The things they don't tell you in ordination training

An important role of a hospital chaplain is to take Holy Communion to patient’s who would normally either go to church and receive communion or have communion brought to them at home by their local church.

The service used in most churches now is in modern language. At the hospital we have books with a shortened version of this service in fairly large print so that it is easy to use at a patients bedside. These books are given to the patient so that there is no trouble with infection control.

Before I was ordained and came to work at this Hospital, I did some voluntary work at another local hospital. I had been helping the chaplain there with his communion round and he felt I could go off and do a bedside communion on my own. It was to be fairly straightforward with a young woman who regularly attended church and was used to being in hospital with a long-term condition. When I arrived at her bedside she explained that the elderly patient next to her wanted to receive communion too. I said this wasn’t a problem and that I had enough with me. We all moved over to the elderly woman’s bedside and were having a lovely service. The problem came when I gave the elderly woman the wafer. She started to choke on it. I cupped my hands under her mouth and she coughed the wafer into my hands along with her false teeth! I couldn’t believe this was happening to me the first time I was let loose on my own in the hospital. I rinsed the woman’s teeth and gave them back to her but didn’t know what to do with the wafer. 

Once consecrated, wafer’s are meant to be consumed. There was no way I was going to eat this masticated blob. I carefully wrapped it up in a tissue, finished the service and made my way back to the chaplain’s office. When I got there I gave the chaplain the tissue and said “I don’t care about the rules, I’m not eating it!” I explained what had happened and the chaplain really laughed and said it should be written up in a trainee’s handbook. He said not to worry and he would burn it. In fact he did burn it and placed it with the ashes of the palm cross used to anoint people on Ash Weds. Truly incarnational theology!

Getting back to the present day, I have come to really appreciate the time I have with patients when they receive communion. I have become adept at creating sacred space in the midst of the noise and smells of busy hospital wards. What I always find moving is being alongside a confused elderly patient. When this is the case I often use the traditional words service. I find time and time again that the familiar rhythm of the words and prayers stirs a memory held dear by these patients and they find themselves joining in with the old words. They are sometimes word perfect and do all the right things in the right places as they receive communion. Afterwards they go back to their imaginary cleaning or conversations with people who aren’t there.

There was one patient who used to cry the whole time her husband wasn’t with her. The poor husband was exhausted by trying to be with his wife as much as possible. The patient hadn’t been much of a churchgoer recently but I found out she liked to sing. When I visited her the only way I could get her to be calm was to just sit with her and sing the old hymns. She would always join in. As soon as I stopped singing she would start to cry out for her husband again but if I started singing she would join in once more.

In my time as a hospital chaplain I have learned the importance of communication and that most of the time this is done without words in the order of a conversation.