Any one of you who is ill....

September 2011 - 57

The sick played a great part in Jesus’ life. They were brought to Him, and many heard his healing word. “And He cured all who were sick. This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: He himself bore our sicknesses away and carried our diseases” (Mt 8:17). It was Jesus’ calling card, so to speak, and when John’s disciples asked Jesus if He was the Messiah, He answered: “Go back and tell John what you hear and see; the blind see again, and the lame walk, those suffering from virulent skin-diseases are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” (Mt 11:4-5).

Jesus finds himself in the tradition of the Jews, who had developed their own specific view of illness and disease. On the one hand, they associated disease with a punishment from God, and on the other hand, they issued all sorts of hygiene regulations to prevent disease. There is no better description of the connection between disease and God’s punishment than in the Book of Deuteronomy: “But if you do not obey the voice of Yahweh your God, and do not keep and observe all his commandments and laws which I am laying down for you today then all these curses will befall and overtake you” (Dt 28:15), followed by a list of problems that can occur: plague, consumption, fever, inflammation, ulcers, swellings, the itch, right up to distraction of the mind. The fact that the connection between suffering and punishment was not always experienced as self-evident is reflected in the Book of Job, in which a righteous man is beset with disease and in which God makes himself known as being unfathomable in a remarkable dialogue, yet He means well by every man but man is unable to realise this. But, eventually, God will be the one who will heal. The Book of Leviticus, the book of Jewish law, holds many rules concerning hygiene and disease prevention, and isolation of in case of infection. And it calls on people to attend to the sick.

Jesus follows this tradition, yet at the same time He breaks it by not blaming God when a person is ill but by considering it to be inherent to the human condition. That is why He links healing with the forgiving of sins, drives out demons, and brings back people to the community.

The Old Testament also struggled with the concept of suffering. Only by discovering the true meaning of suffering, people could accept and believe that God could have a purpose for suffering. This is explored even more by Jesus, and eventually He will show that suffering can open the way to salvation with his own suffering and death on the cross. He calls on all to have compassion for those who suffer, referring to God who revealed himself to be a merciful God: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying for help on account of their taskmasters. Yes, I am well aware of their sufferings.” (Ex 3:7). Compassion, choosing the side of those who suffer, and finding out how suffering can be alleviated is the message and the praxis of Jesus. By radically and consistently walking the path of suffering, He shows that suffering is a part of life but that suffering and death never have the final word in eternity. And that is the most liberating message ever to be heard in the world.

With Jesus, the commandment of neighbourly love is very specifically put into practice in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and in it, He puts all the ingredients that are important to a good care of the sick and the suffering: a care without discrimination, not focused on reciprocity, with attention to all of the person’s aspects, with a concern for that one person who is unique, using the means available, and with the perspective of full recovery and return to society. This became the basis of charity, a service for the sick that starts from love and that is done with love, and that sees and loves Jesus himself in the person of the sick.

Concern and care for the sick became an important task for Christians, in imitation of Christ, and it always took on new shapes. In addition to individual care for each other, to which every single person is called, groups started to organise themselves to take care of the sick, particularly the poor sick, in hospices. Orders of knights, hospitaller orders, and other groups emerged and took the specific task to nurse the poor sick in a more organised fashion, so that in the Middle Ages every city had its own hospice. Several figures played an important part in this development: Elisabeth of Hungary (1207-1231), a princess who personally started nursing the sick and built hospices; Camillus de Lellis (1550-1614), who, starting from his own experience with disease, fully dedicated himself to the care of the sick in Rome and established his own community. The aforementioned John of God should also be included in this list. But the absolute leading light definitely is Vincent de Paul (1581-1660), who founded the Daughters of Charity with Louise de Marillac to see to the sick and the poor in their homes and later to offer their services in the existing hospices. “The poor and the sick are the icons of Christ; they are our masters, whom we are to serve with love”, was Vincent’s motto. Many religious congregations dedicating themselves to health care were created in their example.

Within this wealthy tradition, Christians today are called to attend to the sick, to visit the sick, to support them with their prayers.

Let us reflect on this triad and take a closer look at these three aspects.

Health care has become very technical business in many countries nowadays. Medical technology has made great strides forward and we can only be grateful for that. But at the same time, we must continue to guard the fact that health care remains something human, in which the person of the sick is treated as a person and does on no account turn into a ‘case’ that is flooded with medical technology. Hospitals, or hospices, where the sick were hospitably received or were nursed like Jesus have become medical companies, and risk neglecting the human side. Nurses no longer have the time to listen to the sick person; they can only perform technical actions. Physicians go from one room to another to determine the right therapy after a quick observation. Patients are sent home immediately, so that they barely have time to recover. Thirty years ago, we learnt about integrated nursing, which argues in favour of taking into account all of the persons aspects during treatment. It spoke of a holistic approach, and it was beautiful. Today, however, this model is abandoned for economic reasons and they reverted to a nursing model that is limited to purely technical actions. Every patient is a case, with a number, and they barely think about the issue of being ill itself. At the same time, our thoughts go out to all those countries that do not have organised health care or where hospitals cannot cope due to a lack of basic means. In Congo, we saw a child die because there was no right catheter available in the entire hospital; and in several Asian cities mentally ill people wander the streets naked, filthy, neglected. They are left to their own devices. Malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis still are the big killers because the necessary medication is simply not available. In countries that have luxury medicine, the concern for the humane is wasting away, but in these countries, man himself is wasting away. That which Jesus taught us in the parable of the Good Samaritan remains a reference for good care. “I was sick and you visited me” (Mt 25:36).

If we get sick ourselves, we immediately sense which nurse is made of the right stuff. Once, I woke up bathed in sweat because I had an attack of fever and so I called the night nurse. A friendly lady appeared who saw my misery. She proposed to give me an injection for the fever, she changed my pillow and stayed to talk a bit. I called her an angel of the night. In the morning, I thanked her for her kind care and she told me how she loved being a nurse and chose to work at night so that she could treat people in a calmer and quieter way. It was an ode to all health care workers who consider and experience their profession as a vocation. “In addition to our technical care, the sick particularly require our love”, was Mother Teresa’s adage.

Visiting the sick is an art form, and apparently some received other gifts than the gift of visiting the sick.

When I entered my father’s sick room, I saw how his health was deteriorating. He pointed at the patient who was next to him and told us about his visitors who seemed to have a ball every time they dropped by: they were loud and thought that they had the room to themselves. The only solution was that I asked for a single room for my father, and luckily, one had just become available. The day after, my father’s condition had improved because he had been able to rest. Short, frequent visits; listening to the sick person and not wanting to talk the entire time; having respect for the other patients in the room; not sitting on the patient’s bed, but in a chair so that you are at the same eye level as the sick person; and respecting the patient’s wishes if he or she does not want to receive visitors. These are a few little rules that are in a manual for a good visit to a sick person. When I was in charge of a psychiatric hospital, I remember my patients waiting by the door every Sunday for their families to visit them. And every night they said that they would probably come next week. For some patients, the weekends were the emptiest days of the week, which reinforced their feeling of abandonment. People who suffer from a long illness often experience that, after a while, visitors stop coming, or even cancel scheduled visits. After all, you cannot keep on visiting someone, is their reply… I had an aunt who was mentally ill and stayed at a psychiatric hospital all her life. As a child, I was never allowed to visit her, and we barely spoke of her at home. As a young intern, I went to the ward where my aunt had died a few years earlier, and I learnt what a kind lady she was. One of the fellow patients even showed me a picture of her. Emotionally it was hard to bear and I was angry that I had never met this sweet lady. In our family, psychiatry was considered taboo; “Let us not speak of it again”. But then I saw a woman who visited her husband who was growing demented, without him ever saying a word to her. Her feeding him supper became almost a ritual, and she kept on talking to him without ever expecting an answer. When she left, she used to wave, blow him a kiss, and say: “See you tomorrow, my darling.” I never remember her skipping a day.

“Any one of you who is ill should send for the elders of the church, and they must anoint the sick person with oil in the name of the Lord and pray over him. The prayer of faith will save the sick person and the Lord will raise him up again” (Jm 5:14-15). Praying for and with the sick and anointing them is also part of our concern for the sick. It is easy to say that we will pray for a sick person but do we really do it, or is it just an empty promise? Can we still pray with a sick person? I remember when a confrere was dying and the entire community was there in his room. The superior held his hand and prayed with him. In my father’s sick room, as well, I recall seeing an older brother who sat by his bedside holding a rosary. He was there without words. He sat there praying by my father’s sickbed, which became his deathbed that very night. I also remember a young staff member who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. During my visits to him, we went deeper and deeper until we reached the true life: life after death, which we put into words through prayer. When prayer disappears from the atmosphere of every day, it will prove difficult to find a place for it once again by a sick person’s bedside. Nevertheless, praying together with the sick person can be one of the most intense moments of your visit to him or her. It could help us to find a place for prayer in our everyday life once again, even when no one is sick.

Bro. René Stockman,Superior General.