ABSTRACT
Cancer is a family of diseases often characterized by rapid and relatively unrestrained proliferation of undifferentiated cells that invade bodily organs and tissues and spread from original growth sites to distant areas in the body. It is an invasive, powerful growth that consumes and destroys vital life processes. Cancer is modern man’s most dread disease, an in sidious process seemingly victimizing without warning, without reason, without meaning. Even the word cancer1 strikes horror, bringing to mind images of the physical body eaten away by the ravenous advance of a con suming malignancy. It becomes a genuine mortificatio2-a true dark night of the soul. Perhaps in no other way does an individual experience the deepest possible meaning of “ autonomous” than in cancer attacking, seiz ing, and consuming his life. In it, he is confronted by a truly other, a powerful numen3 threatening his very existence.
