Hospital chaplains have a privileged job – accompanying patients, their families and staff during some of the most significant moments in their lives. We spoke to some Catholic hospital chaplains in the Adelaide Archdiocese and asked them to share some stories about their experiences of God at work.
Grace Healey
Spiritual care chaplain
I volunteered a lot in the Church for about 20 years. Then my mother died, and I got the urge to become a chaplain. It was because of the chaplain helping my Mum, and the peace I found when she brought all the family together at the end of her life. I said to God, there and then, if it was meant to be I’d become a chaplain.
Anyway, that was about 10 years before I even started doing anything. I started volunteering in the hospital and then I did clinical pastoral education courses.
As chaplains we are meeting people where they’re at. We don’t know who we’re going to meet day to day. We just go as we are. We take the Lord with us into the room. And whether it’s going to be a spiritual or it’s going to be just everyday talk for a person that needs someone to listen, that’s what we do.
I’ve been doing this for a bit over five years, and I now see patients that have I’ve seen, three or four years ago, come back and I am able to care for them again. Then I have people come and have coffees with me. So it’s not like we just go to one person and say ‘see you later’. We make long-term friendships. We bring some people back to the Church, I’m sure we do. We don’t always see it at the time. We plant the seed, but I’m sure that sometimes something happens.
Robynne Malone
Spiritual care chaplain
When a Catholic patient needs anointing for healing, we ring the priests from the parishes and they come in to visit the patients. On occasions I have been invited to go into the room with them.
When a priest offers the liturgy for the sacrament of anointing with a Catholic patient who is deeply, deeply faithful, to witness that encounter has been close to witnessing holy ground. Like being on the mountain seeing the Transfiguration.
There is so much peace that comes to the patient, particularly at the end of life. I’ve seen very agitated people completely calm from the prayer and the lovely way that a priest will engage with the patients. You feel the presence of God in the room with you.
Also saying the Hail Mary with people, it’s such a familiar and comforting prayer to people who’ve had a long Catholic journey. So they’re two of the moments of witnessing that I hold dear to my heart.
Jen Sherlock
Spiritual care chaplain
Working as a chaplain, it does sometimes feel like God is guiding you through the people that are needed. You can go through most of your list and nurses and doctors are with them or they’re sleeping. Then you get a certain one and you think obviously I’m meant to go see this one.
Sometimes, as we work more in the hospital, we get that feeling we need to be in palliative care, or we need to be in SMU or one of the other rehab wards. You’ve got to listen to what is happening within you, to where you’re meant to be, because God’s leading us through all of these journeys that we are sharing with these families and patients, as well as the staff.
Sometimes we’re led to staff members who are not coping, because it’s hard. The times that we’re dealing with now, with COVID-19, the staff members are actually finding it hard to cope because they haven’t been able to have a break, unlike the rest of the community. And we just have to walk slowly, with all the members of staff as well as the patients.
Bernadette Kerr
Spiritual care chaplain
We get our wards allocated to us, and then we may go across the wards visiting Catholics where required. Being present in the space, listening and being sometimes someone who’s out of the everyday moments of what’s going on in the ward is actually very important.
We see people who are dying, people who have a fair bit of time before they will pass, people who are in a lot of pain, and sometimes people who are just confused, don’t know where they are. There are people with mental health issues and we are there to listen, to calm and to ensure they’re heard.
Our work is part of the team that includes the doctors, the occupational therapists, the nurses, everybody, not just our own chaplains. We do share information on a need-to-know basis only. A lot of what the patient talks about is confidential between us and them, and it is a journey where God is always present for me whether or not those people attest to a faith or not.
I recall one lady who had been through a traumatic experience at least 15 years or 20 years earlier. It affected who whole life – she was scarred from this trauma. One of the things that I found in having the conversations, listening to her story, was that she was a devout Christian, but there was a disconnect, there was a shame.
Then there was this moment, a transcendent moment, that allowed her to let go of the shame. You could literally feel it, with God, to the point that she felt she would be better able to talk not only to other people about this, but also to change some negative aspects of her life, and to re-engage effectively with God.
She followed up with me later and said it was still a work in progress. But she said I’ve never forgotten what I felt in that room. And God was with us.