Faith Without Deliverance

Saint Mark Ji Tianxiang was a physician in nineteenth century China who became dependent on opium after using it to treat an illness. His priest understood his repeated inability to stop as a failure of repentance, and Mark spent roughly thirty years unable to receive the sacraments. He continued practicing his faith through that exclusion and the addiction he could not overcome. In 1900, he was killed during the Boxer Rebellion after refusing to renounce Christianity. His life ended in fidelity to God without the freedom from addiction he had sought.