For 6 months now we, my wife Mary Lynn and I, have been visiting the sick in our local hospital; we continue to experience DREAD before entering the room. It is dread; it is not fear of some consequence; it is not dispersed anxiety. It is specific but unspecified; it is precise; it is dark and ominous; it is mysterious; it is present but not identified.
The word dread today indicates great anxiety or fear; but traditionally it also indicated awe and reverence. Rudolph Otto classically described the "holy" as evoking a primal, archaic sense of both fascination and dread. We are drawn to the holy; but we also fear it. Moses before the burning bush is haunted by it, drawn to it, but in fear of it. The truly holy is so so so good that we are in awe, a distinct kind of fear or dread: we fall to our knees, we take off our shoes, we prostrate ourselves.
And so it is with visiting the sick: is very very good; it is fascinating; it is terrifying in an incomprehensible manner; it is holy!
It has been for us an exhilarating, elated experience. At least half of the patients we visit immediately welcome us warmly as chaplains, representing spiritual or pastoral care. Of the rest, most warm up to us after a few moments of conversation. If we visit 20 or more patients, perhaps two decline the prayer; but we are fine with that, wish them well, and more often than not they thank us for the visit; they leave us with their own, non-theistic blessing. In other words, even the very worst visits are pleasant. Mary Lynn records the names of those we visit and we talk about and pray for them during the week. It is an extraordinary blessing for us.
Yet, we continue to feel the Dread. It does not go away. We do not "get used to the thing." What is this?
Fear of the Unknown
Our mentor in chaplaincy, Reverend Cindy Wilcox, sees that we fear the unknown. She is correct. Every room we enter is the unknown: we are not invited by the patient. We have no idea of what we will face in terms of attitude, suffering, religious faith. Clearly, we dread the unknown. It is threatening. That is the first reality.
Suffering and Faith: the Private, the Intimate, the Sacred
But there is more. Perhaps there is nothing more intimate, private, and properly secretive and protected, aside from the matters of marriage and family, than sickness, of body and soul, and relationship to God. These two things are Sacred. They are to be revered, protected, cherished. They are shared only with those we trust: family and faith member. To walk, as a stranger, into the sick room to engage both the pain and God is on the face of it scandalous and sacrilegious. Who am I to be so bold as to intrude on what is so holy: so precious, intimate and terrifying? My friend Steve, when he heard what we are doing every Thursday morning, said nothing, but had a horrified look on his face. That is a sober and wholesome response!
And yet, we enter each room serene and confident, if terrified, for several reasons.
First of all, we are sent there officially by the hospital. We have been vetted and accepted, officially, as volunteer chaplains. The hospital realizes the value of making such contacts available to patients. My wife is a nurse and she knows very well the stress and demands on nurse, doctor, and aides. Normally the staff has no time to give personal attention or spiritual care. Therefore we are on an official mission. The patient in the hospital is being visited throughout the day by all kinds of people: nurses, cleaners, medical specialists, aides, etc. So another visit is not so intrusive as it would be if we were knocking at the door of their personal residence. The nurses and staff welcome us warmly and clearly appreciate our contribution. Sometimes we wish we were medical professionals with clear and accepted purposes. But we know the value of what we do.
But even more important than the approval and mandate from the organization is our personal Catholic faith. We know that in our sacramental life, baptism-confirmation-penance-Eucharist, we are in communion with the Person of Jesus Christ. When we enter the room, we are not alone, we bring him with us, notwithstanding our personal failings. We bring no specialty, competence, service...just our faith in our Lord. We also know, with certainty, that every human heart yearns for God....and is seeking Him in some way, even if it is disordered. "The protagonist of history is the beggar" we learn from Monsignor Luigi Giussani. We enter the room as a fellow, pilgrim beggar; eager to join with a newfound brother/sister in begging for God's mercy. If there are no atheists in foxholes, there are very few in hospital sick beds. We have an additional advantage, we introduce ourselves as a married couple. Our marriage of almost 53 years brings with it a heightened presence of Christ that patients seem to intuit effortlessly. "Wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there am I in your midst."
Dread Before Suffering, Deprivation, Desperation
I have known this dread elsewhere. It is familiar; and not restricted to the sick bed. Some 15 years ago I would visit a boarding home in Newark NJ on Monday nights. I had befriended the residents and would bring brownies and soda, talk casually for a while, than share a 10 minute prayer. It was a miserable place, eventually closed down by the State. The people were endearing and delightful. But driving to the place I felt the dread as I ruminated: "Why am I going to this horrible place? I have no purpose! I am not a psychologist or nurse or social worker or activist! I hate going there!" But then I would recall: "I received our Lord this morning in Holy Communion. In some way I am bringing him." The dread dispersed within two minutes of my entrance; the visit was always a Joy; I left every Monday elated.
But what was the dread? I think it was my sense of the loneliness, deprivation, suffering of the place. The sense of human misery. The sense of the evil of human suffering. I think it was a sensitivity to a reality.
The miracle was that within a few moments of conversation, there was a real bond, a communion, a sense of solidarity. That became intensified in the shared prayer. That was the same dynamic we now experience in the sick room.
The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail
These words of Jesus assure us that there is indeed a hell, a hell on earth, a hell of loneliness, desperation, despair. But that hell is vulnerable. When we approach the gates of hell, in the name of Jesus, we are victorious. The gates and walls fall like Jericho. We triumph in gentleness, confidence, serenity, tenderness. We move quickly into Joy. But upon the approach, we cannot avoid dread.
The Dread of Eve in Paradise
Consider the seduction and sin of Eve in paradise. She is without sin, innocent, immaculate by nature. How then, we ask, can she sin? A thesis: When she encountered the Serpent, who was of course Satan, she would have felt: dread. She herself at that time was free of what we know as sin, death, anxiety, suffering. But in this creature she would have sensed death, not biological death, because this angelic creature is immortal, but the death of separation from God, absolute loneliness and isolation. In her very innocence and purity, she would have shuttered at this void of Evil. The cunning tempter would have anticipated this vulnerability. Brilliantly he exploited this momentary moment of weakness: he suggested that God was not to be trusted; that he had lied. He assures her that if she eats the fruit she shall not die. In this, he proposes a bogus salvation from the dread of death: grasp this appealing fruit, turn away in distrust of God, and become yourself godlike. And so, we suggest that God allowed a testing, as he later did with Job (and with each of us), a moment of dread, before death as Evil as Godlessness, so that Eve and then Adam could choose between life and death.
Jesus' Dread in the Garden of Gethsemane, and His Descent into Hell
In another garden Jesus was to engage the dread of Evil in its greatest possible intensity and depth. Taunted by Satan and death, his three best friends asleep, he was overwhelmed with dread. My own opinion is that in that garden Jesus descended into hell: he experienced the greatest possible separation from the Father as isolation, loneliness, deprivation and evil. He entered into hell freely, purposefully, serenely, trustingly. He exited the garden triumphantly. He entered into his passion...freely, purposefully, serenely, trustingly...and death. His passion was the passing of a triumphant King. He had nothing but gracious words, for his executioners and all us sinners. He decisively defeated dread.
Mary's Dread at Calvary
If the dread of Jesus in Gethsemane was the greatest ever; the second would be that of his mother the next day. Watching her son's torture and death and then receiving his limp body, she would herself have entered in an incomparable manner into the dread of evil, of hell, of death as separation from God. By a singular grace, her purity and trust was superior to that of Eve and Adam. She suffered patiently, trustingly, hopefully. So close was she to her son that she shared in a distinctive way in his passion and death. But then, by Easter morning, so close was she to him that she would have known clearly (I suggest) that he was Risen. No need, in her case, for an appearance.
Aragon's Entrance into the Paths of the Dead
Engagement with dread is graphically presented in Lord of the Rings when The King, Aragon, enters the mountain of the Paths of the Dead. It is a ghostly, ghastly place. It is the unknown. It is death itself. Aragon, with regal fortitude and dignity, boldly confronts these ghosts, beckoning them to their own liberty, and that of the broader world. It is an extraordinary image of Jesus' descent into hell and the advance of us, his disciples, into the darkness of Satan.
Dread as the Pathway to Life
We cannot avoid dread: of death, loneliness, desperation, Satan and his reign. But like Aragon and Jesus, we are impelled by the fire of the Holy Spirit, flaming within us, to combat through the dread, into the darkness, to bring the warmth and light of Christ's love to our brothers and sisters suffering the deathly, hellish loneliness and isolation of separation from the love of God.
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