Pride comes before a fall

By now I was feeling pretty well established as a hospital chaplain and nothing much phased me. I was happy to be on-call and not worried about what I might get called to. One night I had a call to come out to a 74 year old woman who was dying. Her family were present. The only strange thing about the request was that they wanted holy water. I checked that the patient wasn’t RC and was assured she was C of E.

I turned up with the holy water and my oil for anointing and was really surprised to find the patient was conscious. She was dying from heart failure and is often the case, was still aware of what was going on. This threw me. By then I had attended the bedside of many dying patients none of them had been remotely conscious. My words had been aimed more at the relatives than the patient. This situation meant I had to say words that meant something to a woman who was just about to make the most amazing journey of all. I felt inadequate and ill equipped. I checked that the patient didn’t want to speak to me alone and then stumbled through a liturgy. The family and the patient were very appreciative but I felt I hadn’t done a good job.

This taught me a valuable lesson. I now always ask if the patient is conscious. What I should have done was to take a few minutes out once I was aware what this family wanted and prepare myself and compose myself.

This lesson helped me with my next encounter. I was asked to go to a ward and see a patient who had asked for the chaplain. The staff didn’t know why. When I arrived the man asked if he could make his confession to me. I gulped. I’d never heard anyone’s confession before. I told the patient that would be fine but that I just had to collect a few things from the office now that I knew what he wanted. On the walk back to the office I was thinking “Oh no. What if he tells me he’s killed someone? What if he gives me a crisis of conscious?” I also didn’t really know what to do. I tried to phone a few people who might be able to help but they were all unavailable. I looked things up in my liturgy book and quickly produced a sheet on the computer.

When I got back to the patient he told me he couldn’t read, so I had to think again. It actually turned into a very moving occasion for me and made me truly realise why we call it the sacrament of reconciliation. It was one of those moments where I really felt my priestly vocation. Most of the time I feel and I am an ordinary person doing an extremely privileged job. Just occasionally though I don’t feel ordinary and I do feel priestly. I don’t really know how to describe this. Maybe it’s something to do with that ontological change that happens at ordination?