Feast of St. Bridget -- Caregiver

I'm a little late in posting this -- I got sick shortly after giving this homily, and when you miss time at a parish, a lot of the work just piles up and waits for you. Thanks to a lot of help, I've gotten mostly caught up, and I'm mostly well. So... here is my homily from the weekend of February 4-5.

It really isn't about St. Bridget, but that was my "intro," because of her feast day the previous week. And most of our parishioners are really unaware of the story that our BEAUTIFUL stained glass tells, so I wanted to weave a little bit of that into the homily.

What I write about being a chaplain at the hospital (Seattle Children's Hospital) is absolutely true. I've searched my heart on this numerous times over the years, and so I'm sure I'm not just being romantic, dramatic, or anything other than simply straight out honest with you. I hope you find it worthwhile.

Fifth Sunday, Ordinary Time (B)

Good morning. It’s very good to be with you again. This past Wednesday – Feb. 1st -- we celebrated the feast day of our patroness, St. Bridget. There are a lot of things about our saint that have found expression in our parish life. The most obvious is her focus on charity. Bridget is sometimes known as the giveaway saint, and as a parish we’ve tried to follow in her footsteps by such works as our St. Vincent de Paul, Sacred Heart Shelter, Orion Center, our youth Mission trips to Jonestown, and our partnership with Namitembo. I hope that our community will always be known for its generosity to others, like the original Bridget was. Bridget was also known as a saint of Light – she’s always depicted with a symbol of light: tongues of fire over her head, or holding a candle, or sometimes holding a lantern. This symbol too has particular significance for our parish, because there is so much talent and ability here. These talents are not given to us for our own exclusive, individual use. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world!” There are few limits to the brilliance that can shine from us, when we offer our gifts for God’s uses.

But today I’d like to focus on a third charism of our saint, and that’s the gift of healing. Bridget was known for her pastoral and spiritual care of others, so much so that her cloak was said to have healing powers. That charism is represented in our stained glass, which shows Bridget in a flowing aquamarine cloak extending from her figure in the back, through each of the main doors, so that you actually enter through her healing cloak, continuing along the bottom of the glass in the chapel, on to front windows on both sides of our altar wrapping around our entire worship area, so that this whole church is like a refuge, a protected place, a healing place.

And our readings today are about healing. Our first reading is from Job, and boy, it’s a hard one to listen to! It’s full of Job’s moaning about life –it’s a drudgery, a misery, filled with restlessness, hopelessness, unhappiness. It makes you wonder why it would ever be chosen as one of our Sunday spiritual readings, except…that it does remind us about suffering! Probably most of us have had days of drudgery, or even misery. I know there are parishioners who are right now going through a time of suffering. I don’t have to mention any names -- you know some of them, because we’ve been praying for them for a long time. There are many more names than those, too, because there are parishioners who don’t want others to know about their afflictions.

We don’t hear the resolution of Job’s story today; but immediately after hearing about his miseries, we hear the words of today’s Responsorial Psalm: “Praise the Lord, who heals the brokenhearted.” After a reading filled with misery, a song of healing and praise! And shortly afterwards, in our gospel passage, we see Jesus, at the beginning of his public ministry, living out this healing, beginning first with Peter’s mother-in-law, and then, as the word spreads throughout the village, to all those who are sick, to everyone ill in body or in spirit.

I’ve been thinking a lot about healing during these past few weeks. It started with the death from leukemia of a longtime friend, Pat Sursely, who was one of the most respected laymen at the Chancery. He began his service within our Archdiocese around the same time I did – we had known one another for over 35 years. His death was not sudden, and so his family, co-workers, and friends had opportunities to say goodbye to him very beautifully. I’ve also been praying for another long-time friend, Jesuit Fr. Bill Bichsel, who is 83 years old and is fragile, not in good health, but who nonetheless was jailed in SeaTac recently for protesting the Trident nuclear submarine, based in Bangor. There are a lot of us who are with him in Spirit in this, and when despite his fragile health he began a fast to protest his treatment, there were a lot of us who joined his fast in our own ways. But beyond these friends of mine, I’ve just be sensitive to the need for healing lately. And I know there are others too, parishioners, who are also sick, some close to death, and their families and friends are caring for them very lovingly, but of course it’s difficult; it’s a time of sadness and grief.

It’s not for nothing that our patroness, St. Bridget, had the charism of healing. It is a reminder to us that the gift of healing is available to us, if we look for it, ask for it, nourish it. We all will be at some time in need of this grace, either for ourselves or for those we love. I’m not a doctor, as several of you are, but from my work as a chaplain I do know that healing ministry is only partly about physical healing. What I concentrate on is pastoral care, spiritual care. I don’t consider myself an expert; but since I know a little about it, I would like to offer four things for us to consider.

First, I know that before I am any good with others, I have to ask for help myself. You might think that after 29 years I’d be more confident, or I’d know just what to say or how to act. Let me tell you that is not the case at all. When I first started visiting families at Children’s Hospital, I could hardly walk into those rooms, even to introduce myself, because I was painfully aware that I had so little to say on my own account. Every time I went to the hospital I first had to spend time in the chapel, sometimes for an hour or more. Even today, 29 years later, when this hospital pager goes off, and I get into the car on my way to the hospital, I’m not listening to the radio. I’m praying: “God, help me. Help me. Help me to be there for this family. Help me to know what to say or do. I can’t do it without you.” I ask for help because I know there’s no way I could do this on my own.

Second, you have to listen. There’s always such a temptation to fill up silence, especially if someone’s hurting or asking for answers, but you have to listen first. You can’t be busy or preoccupied; you can’t be worried about an appointment that you have afterwards. And I’m not talking just about listening to the person or family that you’re with. I’m talking mostly about listening for the Holy Spirit. One thing I’m absolutely sure about, is that God is present with those who suffer, even if they’re hurting so much that they can’t feel it or know it. So I reach out, “God, where are you? Help me to hear you, to see you, to feel you.”

Third, you have to have the courage to give expression to that Spirit, to give flesh to that movement of God. I wish I could tell you what that means, but I just can’t, because it’s different every time. It may be something you say, a way you move, an attitude of reverence or respect, a loving touch, a quiet song or prayer. I hope this doesn’t sound presumptuous to you, but I know that God moves through me sometimes, and I’m not really in control when that happens. So I can’t tell you how it happens, only that it does. And if you ask for help, if you really listen, if you have the courage to give flesh to the Spirit, God really will move through you, too.

Finally, it’s also about giving thanks. My life has been touched and changed, again and again, by the people I meet, whom God loves so personally, so intimately. This is a very humbling experience, to be “along for the ride” when the Holy Spirit is moving. I’m sure Jesus felt that way in our gospel today – that’s why he had to go off by himself to pray, to be grateful. And notice too, Jesus didn’t stay in that town, to be treated as a celebrity. He knew that it wasn’t about him, but about building the Kingdom – and he had to move on.

So I invite all of us this morning to consider this gift that our saint and our scriptures lift up for us: the charism of healing. All of us can be instruments of healing. And all of us are in need of healing -- whether now or tomorrow – whether for ourselves, or for those we love, or for the person sitting in the pew near us.

Deacon Denny Duffell, Feb. 5, 2012