the Eucharist in adoration chapels, face-to-face with Our Beloved. Christ’s body given up for us. Have hope, dear brothers and sisters. The resurrection is coming.