I was sick and you visited me

As I have mentioned before in this blog, visiting the sick has been one of the most profound aspects of my diaconal ministry. Being able to visit, to talk with the sick person and with the caretakes, and to be able to share the Eucharist are a great gift, a privilege.

At times I don’t know what to say and so I just use the prayers in a book I have.

I’ll make a little small talk before I begin, asking how they are, and will often given a short commentary on a scripture passage.

Being present is the gift.

But yesterday I was on the receiving end.

I asked a neighbor, who is a communion minister, to bring me communion. She came with her young grandson; we prayed and I received communion. 

It was clear that she felt a little uncomfortable since she is accustomed to receiving communion from me or to accompanying me when I bring communion to others.

But I suddenly realized the significance of this ministry.

When we go to the sick, we bring Jesus in Communion, but we also come as the Church, the Body of Christ. Christ in the Eucharist is inseparable from Christ in His Body, the People of God.

All too often I’ve felt that some Eucharistic practices are too individualistic – me and Jesus, Jesus coming to ME. 

We look at the Eucharist from outside – as a spectacle. We even look at the Eucharist as MY food, as a commodity. 

But receiving communion from the hands of a communion minister helped me see that communion is a communal practice, a communal encounter with Christ – in the Eucharist and the Church.

We don’t give ourselves Communion; we receive it from the community of faith. 

This inspires me to re-envision how I will visit the sick in the future. 

We, both ordinary and extraordinary ministers of Communion, bring Jesus but we also bring the Church, the Body of Christ.

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NOTE: I just began reading Monika K. Hellwig's The Eucharist and the Hunger of the World. Second Edition, published in 1992. I am sure that the introduction opened me to this insight. She mentions how, even with the post-Vatican II changes, we feel as if we are coming to the Eucharist as a "spectacle." But, as she notes, 

To take part in a eucharistic celebration is always an act of allegiance, of self-identification and of commitment, however slight. 

God working among us

When things get rough and life leaves me feeling lonely, God has a way of stirring my heart.

Yesterday it was going to a distant village for a Celebration of the Word with Communion at 9 in the morning. The community has had some serious problems, including divisions. At the request of our pastor I spoke with one of the parties involved. What he said to me was the mirror image of what our pastor had told me of the experience of the other person. Both say that they are open to reconciliation but the other one isn’t. I advised the person I spoke with to speak directly with the other person or find a person whom the other respects to pass the message on that he is open to reconciliation. I don’t know if anything will come from this and I felt helpless, unable to resolve the situation then and there. But it is in the long process that reconciliation can happen. I hope and pray that I planted seeds that may sprout in the hearts of these two men.

After the Celebration I went and visited three places to bring communion to the sick and home bound. The first was in a very isolated place. There I found a beautiful couple. I spoke at length with the husband who was a delight. He and his wife were married in the church last year but have been together more than forty years. It was a grace to be able to share the Body of Christ with them.

Then I visited the house of one of the persons guiding me around the community. There I met her daughter who, I believe, is suffering from a severe trauma since one of her young children was murdered. She spoke of how she loved to play the guitar and sing, but I sensed a deep grief. Then we went to visit an older woman up the mountain, the grandmother of the woman. It was a short visit since I was going to a Mass at 2 o’clock in a village about 45 minutes away. I barely made it.

Today I had a meeting of persons involved in Social Ministry in the villages. We had about thirty participants. After some explanation of what social ministry is and can be, I shared some of the areas in which we might be working. It was an eye-opening experience as many shared what they were doing in their villages. I am amazed at some of their efforts.

In one village, I found out that the youth group was visiting the sick and collected corn and beans for poor families.

In another village, they have a group of ten who are working to respond to the needs of the sick and poor. They have organized a solidarity fund to help those in need. I have been trying to push this in the parish since last year and it is taking root in various parts of the parish.

I came away edified. So much being done, with so few resources, to meet so great needs. I ended up sharing with them the thoughts of Dorothy Day from Loaves and Fishes:

People say, "What good can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?" They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time. We can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes.

Tomorrow seven or eight communion ministers will go with me to San Agustín to visit the sick and homebound. There is only one communion minister year and she has been ill. So we are going to meet together for prayer and then go out to visit eighteen to twenty persons there and in a neighboring village.

These experiences give me life – and are real gifts from God.

Viaticum, food for the journey for Don Antonio

This morning I got a phone call that Don Antonio from Mar Azul had died earlier today. I had visited him during Holy Week and last Sunday I went back to visit him and bring him Communion. A church worker in a neighboring village had told me that he was very ill. He was about ninety years old.

The visit on the Wednesday of Holy Week was still present in my heart. Then he had some strength. We helped him get a sponge bath with warm water. But he washed and dried his private parts and even bent over to pull up the clean pants that were there.

For me, that visit was living the Washing of the Feet a day early.

This time, it was different. When I entered the house, I saw a large number of people from Quebrada Grande were there to accompany the family. I also spoke with a daughter who was taking care of him and met some of his grandchildren and a teen age great grandchild with some special needs.

I tried talking with Don Antonio, but though he didn’t speak I sensed that he was aware of what was happening.

I had a sense that this might be his last communion and so I used some of the parts of the rite for Viaticum outside of Mass.

The word Viaticum comes from Latin: Via cum te – on the way with you. The Eucharist is the provision for one’s journey to God.

I spoke with Don Antonio, as well as with his daughter who, I noticed, had a gentle touch with her father, as she gave him spoonfuls of water after I had placed a particle of the host on his tongue. I also asked him to pray for me, for our parish, and for his village, beset with divisions.

The rite for Viaticum is moving, especially the final blessing, which is different in Spanish than in English. Here is the Spanish with my translation:

Que nuestro Señor Jesucristo te acompañe y te defienda.
Que te anteceda para guiarte y vaya detrás de ti para protegerte.
Que ponga sus ojos sobre ti, te guarde y te bendiga.

May our Lord Jesus Christ accompany you and defend you.

May he go before you to guide you and go behind you to protect you.

May he place his eyes over you, guard you, and bless you.

As I reflect on this prayer this morning, I note how much this is like a famous prayer of Saint Patrick:

Christ with me, Christ before me;

Christ behind me, Christ in me;

Christ under me, Christ over me;

Christ to right of me, Christ to left of me;

Christ in lying down, in sitting, in rising up;

Christ in all who may think of me!

Christ in the mouth of all who may speak to me!

Christ in the eye that may look on me!

Christ in the ear that may hear me!

May Don Antonio rest in the loving arms of God and may he pray for us. 

Burying the dead and visiting the sick

“I want to be buried in Easter time,” a priest friend recently told me after a funeral Mass. 

I don’t know how many funeral Masses he has had in these past three weeks of Easter, but I assisted him in three funeral Masses and presided at two other funeral Liturgies of the Word with Communion.

Since being ordained a deacon, I have been present at more funerals. Sometimes, as was the case of three of those we buried, I had brought them communion – or being with the pastor when he anointed them and brought them communion.

Visiting the sick and burying the dead might seem to be dark and depressing, but, for me, they have been redemptive. It is a way to accompany people, trying to open up for people the presence of a God made flesh who died for and with us and who is risen. 

How appropriate to celebrate dying and death - in the season when we celebrate the risen Jesus, who still bears the wounds of his death.

I was particularly moved about ten days ago when I brought communion to two people dying of cancer.

One was a young woman with three young children. She was alert and peaceful. When I gave her communion, her oldest daughter was present. I asked her if she had yet received her first communion. She hadn’t but was preparing. The next time I saw her, she was beside her father, younger sister, and younger brother, at the side of the coffin of her mother in church.

The other was Don Efraín, here in Plan Grande. I wrote about him a few days ago log post here. in a b. His peacefulness and acceptance of death moves me. We buried him yesterday near the top of the hill of the cemetery in Candelaria, the next town over.

But there was another funeral that moved me – a poor indigenous woman, 28 years old, María Confesora. I had been present when Padre German anointed her and gave her communion one night in December. She lived in a small, rented house with her parents and a brother, in Dulce Nombre. I was moved when one of the stations of the cross of our parish’s Via Crucis stopped outside their house. Padre German went in and prayed with her during the station and, through the magic of remote microphones, we heard her pray with us.

The funeral was held early Monday morning in Dulce Nombre. 

But the family wanted to bury her in their home town of La Jigua. They had no money to pay for transporting the coffin, which had been given them. So I ended up transporting the coffin in my pick up – in a 90 minute or so trip from Dulce Nombre.

When we arrived in La Jigua, they wanted to go to the church. They got someone to open the church and brought the coffin in. Before a short service, I spoke with a woman who was cleaning the church. She knew the family and told how María Confesora was involved in the church, willing to help out in cleaning the church and whatever else might be needed. It’s amazing what we don’t know about people. I had only known her as a bed-ridden suffering young woman. But she had been an active participant in the life of her hometown faith community.

We brought the coffin to the cemetery where we finally interred her body. I brought some of the family back to Dulce Nombre.

Yesterday, we buried Don Efraín. The church in Plan Grande could not contain all the people who came. Afterwards, I went to the cemetery to pray at the graveside.

Priests (or a deacon) don’t often go to the graveside, partly because of the distance and time involved. The family often walks with the casket from the church to the grave. That can be an hour or more.

But I went and prayed and spoke with the widow, a brave woman, with the sisters of Efraín who had come from their homes in El Salvador, with some of their eleven children, and with a number of the grandchildren. My impression of Don Efraín as a gentle, humble, and loving person was reinforced by their testimony.

The tradition here in Honduras is that the people wait in the cemetery until the tomb is sealed. If the body is buried in a concrete vault in the ground, they pour cement over boards placed over the vault.

I was deeply moved, and concerned, about one of the sons who wept openly over the coffin and, at the last moment, opened the top of the casket to get a glimpse of his father. I don’t know the story, but he was really distressed. After the burial I went and embraced him. He thanked me for all I had done – which I consider all too little.

Last night, reflecting on this encounter and on the many occasions when I have given hugs to family members who ended up crying on my shoulders, I realized something. It is not me, but the presence of the Church, the people of God, that gives me the strength to be there to embrace those who are in mourning and, perhaps, offer a word of consolation and encouragement.

The servant, the deacon, is called to be there, to accompany people in their daily lives, their joys and their sorrows. It is a great privilege – and a ministry that can give deep joy.

For all this, I am grateful.