Caroline Aigle: Becoming a Gift of Love

Like most young peo­ple today we tend to live our lives on fast for­ward, speed­ing fran­ti­cally through our daily rou­tine: school, work, sports, home­work, friends, fam­ily, … and faith.
…Oh yeah, … faith…
As we live our fast-​​paced lives there is a dan­ger that we can put faith at the end of the list. As long as every­thing is speed­ing nicely along, it doesn’t seem to be that much of a prob­lem. But there are moments that reveal how deep our faith is, and some­times these can be moments that call us to true hero­ism. This is the story of some­one who had to make a deci­sion of faith, a deci­sion in which faith became heroic love.

Born to Fly
Speed is sec­ond nature in the life of a com­bat fighter pilot. Car­o­line Aigle, the first woman fighter pilot in France, knew all about speed. At the age of twenty-​​five, she was fly­ing one of the fastest com­bat fight­ers in the French Air Force - the Mirage 2000-​​5.

Born in 1974 in Mon­tauban France, Car­o­line lived as a daugh­ter of the mil­i­tary. As a child, she spent some years in Africa; her father was a mil­i­tary doc­tor. At the age of four­teen, she entered the French mil­i­tary acad­emy at Saint-​​Cyr. Car­o­line grad­u­ated vale­dic­to­rian from the fore­most engi­neer­ing school in France. In May of 1999, she received the cov­eted fighter pilot wings, becom­ing the first woman fighter pilot in French his­tory. She received a pro­mo­tion to the rank of Com­man­dant. (There is no U.S. rank equiv­a­lent to Com­man­dant. It falls between the U.S. ranks for Cap­tain and Major.) Always an ath­lete, Car­o­line also became the French and Mil­i­tary cham­pion of the triathlon.

Mis­sion Impos­si­ble
Hero­ism is a trait com­mon to all fighter pilots, and Car­o­line was no excep­tion. Uncom­mon how­ever, was the oppor­tu­nity that God pro­vided for her to be a hero­ine – and it was not as a pris­oner of war or because she received a com­men­da­tion for being wounded in bat­tle. Noth­ing, in fact, includ­ing her out­stand­ing mil­i­tary edu­ca­tion, had fore­shad­owed the plan that God had for her. In July of this year, Car­o­line was diag­nosed with an advanced case of melanoma, a type of skin can­cer. She was thirty-​​two years old. She was also five and a half months pregnant.

Car­o­line and her hus­band, Christophe Dekete­laere — a fighter pilot him­self — already had one healthy young son named Marc. At the time of her diag­no­sis, Car­o­line was encour­aged to abort her baby so she could receive treat­ment for the can­cer. With the sup­port of her hus­band, she chose to post­pone the treat­ment and carry her baby for as long as she could. Accord­ing to her hus­band, Car­o­line wanted her baby to have “the max­i­mum chance” for survival.

Believ­ing in Love
Caroline’s son, Gabriel, was born three and a half months pre­ma­ture by cesarean sec­tion at the begin­ning of August. His birth came less than three weeks before her death. Car­o­line saw her son sev­eral times and was even able to hold him before she died. Gabriel’s prog­no­sis is good; he should live a full life. In the most heroic of acts, Car­o­line secured the future of her son by plac­ing his needs before her own.
The story of Car­o­line reminds us all how quickly the things of this world can change. The time from her diag­no­sis to her death was just over a month. She did not have the lux­ury of time to pon­der her deci­sion. Like a reflec­tion of her fast fly­ing days, the choice Car­o­line was forced to make needed to be done quickly. We can see by the out­come of this sit­u­a­tion the strength of the woman that was Car­o­line. She believed in love; she hoped for her sons’ future; and she was hero­ically gen­er­ous in think­ing of the needs of another before herself.

Women as a Wit­ness of love
There is some­thing incred­i­ble about a woman’s love, a mother’s love. It’s a mir­a­cle that per­haps we become so accus­tomed to that it takes some­one like Car­o­line to help us step back and appre­ci­ate the strength and total­ity of this kind of love. Here was a woman who seemed to have it all, and yet so gladly sac­ri­ficed every­thing for that lit­tle child. Her love gave him a chance, a chance to live, a chance to maybe expe­ri­ence some of the beau­ti­ful things Car­o­line had experienced.

Pope John Paul II talked often about the dig­nity of women. It was a theme very close to his heart. He reminded us that a woman’s dig­nity, her great­ness, is shown espe­cially by her capac­ity to love and to draw out love in oth­ers. A woman’s heart nat­u­rally makes room for oth­ers. A woman’s heart is a spe­cial sign of the love of God. It is also a reminder that we as human beings find our deep­est ful­fill­ment in love, in being loved, and in turn becom­ing a gift of love. Even though Car­o­line had reached so many excit­ing goals in life, she showed us that what is most ful­fill­ing is love, even when it means total self-​​giving, or per­haps espe­cially then. When Car­o­line held her lit­tle child in her arms she knew that the sac­ri­fice of love was well worth it. Her heart had made room for another, even though it meant leav­ing the world herself.

Learn­ing to Open Out to Oth­ers
Our Chris­t­ian faith teaches us to love with gen­eros­ity. Car­o­line Aigle was a Catholic. The priest who cel­e­brated her funeral was the same priest who had cel­e­brated the wed­ding Mass for her and her hus­band, Christophe, a few years ear­lier. He recalled that when Car­o­line and Christophe sought him out for mar­riage prepa­ra­tion, they asked him for a book that spoke not about the love of one for the other, “but rather about the love that opens us to love others.”

Beyond Secu­rity
Car­o­line Aigle chose love for an unborn child rather than choos­ing secu­rity for her­self. As a woman, she answered the call of Christ who tells us: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). We are also called to be this exam­ple of love in our every day lives. Our cir­cum­stances may not be as dire as those faced by Car­o­line and other women like her, but each day we have an oppor­tu­nity to choose love of neigh­bor over our­selves – in the cafe­te­ria when some­one pushes past us in line, after din­ner when our mother demands we fin­ish our chores before call­ing our friends, per­haps with our lit­tle brother when he scrib­bles crayon all over our Eng­lish paper. These may seem like small choices, but it is the small choices that get us ready for the more heroic ones. A hero is made in the day-​​to-​​day choices of love and gen­eros­ity.
Another out­stand­ing trait seen in Caroline’s choice is the hope she showed for her son’s future. Even in the most bleak of sit­u­a­tions, the hope that this mother had for her child can be seen in the fact that she wanted him to have “the max­i­mum chance” for survival.

Tough Ques­tions
How is it that this child could sur­vive while his mother did not? This is a hard ques­tion. Some­times when pain enters our lives we are faced with a mys­tery we can­not quite com­pre­hend. The deep­est answer is trust. Hope also means trust. It means trust that the Father still loves us in spite of the pain. It means trust­ing that God can bring some­thing very beau­ti­ful from the pain. Trust that, like Christ, the road to giv­ing life also passes through the cross. Yes, love also means cross and sac­ri­fice, but at the same time it means life. We must believe in the abil­ity of God to bring good from all things, to bring life from the cross. Caroline’s exam­ple showed the power of hope. She believed in God’s power to bring good even from suf­fer­ing and death.

Find­ing the Inner Strength
We nat­u­rally admire some­one like Car­o­line, and won­der if we would have her strength faced with the tremen­dous deci­sion she had to make. One of the best ways to learn to become a per­son like her, who can make the heroic choice when needed, is to learn to pray. Prayer is speak­ing with God. In a con­ver­sa­tion, one talks and the other lis­tens. Prayer is not just us talk­ing to God – telling him what we want and how we want it. Prayer is also lis­ten­ing and learn­ing more about the plan that God has for us. When we pray God does not mag­i­cally spell out his plan for us but in prayer we learn to trust. We learn to see his prov­i­dence. In prayer we learn that we are deeply loved by God, even when he allows the cross in our lives. And if we learn in prayer that we are loved, we will also feel the desire to let oth­ers know God’s love, the desire to become givers, not just tak­ers, givers like Car­o­line. We must set aside time each day to talk and lis­ten to God.

A Call to True Great­ness
Many times, peo­ple today do not see the real impor­tance of how faith fits into their busy lifestyle. Becom­ing peo­ple of faith will help us reach true great­ness and true ful­fill­ment. Love, hope, gen­eros­ity, and prayer will help us to grow into peo­ple who will be able to make the heroic choices when we have the chance. We will become more like Car­o­line if we face even our tough­est deci­sions think­ing of oth­ers and not only ourselves.