Let Go into Love
A 90-Day Catholic Companion for Cancer Patients and the People Who Care for Them
For the person who has just heard the word, and for the husband, daughter, sister or friend who drove them to the appointment. Each page is short enough to read on a bad day. Most of them have a line for each of you, so you can read yours and hand the book across the table.
Three parts, one page at a time
Part One: Moments
Thirty pages, each for one moment: the day of the news, the first night, waiting for results, the infusion chair, the night you can't pray, the day you're angry at God. Twelve of them are written for the one beside the bed. Find the page that matches today and read nothing else.
Part Two: Ninety Days
One page a day: a passage from Scripture, a short reflection, a line that begins Today I let go of, a prayer you can say out loud, and wide lines for your own hand. Twelve weeks, each opening with a story from the Gospels printed in full. Each month ends with a novena.
Part Three: Prayers
Prayers for the one who is ill, for the family, and for the people who care for the sick. Three prayers with Saint Leopold, the Sorrowful Mysteries read from the bed and from the chair, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, short prayers, asking for the Anointing of the Sick, and prayers for when death is near.
Letting go is not giving up
Let go doesn't mean stopping treatment, hoping less, or pretending things are fine. What you let go of in these pages is smaller and heavier than that: a sentence you keep saying to yourself, a fear, the habit of carrying everything alone. You let it go into someone's hands. That's what into love means.
What this book won't do
It doesn't promise a cure, and it gives no medical advice. Decisions about treatment, pain relief and care belong to the patient, the family and the medical team. What it does is keep you company, and give you words when yours have run out.
A companion saint
Saint Leopold Mandić was a small, frail Capuchin friar who spent most of his life hearing confessions in a tiny room in Padua. He had cancer himself, and in 2020 he was confirmed as the patron of people with cancer in Italy. You meet him three times in the book: at the beginning, in the nine days that close the first month, and in three prayers at the back.
- Scripture from the World English Bible
- Original prayers, alongside traditional prayers in their older English forms
- Wide ruled lines on every daily page, because during treatment the hand shakes
Try nine days of it first
The novena with Saint Leopold from the first month of the book, as a free PDF.