Tom Dooley was a young doctor who gave up an easy career to organize hospitals and pour out his life in service to afflicted people in Southeast Asia. As he lay dying of cancer at age 34, Dooley wrote to the president of Notre Dame, his alma mater.
"Dear Father Hesburgh: They've got me down. Flat on the back, with plaster, sandbags, and hot water bottles. I've contrived a way of pumping the bed up a bit so that, with a long reach, I can get to my typewriter...Two things prompt this note to you. The first is that whenever my cancer acts up a bit...I turn inward. Less do I think of my hospitals around the world, or of 94 doctors, fund-raisers, and the like. More do I think of one Divine Doctor and my personal fund of grace...I have monstrous phantoms, all men do. And inside and outside the wind blows. But when the time comes, like now, then the storm around me does not matter. The winds within me do not matter. Nothing human or earthly can touch me. A peace gathers in my heart. What seems unpossessable, I can possess. What seems unfathomable, I can fathom. What is unutterable, I can utter. Because I can pray. I can communicate. How do people endure anything on earth if they cannot have God?"
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:7
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