Former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) announced on social media that he has been diagnosed with metastatic stage-four pancreatic cancer.
“This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die,” he wrote on X. “Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.”
Despite the diagnosis, Sasse expressed his hope in Christ and the meaning of the Christmas season. “As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come,” he wrote.
“Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say ‘hope’ when what we mean is ‘optimism.’ To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient,” he wrote. “It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.”
Sasse went on to declare that “we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.”
“Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective,” he added. Sasse then quoted a stanza from the hymn Amazing Grace: “When we’ve been there 10,000 years…We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise.”
“But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: ‘The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given’ (Isaiah 9),” Sasse wrote.
Sasse represented Nebraska in the U.S. Senate from 2015 to 2023. According to the National Cancer Institute, the five-year survival rate of stage 4 pancreatic cancer is 3.1%.
