The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) · Ascension

How a Man Battles Cancer (with Matthew James Christoff)

·49 min·3 clips

Matthew argues that suffering has meaning because Christ’s cross turns pain into redemptive offering.

Jeff Kavins opens the episode by saying he does not often bring guests onto the show. He presents the guest's story as the kind of witness other people need to hear. The conversation starts with cancer and the way a diagnosis can shake a person's world. Kavins speaks from his own experience with melanoma about 11 years earlier. He says he remembers hearing that word and feeling the battle ahead. The conversation turns to prayer as the first response and to drawing close to loved ones in prayer. It also gets into how a person tells family that something serious is happening. The guest says it takes time, care, and attention to the different ways people, including children, hear hard news. He emphasizes that people are not all the same in what they can handle. The conversation then shifts to the temptation to keep suffering private. He says people often do not want to seem vulnerable. He pushes back on that instinct. Speaking honestly, he says, can help others remember mortality and think differently about life. He also talks about reaching out to the people around you. He encourages building a band of Catholic brothers and leaning on them. The tone stays warm, direct, and practical throughout. Kavins and the guest keep returning to prayer as the ground beneath the whole response. Near the end, the prayer language becomes more explicit about suffering, redemption, and union with the cross. Kavins prays for miracles, but also for grace in suffering. The episode ends with a blessing and a promise to include notes and connections in the show notes.

As heard by us

A pastoral conversation about cancer that stays practical, prayerful, and unsentimental.

Episode 471 has Jeff Kavins treating cancer as something that unsettles the whole circle around a person, not just the patient. The conversation stays close to the practical questions that follow a diagnosis: how to tell children, how to speak to loved ones, and how to keep…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

When illness shakes a family, this gives you words, prayer, and a steadier way to face it.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast)