"It's hard to bear yourself at the foot of the cross. And it's hard to recognize your own shortcomings, but it's also the only thing that helps."
Claire Lai had been reading Fulton J. Sheen, the archbishop and trailblazing American TV host who is advancing on the road to sainthood in the Catholic Church this week with a beatification Mass at the Dome at America's Center in downtown St. Louis. Sheen was meditating on "the Blessed Mother, Mary Magdalene, and St. John, the most beloved disciple, at the foot of the cross" of Jesus. She brought up the Scriptural image and quote from Sheen in an interview earlier this year about her father, Jimmy Lai. He has been living his own hell — away from his family, the sacraments of his beloved Catholic Church and the freedom he fought for as a newspaper editor and entrepreneur. He's a political prisoner — mostly in solitary confinement — in Hong Kong, incarcerated under trumped-up charges under a bogus national-security law that pretty much exists to silence — and make an example of — him.
And now his daughter has been diagnosed with cancer — and with it her plea for her father's release has only intensified. My anger at China only increases by the day, knowing that Claire can't have her father with her, knowing he can't be at her side.
Claire recently shared advice that her father gave her in a letter shortly before she was diagnosed: "Hold on to hope and don't be impatient. You have to know and trust that God's way is not your way."
"The humid Hong Kong summers are the harshest," Claire writes about her father's confinement. "Summer 2026 was particularly volatile, with both heatwaves and thunderstorms that left the prison floors damp. The windows in his cell are covered over, blocking access to fresh air and natural light."
Locked away for six years and counting, Jimmy Lai's condition declines. But the man, despite his age, 78, and ailments, is an icon of resilience. "[H]e has seldom been overwhelmed — by anything," Claire writes. "But when he was told recently that I have cancer, he broke down."
Within a month of his imprisonment, Jimmy Lai committed to fasting on Fridays. When the weather is cold, it makes him shiver — he's lost so much weight while there. Claire worries about the fasting, but his reasoning is difficult to argue with. The guards would set a tray of food before him anyway, and he has admitted he has considered breaking the fast. "I was tempted, of course, but I did not yield," she quotes him explaining. But then he "looked at the picture of Christ on the Cross I put on the wall" — he has taken up religious art during this time of isolation. He draws Christ on the cross, often with Mary. He's also worked on the image of the Pietà — Mary holding her crucified son in her arms. While gazing on the Savior on his instrument of execution, he wrote: "I realized how trivial my shivering was compared to what the Lord suffered for our sins."
Having learned from her father, Claire writes: "My father bears all his ills patiently and joyfully, recognizing the graces they bring. Over the last six years, he has offered up his physical and emotional ailments in union with our Lord. Knowing that, when united with Christ's suffering, it carries redemption and divine grace. This is a profound mystery."
Strikingly, she adds: "I hope to bear my much smaller cross half as well as he has. That this will unite me more deeply with both Christ and my earthly father. Taken this way, it's hard to see my diagnosis as anything but a blessing."
God loves these beautiful, courageous people, to borrow a phrase from Fulton Sheen's famous "Life is Worth Living" sign-off. We may not be worthy of them, but they show us how to imitate the goodness of our creator. This is the Christian life. Thanks be to God for this family.
(Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book "A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living." She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan's pro-life commission in New York and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.)