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Chapter 1
Welcome
The image is as vivid in my mind's eye as it was fifty years ago: the long rows of beds in the drab green ward. It was the women's ward for MS (multiple sclerosis) patients in King's County Hospital. Each Saturday I would make my way along the line, visiting these women, many of them much too young, trapped in bodies that no longer responded to their least desires. I searched for words of comfort and consolation, for words that might give them some hope as they faced the empty years that lay ahead. By the end of the afternoon I was drained. I felt like some giant hand had roughly wrung me out.
I am sure that for most hospital chaplains the situation is quite different today. But I am sure we all share that pain and frustration when confronted with exposed human misery and we have not the salve to at least alleviate some of its burning. As the day wears on, and there are days after days, we ourselves begin to feel very raw. How much more can we take? Can our empathy stretch to cover yet another wound? In the freshness of the morning when we rise from our prayer, that which we want so much to bring to our dear patients that day seems in the succeeding hours to be wholly consumed. There seems to be nothing left to give beyond the worn-out words and the sacramental signs. How can we tap into the bottomless wells of the divine compassion? How can we somehow be the sacrament of the radiant hope of the risen Lord? How can we ourselves be saved from discouragement and despair, or just from that brownout that hardly brings comfort and light into the room and the heart of the sufferer? We need to know the way to the Source, how to get in touch with the Source, at least on a daily basis, but also how to step aside and dip in when we begin to realize we are close to drained. There is an old saying: It is better to teach a man how to fish than to give him fish. But maybe he needs a fish right now, before he can begin to learn. We need to bring Christ, with his strengthening comfort and consolation, to each one we are privileged to serve. It would be well if we can also put our patients in touch with the Source, show them the way to the Source, so that they themselves, as much as they want and need, can draw from the Living Water.
In many hospitals today, the patients fall largely into one of two categories: the quick in and out and the one who has come there to die. The former gives the chaplain little opportunity to develop a relationship with the patient. So many of our Lord's encounters were of this quickly passing sort. There comes to my mind immediately the day four young men were determined to see that their friend got to Jesus. They were soon dragging their jerry-rigged stretcher to the roof and pulling off the roof tiles. Jesus appreciated their energetic faith and responded, but in a way that was not quite expected. To the sick man: “Your sins are forgiven you.” Challenged, Jesus immediately related the physical sickness to the sickness of the soul. Responding to faith, bringing a healing word to the spirit of our patient, we may be doing far more than anyone expects toward promoting physical healing. Albeit a quickly passing meeting, a word of faith, love, and compassion can make a difference.
Deathbed ministry is at the heart of Christianity. Jesus responded to the plea of his fellow sufferer: “This day you will be with me in paradise.” Catholics like to speak of this good thief as the first canonized saint. It takes but a moment, a subtle movement of the soul, to turn around one's life and face the all-merciful and saving Lord. It will probably only be in paradise that we will come to know how many have heard our word or been touched by our presence and found healing and the heavenly gate.
We are, of course, very aware that we are not the only ones ministering to the spiritual welfare of our patients. Doctors and nurses, perhaps more so today than ever before, are concerned about the spiritual well-being of patients and minister to them in many ways. Nonetheless we chaplains have a distinctive ministry. A part of our ministry is to be a manifest sign that God does care, cares enough to send someone to the patient, to come to them in the person of a minister. This demands that we do have a grateful respect for the ministry of doctors and nurses and other members of the hospital team, even while we have a special responsibility in the way we act, the way we speak, the way we try to be Christlike, to be a Christ-presence.
It is obvious then that the key to our ministry is to come as Christ, and there is certainly nothing artificial about this. We have been baptized into Christ. “I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me.” We want to realize our Christness more and more and to put on “the mind of Christ.” “Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus....” In the pages of this little book we talk about acquiring the mind of Christ, and his heart. And how to help our patients get in touch with this. What we have to say will be simple and practical, but let me assure you, it can be profoundly transforming. I speak out of decades as practitioner and teacher. It is a sure way to come to him and be refreshed, to taste and see how good the Lord is.
This is essentially a book about prayer. I think Sean O'Malley put it well in the course of his homily at his installation mass in Boston:
Formation in prayer must become the determining point in every pastoral program. In prayer, we shall discover the primacy of grace and discover that without God we can do nothing. In prayer, we will find the strength to carry out the mission entrusted to us to walk in humility and love and practice mercy with all. St. Ignatius put it so well: “We must pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended upon us.”
It is simple, but not easy. Because it demands that we turn from our self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness. We will only be all we want to be as chaplains and all that our patients want and need when we come as Christ. Our own unique expression of Christ— true. For the Lord loves us and delights in the unique person he has made each one of us.
As you read along you may find that some of the scriptural quotations sound somewhat different to you. I think most modern authors decide what texts they want to use and then turn to some chosen, accepted translation and copy the texts precisely from that translation, which is often acknowledged at the beginning of the volume. I function a bit more like the writers and preachers of the centuries before the printing press. I quote scripture from memory. In editing I can check my translation with the original Greek or Hebrew, though sometimes I prefer to follow the Vulgate or the Vetus Latina. In any case I think most would agree in these days when we have so many fine accepted translations—New Revised Standard Version, New American Bible, New Jerusalem, etc.— that texts can indeed be legitimately translated in different ways and that it can be useful for us to hear different translations. The variety of interpretation invites us to look more deeply into what the text means for us and in our lives, what the Lord is actually saying to us now.
I would like to be able to sit down with you, hear your story, get better acquainted with you and your ministry. That unfortunately is not possible. I have been blessed with sharing the stories of many through the years. They add much to the limited wisdom that comes from my own experience, but I know the little I say here will have to play into your own experience and ministry with its many facets. My prayer is that it may in fact be helpful for you and for all those to whom you bring Christ's love and blessings, his gentle, abiding care and love.
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Chapter 2
To Know Him: Acquiring the Mind of Christ
I ascended very early. I wanted to enjoy the serenity of the Acropolis before the sun began to burn and the hoards of tourists began to arrive. Soon enough the large buses put in their appearance and disgorged the eager masses who rushed about with cameras clicking. Before they had an chance to experience the reality that they were capturing on their celluloid their taskmaster herded them back aboard their buses to hasten them on to the next bit of history.
As I looked down from the commanding height of the Acropolis I could see the nearby Areopagus, the place where the Acts of the Apostles report that Paul preached to the Athenians. What a different sight. The mount boasted few archeological remains. In that early morning hour only two figures graced its fairly nude summit. One walked about in silent meditation; the other sat on a sizeable rock, a Bible open on her lap. I could not help but sense that they were seeking not the tourists’ novelties but rather Saint Paul's Un-known God.
All those centuries ago the missionary from Tarsus brought to the Athenians the good news: ‘The God whom I proclaim is in fact the one whom you already worship without knowing it—An Unknown God.” It is a stretch to worship an Unknown God. It is really impossible to love such a one; no one can love what one does not know.
The human heart, the human being, is made for love. Whether we know it or not, and most of us in our better moments know it, this is what we long for: to love and to be loved, to live in the embrace of a mutual love. If in some way we always sense it, even if that sensing comes out of a deprived infancy and youth, we know it even more when the usual distractions of life are stripped away or perhaps slipping away permanently. We walk or hasten down the corridors of a hospital to bring love, with all its hope and peace and promise, to hearts that long for it. The love we bring is, of course, not an “it”—love never is; it is a person. It is the God who is love and who became one of us to calm our fears—how often did he say: “Fear not. It is I”?—to touch our hearts and fulfill all our longings. As Christian chaplains we come to bring Christ, to be the Christ who we are, and as Christ to be present in love.
My old theology teacher, leaning on the smattering of Latin we were reputed to have acquired used to say: “Nemo dat quod none got!” (“No one gives what one does not have”). Even though we as women and men baptized into Christ are always possessed by him, can we in turn so possess him in love in a way that will be meaningful and satisfy the longing hearts of our sisters and brothers whom we come to serve if we do not truly know him?
We have all heard many sermons, read many books, perhaps studied much theology. We know a lot about him, but that is not enough. The question is: do we know him, truly know him? The devil (and many theologians, too) know a lot more about him than we will ever know. But the devil can never know him nor help others to know him in the way that leads to and satisfies the longings of the human heart, in the way that love alone can reveal him. When we know the Lord in the way of love then we can, indeed, bring him and make him present when we stand beside the one to whom we minister.
How do we come to know the Lord in this way? How do we come to know anyone in this way? By spending time with them in openness, an openness that allows the other to reveal themselves to us.
THE SACRED TEXT
Our God is a revealing God. This is an awesome gift we share with our Jewish sisters and brothers: we are the children of the Book. If you have not personally experienced it, perhaps you have read Cham Potock's My Name Is Asser Lev. In the climax of his story he describes it well: the Feast of Simcha Torah: the celebration of the Torah, the gift of revelation. It is always something special when the rabbi takes the sacred scrolls from the ark. As he passes through the congregations, eager hands reach out the touch the sacred burden, to place thereon a kiss of total homage. But on the Feast of Simcha Torah, this is not enough. One after the other, the devoted disciples grasp the sacred burden, hug it to their breasts, and enter an ecstatic dance. It is the union of God and God's beloved, a moment of intimate union—truly a sacrament of communion.
Do we Christians treasure en...
