More than ever before the message of Christmas for the former Master of the Dominicans is about Christ sharing the precariousness of human existence. He records his coming to terms with a cancer diagnosis and what it taught him about mortality – and patience

In May, I had two operations for cancer of the mouth, an ironic affliction for a member of the Order of Preachers. A few weeks later I was sitting at my desk, trying to catch up with the backlog of unanswered emails. Suddenly I was bowled over by the realisation that I was mortal and must die. I have been present at many deaths, and spent time in places haunted by death: Rwanda, Burundi, Syria, Iraq and so on.

In theory I knew that I too must die, just as I know that our little planet must someday be swallowed up by the Sun. But that morning, at the age of 71, late in the day, I became aware that my existence was precarious.

In Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel, The Leopard, a couple of young people look at the portrait of an ancestor, but his death meant nothing to them: “For both of them death was purely an intellectual concept, a facet of knowledge as it were and no more, not an experience which pierced the marrow of their bones. Death, oh, yes, it existed of course, but was something that happened to others.” On that day I had a vivid realisation that it must happen to me.