After completing my first year of Theology at The Saint Paul Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., I have had the opportunity to partake in their program called Ministry to the Sick and Suffering. It’s a summer program designed to give seminarians experience in pastoral care to people in hospitals and nursing homes. I’ve been assigned to a hospital trauma floor to work as a chaplain. It’s been an experience full of challenges, graces, and personal growth.
The weeks of the program are split between class time at the seminary two days a week, and time spent at our ministry sites three days a week. The classes serve to teach us how to minister to people who are in the hospital. We receive instruction from priests, doctors, therapists, and lay chaplains on various topics regarding ministry to the sick and suffering. They’ve been very helpful for guiding us in what to do in certain situations.
Despite the great things they teach us during the classes, it can still be very difficult when it comes to actually visiting patients. It’s hard to know what to say to a person who is laying in front of you, who is in so much pain or has received a bad diagnosis. There is always the temptation to try to say something that will make them feel better, but what they need are not some shallow words that try to make them feel as if they are not suffering. What they need is Christ. They need to be shown that Jesus is with them in their suffering. That is the only consolation that can truly lift people through the difficult circumstances they find themselves in.
Whether it’s through words or example, showing people the love of Jesus carries much more healing power than anything I can give them. That’s why I need to continually unite myself to him through prayer and the sacraments so that it is not me ministering to these people but Christ who is ministering through me. Realizing this has been a blessing and has helped me to grow in trust in God that he can make good out of my feeble attempts to minister to his people.
There have been many times where I walked out of someone’s room and thought, “Lord, did I do anything for that person?” I will be thinking about the quality of the conversation, or my ability to explain redemptive suffering, or my attempts to articulate truths of the faith and think there’s no way I helped that person. But that is putting limits on God’s grace and power.
The fact is that I may not be able to say the perfect thing at the perfect time or exquisitely explain some theological point, but God can touch their hearts anyway. That is evidenced in the many people who have thanked me for spending time with them, the people who receive the sacraments or are brought back into the faith as a result of my visits. It doesn’t play out like that every time, but it does happen. It is all the more reason to trust in God that he can work through woefully imperfect instruments such as myself.
God can work with what we give him no matter how far short something falls from our ideal. This summer ministry to the sick and suffering has been the perfect experience to grow in trust of God to allow his grace to work through me.