I remember going to the sacrament of reconciliation and saying to God, deep inside myself, "It’s you who should be asking me for forgiveness, not me asking you!" It is this pride that my accident had as its mission to break.

Since my accident, I have discovered many different dimensions to the cross. It purifies, of course, but it also has its own mysterious mission.

I remember one night when I was suffering in the hospital and couldn’t sleep. It was one of the hardest nights of my life.

When morning came, it occurred to me that perhaps someone had died during the night and, if so, maybe that was why the Lord had allowed me to experience this terrible suffering: to share this person’s burden.

In fact, I found out that same morning that a man I love very much had died that night of a heart attack. He was a neighbor who had become my friend, a man who often asked me, "Where is he, this God of yours? When I see all my friends suffering and dying, I ask myself, where is your God?"

When I found out that he himself had died, I was able by God’s grace to say to the Lord, "If I was suffering for him, I am content to have suffered." God had shown me that my suffering had meaning.

Some time later, I heard a homily in which the priest spoke a lot about unity. As I listened, I wondered: if God wants unity so much, why has he allowed the opposite in my body? Why had he allowed my mind to be separated from my body?

Even as I asked myself this question, the Lord gave me an answer in my heart: "André, are you willing to accept being broken in your body so that you can offer this brokenness for the work of unity? A little bit like I did, I who died to give you life?

Are you willing to follow me on this way, the way of the cross? Your body, a body that is paralyzed because it is separated from its head, is a little bit like the world in which you live—without its head, without God. I am asking you to offer up the brokenness of your body for the brokenness of this world you live in."

Gently, the Lord had once again led me to discover that suffering has meaning.

I have to admit that the very things the Lord permitted me to lose for my own good, he returned to me in a far greater way—a spiritual way.

—My strength: My physical strength, the Lord wants to replace with faith, a strength that is much greater.

—My appearance: My muscles have atrophied, I’ve lost my hair, and I have begun to gain weight. But God wants to give me the true and only lasting beauty, which is love. He loved me first and showed me through Elizabeth and brothers in the Church that his love doesn’t demand something in exchange. It is free, and now I can choose to love that way if I want to.

—My health: My health is gone, and I could easily die at any time of pneumonia or a kidney infection. The Lord is teaching me that true health is eternal life, already lived in the present. Nothing is better than that!

—My liberty: I no longer have the liberty to do what I want, when I want. However, God is in the process of giving me a much greater liberty—that of being at peace, no matter what happens to me. He is also giving me the joy of knowing that I am his child and that he really loves me.

I have discovered all this and more through my cross, my paralysis. This is why I have not been crushed by this cross. Instead I am grateful for it.

—Translated and used with permission from Le Nic, (October 7, 2007), Rawdon, Quebec.