The Body of Christ and the Cancer of Evil

As individual bodies afflicted by demons, we are infected with the virus of evil — a disease that brings cancer to the soul. It is within our power to face the cure, yet it often feels as though we suffer against our will. We are afflicted whether we want to be or not.

Similarly, the Body of Christ lives as our bodies do. Some of its members become purified and act as antibodies. At the first sign of infection, the disease is recognized, contained, and destroyed. In the early life of the Church, however, the immune system was weak — the body was beaten down and confused, and so the antibodies gathered in councils to identify and fight the spreading disease. Through those councils, the memory of each illness was written into the Church’s DNA, preserved in her Tradition, that the Body might never forget what had once threatened its life.

Still, there are many infected members, and many limbs that have been severed — cut off from the life of the Body, outside the communion of the Church. Christ’s Body is overrun by viruses of ignorance and hatred, its cells weakened by sin. Evil infiltrates through the weak — through us — and it is our task to turn toward the cure, to listen to the Head rather than ourselves.

When we refuse, we become cells that turn against the Body. We amputate Christ by our disobedience. He suffers an eternal cancer — not because His divinity can decay, but because His love refuses to abandon His creation. In His mercy, He chose to enter into a world of sickness, to take upon Himself the infection, and to suffer eternally with it — knowing that the health of existence would one day far outweigh the illness.

Is it fair that others suffer eternally? It seems they choose to. For in rejecting the cure, they crucify the very Life that brought them into being. And insofar as we are all His creation — His cells, His body — every time we refuse life, we participate in His death.