Ben Sasse: Mortality, Meaning, and the Future of America

Following up on my previous post, Ben Sasse: Death, Hope, and Joy:

Public Discourse: On Dying Well: Ben Sasse and the Vocation of Suffering, by Christopher O. Tollefsen (South Carolina; Author, Killing and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press 2026)):

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.

So, all in all, a propitious time to reflect on Sen. Ben Sasse’s announcement, 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.

Yet Sasse’s 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’s 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.

[T]he call to Christian hope is always, even when accompanied by temporal hope, also a call to hope for salvation and entrance into God’s Kingdom. This is not, Sasse rightly notes, “an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength.” No: it is hope in and for “a real Deliverer—a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place.”

This kind of hope cannot be detached from, and indeed seems to require an acceptance of, one’s 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’s 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? …

In his apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris, Pope Saint John Paul II writes, “Christ does not explain in the abstract the reasons for suffering, but before all else he says: ‘Follow me!’ Come! Take part through your suffering in this work of saving the world, a salvation achieved through my suffering! Through my Cross.’”

The Pope is here meditating on the words of St. Paul in Colossians: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.” 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, “In 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’s 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.” …

In my discussion of Ben Sasse’s announcement, I’ve 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’s redemptive work on our behalf.

In accepting his suffering in ways that at least approximate these fruits, Sasse thereby fulfills his vocation and shares in Christ’s 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 “in the land of the living … cleansed of all dirt, lit up, and transformed.”

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.