On Saturday night, Father Dennis Callahan of Christ King Parish passed away after a seven month struggle with ALS, a disease that causes motor neurons, and thus muscle movement, to slowly deteriorate. I was lucky enough to go visit him a couple of weeks ago and learn a lot more about him than I knew before.
Even though he was afflicted with such a sad disease, Father Dennis was surprisingly cheerful. I had expected to have to carry on conversation and was worried about running out of things to say, but he actually wouldn’t stop talking. It was obviously incredibly difficult for him to talk and laugh, but he did so for a couple of hours.
The most amazing thing about him, though, was his attitude toward his disease. Even though he needed assistance in almost everything that he did, he believed that the disease was a blessing. He said that as a priest he had been meeting with people all of his life, but now he had the chance to listen much more deeply to his visitors’ stories as well as to tell his own. Without the disease he would not have met and talked to the many people who came to visit him.
Obviously, Tosa has lost a great man, but at least many of us got to know him on a greater level first. Father Dennis’ disease was definitely not just a blessing for him, because if it weren’t for the disease, I wouldn’t have gone to visit him.
I thought I was going to help him get through a difficult time, but he ended up showing me that something so difficult could be the complete opposite depending on the way you look at it. He told me that he believed that life should be all about love and be “light and easy.” Anyone could see that he was living his own words, regardless of such a hard situation. It’s amazing that Father Dennis could have this positive mentality towards something so painful; it makes me wonder how much better my own life would be if I could approach my much smaller problems with the same attitude.
