{"id":35808,"date":"2026-02-26T16:00:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T16:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cincinnatirighttolife.org\/?p=35808"},"modified":"2026-02-26T16:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T16:03:16","slug":"on-dying-well-ben-sasse-and-the-vocation-of-suffering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cincinnatirighttolife.org\/on-dying-well-ben-sasse-and-the-vocation-of-suffering\/","title":{"rendered":"On Dying Well: Ben Sasse and the Vocation of Suffering"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By: Christopher O. Tollefsen, originally published February 15, 2026, Public Discourse<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ben Sasse\u2019s recent announcement reveals to us both goods and virtues that show in his dying a glimmer of light, a stirring of hope, and the possibility of spring even in one\u2019s final winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

February is a good month to write, read, and think about death and dying. It is still constantly dark, it is cold, and winter seems to have now become a permanent reality. Yet at the same time, spring is on the horizon; we begin to see a glimmer of light, to feel the stirrings of hope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, all in all, a propitious time to reflect on Sen. Ben Sasse\u2019s announcement<\/a>, in December of last year, that he has been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. As he says, that diagnosis is without doubt a death sentence, a death that will be upon him rather quickly. He has now prematurely entered his own winter, and however much time he has left will in some ways be an ongoing February of suffering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Sasse\u2019s announcement reveals to us both goods and virtues that show in his dying a glimmer of light, a stirring of hope, and the possibility of spring even in one\u2019s final winter. All of us labor under the same death sentence that Sasse does, and so it is worth our time to reflect upon the lessons he offers us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start with the importance of knowledge. How many of us might be tempted to fantasy when given a lethal diagnosis? But Sasse confronts the truth: \u201cLast week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.\u201d No mincing words; no turning away from truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unquestionably this knowledge brings suffering. Indeed, suffering just is the awareness that things are not right, that our world, our character, our relationships with other human persons and with God, are broken. But Sasse\u2019s unflinching acknowledgment of the truth of his situation is good in itself, as all knowledge is, but also essential for him to be able to address his dying days in a way that allows him to suffer well, to realize whatever aspects of human flourishing\u2014and there are many\u2014that remain for him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the goods available to him is friendship. One cannot read Sasse\u2019s announcement without rejoicing that he will not die alone. To have \u201chalf-a-dozen buddies\u201d who are like brothers is indeed, as he says, a blessing. And \u201cfriends,\u201d for Sasse, and it is to be hoped for all of us, includes family. Sasse movingly writes of his wife of three decades as \u201cthe best friend a man could ever have,\u201d and he writes equally of the friendships he shares with his siblings, parents, and children.  <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, NE, 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

To reiterate, such friendships are a blessing in dying as in living, and those who wish to die well need to remember this essential truth: not to die alone requires that one not live alone. Of course, one cannot cultivate real friends simply<\/em> in order to have company in one\u2019s death; but one\u2019s life will be deficient in its living and ending if one has not sought and made good friends.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sasse writes, \u201cWe\u2019re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I\u2019ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.\u201d Good! Death and dying are serious business, but even serious business can be enhanced by playfulness, by a recognition that the tragedy of human existence is complemented by its continuing comic nature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those old enough to remember the ad that went \u201cHow do you spell relief? R-O-L-A-I-D-S\u201d can perhaps appreciate my family\u2019s response, almost forty years ago, to the funeral home director who oversaw our own father\u2019s death at forty-five from cancer, and who intoned to us, \u201cI hope sorrow brings relief.\u201d Many a Rolaids joke followed, and the humor kept us going in dark days. I hope the same is true for the Sasse family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me mention one more good I discern in the way Sasse seems to approach death and dying: the good of beauty. Looking to the next life, he anticipates an \u201cenduring beauty,\u201d and an eternity of singing God\u2019s praise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is impossible to think this longing for beauty and song in the life to come will not manifest itself now, in the life he still lives. And so should it be for us all. In addition to being, like humor, a balm against suffering, the enjoyment of real beauty offers us, I believe, a foretaste of that life to come. Those who are dying should seek it out; those who care for the dying should strive, amid their many other responsibilities, to make it available. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have thus far discussed the goods that are available to Sasse in his dying and that still, all the evidence of his announcement shows, animate his living: knowledge, friendship, family, humor, beauty. But Sasse also points to how certain virtues can make all the difference between dying well and dying poorly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Begin with gratitude. It surely helps in bearing one\u2019s sufferings if one is at the same time a grateful person: grateful for the life one has been given, for the goods of that life including friends and family, perhaps even grateful\u2014at the extreme edge of virtue, to be sure\u2014for what one has been asked to endure. Sasse is well aware of this\u2014the goods of which I have just been speaking are, indeed, his ongoing reasons for gratitude: \u201cI couldn\u2019t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must be a terrible spiritual burden to be incapable of gratitude in suffering and dying, however difficult the achievement of that virtue is. But all of us have more immediate opportunities to develop the virtue of gratitude now. Being a grateful person on a day-to-day basis is an important form of preparation for suffering well, and Sasse\u2019s posture of gratitude is a salutary reminder of that fact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One likewise must have hope. For many who suffer, hope encompasses the possibility that the source of suffering can be addressed and the burdens of suffering relieved. That is part of why we suffer: to motivate action toward the relief of suffering. And some of what is suffered even at the end of life remains within the realm of such hope. There are opportunities, for example, to restore our damaged or broken relationships, whether with friends, family, or God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the call to Christian hope is always, even when accompanied by temporal hope, also a call to hope for salvation and entrance into God\u2019s Kingdom. This is not, Sasse rightly notes, \u201can abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength.\u201d No: it is hope in and for \u201ca real Deliverer\u2014a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This kind of hope cannot be detached from, and indeed seems to require an acceptance of, one\u2019s suffering. The hope of the Christian in suffering and dying has to be a hope that bears the suffering one has been given, and never abandons the reliance on God\u2019s promised fidelity. That is surely one of the hardest of the hard Christian truths: that suffering well requires one not simply seek to eradicate it, but to in some measure accept it. How is that acceptance even possible? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I close with some brief and inadequate reflections on this topic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris<\/em><\/a>, Pope Saint John Paul II writes, \u201cChrist does not explain in the abstract the reasons for suffering, but before all else he says: \u2018Follow me!\u2019 Come! Take part through your suffering in this work of saving the world, a salvation achieved through my suffering! Through my Cross.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pope is here meditating on the words of St. Paul in Colossians:<\/a> \u201cNow I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ\u2019s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.\u201d Christ offers us in our sufferings, to which he has joined himself, the privilege of sharing in that salvific work itself, of continually completing that work with Christ. As John Paul elsewhere says, \u201cIn the cross, God has changed radically the meaning of suffering. The latter, which was the fruit and testimony of sin, has now become participation in Christ\u2019s redemptive expiation. As such, it contains within it, already now, the announcement of the definitive victory over sin and its consequences, by means of participation in the glorious resurrection of the Saviour.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we understand this \u201cparticipation\u201d?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The starting point is a recognition that the condition of sin is one of alienation: alienation from the world, with which human beings now stand in a broken relationship; alienation from one another; and above all, alienation from God. Christ\u2019s suffering and death on the cross is of course an atonement for sin, a sacrifice offered on behalf of all human beings in order to restore our relationship to God. Christ perfectly fulfills the will of his father, as Adam did not, remaining faithful to his mission of calling all peoples to repentance and the Kingdom even to the point of death. He thus overcomes, in his own humanity, the alienation caused by sin between human persons and God. God the Father in turn responds to that sacrificial gift by raising Jesus from the dead.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The complete fulfillment of this atoning work remains to come to fruition in the definitive Kingdom of Heaven, an ongoing and dynamic state of affairs marked by perfect communion between all persons, human and divine, and continuing, indeed ever-deepening, fulfillment in human goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while Christ\u2019s atoning work restores humanity to a right relationship with God, it remains necessarily incomplete in relation to each person who is called, as Sasse is now, to some form of personal suffering. For each such person must also, albeit with Christ\u2019s help, remain faithful to his or her own vocation to the end.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe that our vocations include suffering: the compassionate suffering with others that we are called to in acting like Christ, and the suffering that is permitted to us by God so that we may draw closer to him. Thus, the form of fidelity that is demanded of each of us, in order to complete the sufferings of Christ, is fidelity in suffering. That is what the pope calls \u201cparticipation in Christ\u2019s redemptive expiation.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the notes he left for his funeral homily, the theologian Germain Grisez offered this close paraphrase of section 39 of Gaudium et Spes<\/em><\/a>. From the Second Vatican Council: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Having completed the work God called them to do in this world, they will find rest. Moreover, their works will accompany them, and they will find once more, in the land of the living, all the good fruits of their nature and effort\u2014but cleansed of all dirt, lit up, and transformed. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In my discussion of Ben Sasse\u2019s announcement, I\u2019ve tried to indicate some of the good fruits of his, and by extension our, present suffering. Those fruits can include a deepening of our appreciation for and realization of human goods such as knowledge, friendship, family, or beauty; a deepening of the virtues of hope and gratitude; and ultimately, if these brief gestures toward a theology of atonement are sound, a closer relationship with the divine and a participation in Christ\u2019s redemptive work on our behalf. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In accepting his suffering in ways that at least approximate these fruits, Sasse thereby fulfills his vocation and shares in Christ\u2019s atoning work insofar as that work is an overcoming of the various alienations of sin and a reconciliation with God. He is thereby likewise building up the Kingdom of Heaven, that these goods and virtues, the fruits of his suffering, may eventually be found again \u201cin the land of the living \u2026 cleansed of all dirt, lit up, and transformed.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ben Sasse has led a noble life of public service marked by personal integrity and sacrifice. Yet in modeling an upright death that shares in the atoning work of his Savior, he strives now to meet the great final challenge given to him as part of his personal vocation. Let us pray for him in this final stage of his pilgrim journey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image: Ben Sasse\/PublicDiscourse-Gage Skidmore-WikimediaCommons.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christopher Tollefsen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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