The late Pope’s extended stays in hospital produced some inspiring reflections on the amazing things that take place in hospitals. Saint Benedict’s instruction to ‘Listen carefully and attend with the ear of your heart’ prompted me to reflect upon my own hospital experiences, as after retiring I decided to join the chaplaincy department of our local hospital.
My training to be a lay chaplain began in the autumn of 2019, and I soon started a role which involved bringing Holy Communion to a ‘captive audience’ of appreciative Catholic patients, something which proved to be an easy yet very rewarding task.
Not long after beginning my rounds, however, the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to all visits to the hospital. Nevertheless, I was one of the first volunteers to report back for duty in August 2021, though a major change had been introduced: we were each allocated to a ward, and only one, in order to contain the outbreak of any possible infections.
I was assigned to the ward for Acute Medicine, but panic soon set in… how would I manage to connect and engage with people unknown, who were in pain, worried, facing stark choices, who perhaps had no religion or could even be quite hostile? I took a deep breath and ‘sought the eyes of Christ’, a sentence I had heard often enough at Glenstal Abbey. I have not looked back.
My volunteering now takes place each Wednesday morning, and I wear a purple lanyard which reads CHAPLAINCY with a Saint Benedict’s Medal and pin with the Dove of the Holy Spirit attached. By now I am well-known to the staff on the ward, who count on me to help with difficult patients, and who sometimes need a good word and a hug themselves. My visits are a ‘light touch’ – I simply try to be a witness to the love of Christ through my discreet presence and service. Although in reality not many people are religious, they do all appreciate being ‘seen’, and are receptive to a smile and a chat. Many patients don’t have visitors and are glad to tell me about themselves (or, more often than not, their dog…), while others truly welcome the chance to pray together, something I treasure, particularly with Muslim patients.
There are people living with dementia who need patience and help. On occasion I have been told painful family secrets, a way to make peace with a troubled past. Other times it has been sharing the pain with someone losing a limb to diabetes. Most people are frightened of what the diagnosis will mean for their future. Sometimes I have accompanied patients over many weeks, and seen them deteriorate and die: interacting with their grieving families adds another dimension. As the late Pope Francis is reported to have said: “a hospital is a place where human beings remove their masks and show themselves as they truly are, in their purest essence.”
At the end of each shift, we write-up notes on each of the patients we have seen before chaplains and volunteers gather together in the hospital chapel. There is a brief service in which we pray for our patients, nurses and doctors – and for each other. Some days are so tiring and emotionally overwhelming, but I remember Who is helping me to carry the yoke of caring, the importance of mission and of bearing witness to our Faith as Christ’s apostles. All this work is a huge privilege and a blessing, and I’m so grateful to have this opportunity for service and witness at the hospital.
Anna Gannon is an Oblate of Glenstal Abbey and Fellow Emerita of St Edmund’s College at the University of Cambridge.