Father Corbett, I saw, someone sent me something that they'd seen in the media recently saying,

without health, nothing else matters, something like that.

What would you, as a to mystic moral theologian?

Would I agree with that?

Would you agree?

No, I wouldn't agree with that.

Actually, sometimes the loss of health can be the occasion when you do discover what matters.

So explain why that would be the case.

Well, I mean, it seems counterintuitive, doesn't it?

It does.

But I'm thinking, I mean, I can understand why people would say health is, in a certain sense,

everything, because it's attached to a kind of a state of being.

It's the kind of a coordination of order among the parts,

a good habit, and you're kind of ready

to spring into action, you know,

when you're in good health, you're ready to go, you know?

But when you're not in good health,

when things aren't working well, it's not like you are ready to spring into action to go someplace.

In a way you're already there. Flannery O'Connor once described sickness as not so much a state as a place.

She said, I've never been anywhere else but sick.

And it's a place of solitude where some of the deeper questions

about your life can emerge, can actually be heard.

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