This week I feel so blessed to be able to start my summer field education
close to my church home and in a field that I feel I am called to.
Just after Easter I attended a meeting at Carlsbad-By-The Sea
(CBTS), a continuing care retirement community with assisted living and skilled
nursing. I met with the CBTS Executive Director, the Director of Resident
Services, the SMF Field Education Director and my Sponsoring Priest and we all
agreed that I could volunteer providing pastoral care in that facility.
Little did I know this also involved leading the “Service of the
Word”, preaching most Sundays, attending the Chapel Committee and leading two
Bible Study classes plus numerous other things that may arise such as attending
social gatherings and maybe even playing some pickleball.
After 2 weeks of forms and tests (fingerprints, drugs,
tuberculosis, hipaa, elder abuse) I was ready to start. My first assignment was
to conduct the Service of the Word on the Sunday, including preaching a sermon
on “The Road to Emmaus”. Never having preached before I thought this would be
good experience for when I take a class on preaching. I elicited some knowledge
and guidance from a very experienced preacher in sermon writing and delivery
during the week and on the Sunday everything seemed to go well. Someone did
mention that my 10 minute sermon could have been 3 or 4 minutes shorter but others
said it was a little short. I am not sure what I will learn from that.
My first day of pastoral care was this past Thursday with a tour
of the facility and an introduction to some of the residents I would be
visiting and getting to know a lot better in the coming weeks.
This is an exciting opportunity but required a lot of prayer and listening
before starting. In one of those sessions I was guided to make my pastoral care
“guided by the Word of God”. So after reading and studying that weeks’ Gospel
passage and drafting the sermon I decided to write about how the gospel passage
for each week is lived in practice throughout the week (hence the Blog series
title). I will try it and see how that goes but I am sure I will be guided to
change if necessary
This week we read about a journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus which
is both a literal and a spiritual journey. On one hand it recounts the story of two
disciples who, after the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord, walk seven
miles from Jerusalem to their village of Emmaus.
On the other hand, it outlines for us the journey that we all take
from not recognizing Jesus, to understanding what the Scripture says about Him,
to recognizing Him for who He is, and finally to our giving our own witness.
These two travelers walked
and talked with Jesus but they did not recognize him until at supper He took
the bread, blessed it and broke it and gave it to them. At that point their eyes
were opened, they recognized him, and said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us
while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” .
We just need to invite Him in (“Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent”),
listen and we will recognize that He is with us at all times.
At the CBTS facility there are many people who have journeyed for quite
a while, some meeting and recognizing Jesus daily, other meeting Him
occasionally and some may be not at all. This message is very relevant to all
the residents I have met and will meet in the future.
This week there was one particular pastoral care visit that stood
out. I visited a man in Hospice who is
99 years old and is declining in his later years. During his journey he was a
renowned professor who taught and mentored many scientists that later went on
to do great things, one even achieved a Nobel Prize. Although he is not very
mobile and is hard of hearing he can still tell a great story about his lifelong
journey but is also very concerned about his daily relationship with God. Each
day he prays the Lord’s Prayer and the Rosary and this week was looking for a
confessional type prayer. Together we prayed the Jesus Prayer until he could
own it as another daily devotion. The look on his face when he recognized the
significance of the prayer that acknowledges
Jesus is Lord, that He is Divine that we are Sinners in
need of His help and we can ask for Mercy showed me that he
connected with our Lord that afternoon.
This was a time when I could see
the Gospel reading for that week being reflected in a pastoral care visit
and could feel my heart burning in this encounter. We recognized that Jesus:
1. Draws near to us sometimes and we
are unaware
2. Meets us in our visits, prayers
and worship, and He talks to us in many different ways so we need to actively listen
3. Stays with us always, so we just need
to invite Him in and be comforted
This week in my study for preaching the sermon last Sunday and in my pastoral care visits this week I have seen that Jesus is beside and within us at
all times if we just invite Him in to our daily worship and prayers and let Him
guide us.
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