Fr. Montz: Brain tumor has unleashed 'gratitude'

Except when viewed through the eyes of faith, the incongruity of it all made no sense.

Twelve hours before neurosurgeons would begin their work removing a tumor from his brain, Father Jeffrey Montz, 40, the coordinator of spiritual formation at Notre Dame Seminary, stood inside the Abita Brewery in Abita Springs to deliver an informal talk on the dangers of the occult to 100 St. Peter parishioners as part of the parish’s “Thirst for Truth” summer series.

Father Montz already had eaten his pre-op supper – a salad tossed together by his mother Sandra in her north Covington home – and he sipped on water as he answered questions about how the devil, just as a lion in the animal kingdom, preys upon the weak.

Father Montz’s surgeons told him he could drink water until midnight.

“I had told my mom and dad, ‘I know I’m not going to sleep much before the surgery, so I’ll just sleep during the surgery,’” Father Montz said, smiling.

When his life changed three months ago on vacation with his family in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Father Montz recalled another juxtaposition of joy and suffering. He had taken his electric motorcycle on the road trip, and now he was riding by himself on the Foothills Parkway when he stopped to soak in the beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains.

“I was just sitting there enjoying nature, and I knew something was going on, but I thought it was anxiety, because I have had moments where it felt like my brain would just freeze up and then my left foot would go numb,” Father Montz said.

Three days after returning home, Father Montz was walking into a frame shop when his vision began closing in and his left foot went numb. He called his mother to pick him up because he didn’t think it was safe for him to drive.

“We’re going to the doctor,” Sandra told him.

Later that evening, the doctor phoned with results of the CT scan. It revealed a large tumor on his brain. At first, because of its size and tentacles, the tumor was thought to have been inoperable. After a followup consultation, another surgeon said most of the tumor could be removed.

“The two most-common side effects would be on my vision and losing feeling in my whole right side,” Father Montz said.

The surgery did, in fact, cause an imbalance in the visual pictures sent from each of his eyes to the brain.

“Technically it’s that my brain is not coordinated yet, and that could take up to a year for that to come back into line,” he said. “So, now, when I pray the Liturgy of the Hours, I close one eye most of the time to read. If I try to look at it with both eyes, particularly up close, things are blurry.”

In the midst of the unknown, Father Montz is finding grace everywhere he looks and is clinging to the virtue of gratitude. He tears up when he recalls what his mother told him after doctors told him initially his tumor was inoperable.

“She said, ‘I wish it was me who got this,’” Father Montz recalled. “She was taking this so hard because I was her child. And I told her, ‘No, I’m grateful to the Lord.’ I had a sense of peace. I told the Lord, ‘I feel like I have accomplished everything I would want to accomplish in life. I’m just at peace.’”

“Oligodendroglioma” – the type of brain cancer he has – is a fearsome word, but among cancers, it is described as among the most treatable.

“I’m grateful to the Lord,” Father Montz said. “It’s become a much more positive diagnosis in the sense that the doctors have said, ‘If you had to get a brain tumor, you got the right one.’ It’s the least lethal of the tumors. The doctor said that even if we had found this a year before, we probably wouldn’t have done anything. We probably would have just waited. I’ve probably had this for the last three years, and I thought it was anxiety – almost like a panic attack. I just didn’t understand it because I’m not an anxious person.”

Sandra Montz and her husband Wayne recall when their son was just 4 years old, they had an inkling he might become a priest. Sandra was mopping the floor late at night after the kids had gone to bed, and three times, Jeffrey got out of bed and told his mother “a woman” was talking to him.

Almost a bit annoyed, Sandra told Jeffrey to get back to bed and if it happened again, he should ask the woman who she was and what she wanted.

“The third time I came out of bed, I told my mom, ‘It was Mary, and she said she wants me to be a priest,’” Father Montz said.

“So, I told Wayne,” Sandra recalled, “‘we’d better start saying the rosary.’”

Although Father Montz has no specific recollection of that Mary moment – “All I have is a memory of the gentleness and sweetness of the Blessed Mother” – he said it significantly impacted the life of everyone in his family.

“Even though they didn’t share all the details of the story with us children until later, my mom said it had an impact on them because that really started them praying together as a couple,” he said. “We started off with three Hail Marys, but it eventually grew into the rosary. As I got into high school (at Archbishop Hannan), my mom would take my sister to adoration one week, and then the next week, my dad would take me.”

The prayers for his healing are coming from everywhere. Father Montz had a devotion to the life and teachings of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, and when he went for post-graduate spiritual theology studies in Rome, he did his dissertation on Archbishop Sheen’s spirituality of the priesthood.

Since his illness, Father Montz has asked for prayers through the intercession of Archbishop Sheen.

“I all along have trusted that God is going to use this in how he sees is most apt,” Father Montz said. “For me, the greatest gift is that people are more aware of Fulton Sheen and are praying to him and reading about him. I’ve had a number of people say they’ve started listening to his talks. That, to me, is the greatest gift.”

What lies ahead is a six-week regimen of radiation – five days a week – and a year of chemotherapy, and Father Montz is hopeful that the enervating effects of the medicine won’t detour him from his main responsibilities of providing spiritual direction to more than two dozen seminarians at Notre Dame Seminary.

“Seeing the holiness of the people I direct is extremely rewarding and encouraging for me,” he said. “Even seeing the struggles of people, as well, there is a sense of wanting to do all I can to help them and wanting myself to be as holy an instrument of God’s grace as possible.”

If his vision, for now, remains cloudy, his spiritual insight remains 20-20. Everything is grace.

“As I was sitting outside drinking my coffee and praying at my parents’ house – they have a house on four or five acres – a hummingbird came by,” Father Montz said. “To see the birds and all of that is such a gift to me.”

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