A promise to God: Cancer gives catechist new perspective on prayer, religious education

David Ballintyn gives a first Communion textbook to Aaron Adrian, a second-grader at St. Mark School, during a Jan. 9 meeting at St. Mark the Evangelist Church in Indianapolis. Aaron’s father, Anthony Adrian, stands behind him.

By Sean Gallagher

(Listen to this story being read by the reporter)

In the spring of 2005, David Ballintyn was a new graduate of the University of Notre Dame.

But unlike many young graduates who strike out into the marketplace with ambitious career plans, Ballintyn decided to give of himself to God by serving two years as an apprentice in parish catechetical ministry through Notre Dame’s Echo program.

Over the course of the summer, as he was planning to minister at St. Mark the Evangelist Parish in Indianapolis, Ballintyn became sick and was later diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.

In the process, he discovered that God was asking more of him than he had originally planned to give.

Plans put on hold

Instead of moving in with his four fellow Echo apprentices in Indianapolis, Ballintyn returned to his Delaware hometown where an MRI revealed his brain tumor.

“I just felt sick all over [when I saw it],” he said. “It’s the kind of stuff you see in the movies. It was a huge egg inside [my] head. You could see it right there.”

Ballintyn’s neurologist referred him to a brain surgeon in Indianapolis, the place where he had originally planned to live for two years.

When Ballintyn and his parents arrived for biopsy surgery in September 2005, Harry Dudley, associate executive director of faith formation of the archdiocese’s Office of Catholic Education, opened his family’s home to them.

Mary Lynn Cavanaugh, director of religious education at St. Mark Parish who was Ballintyn’s planned Echo mentor, lent him and his family a car for their short stay in Indianapolis

“He was totally upbeat and positive,” said Cavanaugh. “We talked very broadly about when he would come to St. Mark. The issue wasn’t if he was coming, it was always when he would get here.”

The power of prayer

Mixed in with Ballintyn’s confidence was fear about his future, a fear that he laid before God in prayer.

“I started making promises [to God], fumbling in prayer,” he said. “I was like, ‘Listen. Bring me through this, and I will be more devoted to you.”

“[But] I had decided very concretely that I was not going to be angry at God at all,” Ballintyn said. “I understood that things like this are not God’s fault.”

Ballintyn asked many friends to pray for him. They, in turn, passed the prayer request to others that he didn’t even know.

“I had church groups in Arizona e-mailing me,” he said. “This whole thing is the part that is the most

emotional for me. It was so beautiful to have all these people praying.”

Although Ballintyn and countless others were praying that he might survive, the Notre Dame graduate wanted to make the prayer effort his “dying ministry.”

He wanted to share with his family and friends that if “this wasn’t necessarily going to work out the way they wanted it to … that didn’t mean that God wasn’t working. It didn’t mean that they were being ignored.”

The wisdom of children

Ballintyn received radiation treatment for his tumor at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York in October 2005.

Because of the nature of his tumor, Ballintyn was treated in its pediatric ward. Seeing children battling

cancer was a “wake-up call” for him.

“They were so happy,” Ballintyn said. “I expected a lot more crying.

“But it was quite the opposite. I was made keenly aware of the children’s optimism, of the children’s desire to live.”

Ballintyn’s own desire to live was strengthened when he learned that the probability of a total elimination of the cancer was 90 percent or more.

“That’s actually [when] my prayer requests ended up shifting,” he said. “I sent out e-mails and I said, ‘Listen, I’m going to be fine. We need to pray. We need to pray for these kids.’ ”

Two days after Christmas, Ballintyn learned that the radiation treatments were successful and that he was clear of his cancer.

‘I need to go. I need to do it.’

About a week later, Ballintyn returned to Indianapolis, where he had come three months earlier for brain surgery. Now he was coming to make due on his promises.

“Thinking a little bit about those promises that I had made to God, I thought, ‘I can’t sit around. I have a chance,’ ” Ballintyn said. “ ‘ I have life. I need to go. I need to do it.’ ”

But his youthful enthusiasm was at first tempered by the radiation treatment’s effects on his body.

“[Ministry] was tiring,” Ballintyn said. “I took naps almost every day.”

Cavanaugh, who describes her Echo apprentice as a “go-getter,” was aware of his limitations.

“[Catechetical] ministry is very intense and [it] comes at you quite quickly,” she said. “I had to be intentional to hide some areas from him for a while.”

Ballintyn’s four fellow Echo apprentices based in Indianapolis were also deliberate in incorporating him into the community life that he had missed out on for several months.

“We were all very excited for him to come back,” said Echo apprentice Alexa Puscas, who ministers at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Indianapolis.

Having Ballintyn in the community after his battle with cancer offered Puscas a new view on life.

“God does not plan for these things to happen,” she said. “But we know that God can turn ugly things into beautiful things and that, whatever happens in our lives, there can be some good and new life brought out of it.

“And I think that, from the perspective that we have now, we can look back on it and we can see all of the green shoots of new life that have come from this in our work and in our community and in our personal relationships.”

Family catechesis

For Ballintyn, one “green shoot” blossomed in a new perspective on his catechetical ministry.

“It is a family endeavor,” he said. “It is something that parents can bring to their children. But it is something that children can bring right back to their parents.”

Ballintyn experienced that firsthand in his experience with cancer.

“In my own family, I realized that, while we were a very devout Catholic family, my own faith journey had brought me to a point where I needed to catechize my family,” he said.

“I needed to teach them. I had very clear things I needed to say to my family about what I had learned about God and about prayer and about suffering and about death and about heaven.”

Now Ballintyn relishes the opportunity to speak with parents about passing on the faith to their children.

“I just snatch up the opportunities to talk to parents,” he said. “And I try to give them the practical resources that they can [use].”

Coming back to children

Ballintyn’s battle with cancer has undoubtedly had an impact upon the way he approaches catechetical ministry—whether it’s in speaking to parents or in one of his favorite activities, observing preschoolers and kindergartners in a Montessori-style religious education class offered at St. Mark Parish.

“I get to see… just the unbelievable fire in their eyes just from having these small experiences of Christ,” he said. “It helps me understand how Christ expects us to approach him and to talk to him. It’s humility, which is something that any cancer patient has been through.”

In the coming months, Ballintyn’s Echo apprenticeship at St. Mark Parish will come to an end. At this point, he is contemplating entering into full-time campus ministry.

However he might try to form the faith of others in the future, Ballintyn recognized that while his battle with cancer will have an impact on his ministry, he doesn’t want to simply make it his “big story” that he tells in retreats and faith formation presentations.

If he brings it up with other people, he wants his story to strengthen their faith.

“It does open a line of connection between me and other people,’ Ballintyn said. “But I only feel comfortable using that line so that I can dirct them to the faith that I know.”†