The Priest at Prayer, June 19

The Priestly Ministry

Visitation and Care of the Sick

Second Meditation - Evils that arise from neglecting the Sick

I. One of the most pernicious sins committed by many Christian families is to allow a dying person to remain in ignorance of his real condition and actually to prevent him from realising it by using every effort and device at their command. They would see him pass into eternity without his suspecting it, until the rays of Divine Justice are focused on him and the Supreme Judge Himself imparts the first definite news.

What an immense calamity it would be for the priest to become an accomplice to, and, in a certain sense, a perpetrator of, this crime! That the priest, the dis­penser of Divine Clemency, should turn into a minister of God's Wrath: that Wrath most terrible, eternally implacable, solely hostile, which brings down upon a sinful soul the scourge of a sudden, unpremeditated and unprovided death, and with death, final impenitence and the irrevocable sentence of damnation! I, a priest, aiding and abetting the death of the sinner, the direst of mis­fortunes!

This infernal power is not conferred by any of the Sacred Orders! Shall we have to suspect that Satan too has his Orders and has conferred one of them on certain neglecful priests in order to propagate the unchristian and irreligious death: death without the Sacraments, without the priest, without God? A more terrible plague than the non-denominational school, civil-registry marriage, or the unhallowed grave; because it means the death of the devil's own children in the hands of their father.

II. And that this sort of death exists even among Catho­lics, more widespread than schools without catechism, than cemeteries without the crucifix, than homes without the Sacrament of Matrimony or any other Sacrament, is the conviction of not a few priests, who are ready to give information to anyone willing to listen to them. They will prove to you, with sorrow, that in such and such a parish or city there are neighborhoods where from fifty to ninety per cent of those baptised in the Church die without the priest, without the crucifix, without so much as hearing the Name of Jesus; just like their own domestic animals.

And yet those same families often appear to be Christian, they may even frequent the Sacraments, they seem to live in perfect tranquillity of conscience, and perhaps are zealous for and actively promoting pious and social works for souls; but when questioned, they will show the most callous unconcern about the prevailing tragedy. And we priests, distracted as we are by a thousand other incidents of the struggle against evil and error and spiritual dangers, are liable to dismiss the whole problem with almost the same criminal indifference. (*)

For a soul that has lived far away from the Sacra­ments and the commandments of God, and even for a pious soul, can you imagine a greater danger to salva­tion than to die without the last rites, without any notion of dying, without a thought about God? Is there any problem, therefore, more serious and acute and more pregnant with disaster?

III. If my indolence as a priest served to aggravate the problem, have I not every reason to fear a like punish­ment when my hour comes?

Lord, when are Thy threats going to be fulfilled?

With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again. (Matt. vii, 2)

Judgement without mercy to him that hath not done mercy. (James ii, 13)

I don't know how far it is true, but I've heard it said that many priests die without the Sacraments. A certain diocesan legal authority of my acquaintance drew up statistics of priests who died without the Sacraments, and he found them in the majority. No one has entered into the Mind of God; no one can probe Its workings; but may we not surmise that more than one priest among those who ended their days in this manner were there­by made to suffer for their neglect of duty towards the sick?

IV. Now let me see, by way of a practical conclusion to the foregoing considerations, what the Roman Ritual says in the tenth paragraph prefacing Chapter IV of the Titulus V:

When danger is imminent, the parish priest will advise the sick person not to allow himself in any way to be deceived by the cunning of the devils or the false promises of physicians or the flattery of relatives, which might hinder him from procur­ing in good time those things pertaining to the soul's salvation; but religiously to receive the holy Sacraments while his mind is still clear and his senses are unimpaired, and to receive them with becoming devotion and promptness, guarding against that fallacious and pernicious procrastination which in the past has thrust a great many into the eternal torments, and which, by the devil's persuasion, continues to thrust them day by day.

And canon 468 [1917 Code] says:

The parish priest should assist with constant care and manifest loving-kindness the sick of his parish, especially at the approach of death, by fortifying them with the Sacraments solicitously and recommending their souls to God.

And in order to understand that as long as there is breath in the body the soul is not entirely out of my hands, and can still be equipped for the journey, the same canon continues:

The parish priest, or any other priest attending the sick, has the faculty to bestow the apostolic blessing with a plenary Indulgence for the moment of death; a blessing he should not omit to give.

So it is the Church's wish that I should not abandon the dying person until I have left him at the Judgement-­Seat of God.

Such is my longing request for myself; won't others have the same desire and the same right?

Resolutions
1. I shall hold this all-important ministerial task in higher esteem. I shall perform it with full accuracy. No one shall die, if I can help it, without God's Kiss upon his soul.

2. Although I may not be appointed to it, for the love of God and of souls I shall not refuse this work; on the contrary, I shall give full vent to my zeal, either by giving a helping hand to those who are in charge, or by finding out who are sick among those living in my street or neighborhood, or by visiting the hospitals, after the example of so many good priests.

O agonising Jesus! I wish to appear before Thy Judgement-Seat gloriously arrayed as a minister of the happy death - if only to benefit by the same mercy.

3. I shall place on the list of my customary pious practices the beautiful work of mercy of visiting the sick, even though the latter may not be near to death. Who knows but that the restoration of this practice among priests may serve to abolish or diminish those prejudices which often confront us at a sick person's bedside or keep the door slammed against our entry!

(*) This, unfortunately, applies to Catholic countries in Europe; but what about our own "lapsed" in English ­speaking countries? And what about non-Catholics? (Trans.)
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Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.

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Please pray for our priests and pray for vocations to the priesthood!