Ariel Llanes
Seminarian
Divine Word Theologate
Chicago
 

Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) is an intensive twelve-week course in chaplaincy in a major hospital setting. Seminarians in the program acquire the pastoral skills necessary to minister to patients and their families. We also learn to work with the nurses and doctors on the hospital staff. It is a grueling but rewarding journey that leads those of us who have done CPE to discover the meaning of Jesus’ words, “I was sick, and you took care of me” (Matthew 25:36). It is a journey that leads us to discover Jesus in one another.

The longest journey we make in CPE is not the walk up to the patient floors to attend to our daily rounds, nor is it the dreadful walk to the emergency room; it is the eighteen inches from the top of your head to your heart—at least according to my supervisor, the Rev. Dr. Yvonne Valeris, ACPE. A former nurse, she became a hospital chaplain and is now a certified CPE supervisor.

I did my CPE at Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa, Arizona, near the greater Phoenix area, one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. As my group went through the first week of orientation, we were a bit on edge and not quite sure what to expect. We were seven men from various faith traditions. Our director of spiritual care and the other staff chaplains gave us more than enough information, yet we all still felt a bit overwhelmed. During the first week, we simply did not know what to expect during patient visits or in the emergency room or the intensive care unit. How would I face parents who had learned that their child had drowned and could not be resuscitated? Where would God be in their lives at that time? How is the chaplain supposed to remind these people that there is hope in the midst of such suffering and grief? With the stories our supervisors and directors shared with us, we interns had good reason to be concerned.

Nevertheless, as the weeks went by and we walked through our assigned units, we each gained experience and refined our pastoral abilities to better handle situations we never thought we could manage. Soon each chaplain intern found his own way to bring hope and encouragement to others. No amount of theology could have prepared me for the beauty I experienced in seeing families being moved to tears as I performed an infant baptism.

The proud Hispanic couple was worried that their newborn baby’s condition could take a turn for the worse and had asked for a chaplain to baptize their child. I was on call that evening and came into the hospital. I was nervous and uncertain. But the Catholic Church had authorized the hospital chaplain staff to perform emergency baptisms and so I felt reassured. When it came time to place a bit of water onto the baby’s tiny forehead, I dipped my rubber-gloved fingers into a bottle of sterilized water and reached into the incubator and baptized him. Then the baby started to cry and soon the parents were crying. It was the first time they had heard their baby cry. To see the looks of gratitude and encouraging smiles on that proud couple’s faces made me marvel at how God can indeed be present in whatever circumstances we find ourselves.

The seminary training I had were helpful, but I certainly could not take all my theology textbooks with me on the floors. The only book I had with me was the Bible. All that I could really bring into the patients’ rooms was myself. But where would I find the resources I needed to minister to the patient who just had her legs amputated or the patient whose cancer was causing him severe pain? These people would have every right to kick me out of their rooms if I had come in talking about how God was all-loving and full of compassion. After visiting patients, we interns took both experiences of rejection and our heartfelt connections and brought them back to our CPE group where we simply shared. Our records of conversations with patients were kept confidential. We confronted, challenged and supported one another until we reached the heart of the pastoral response where I often found my own heart connected with what each patient was going through. So it was with this feeling in my heart that I walked into patients’ rooms.

People may have been experiencing sorrow at having lost a loved one, pain from the pressures of work and family, exhaustion from having spent the whole night at the ER or simply numbness from the shock of being diagnosed with a terminal illness. As chaplain interns, we could only hope that our heartfelt presence by their side would inspire them to find some measure of peace in their own hearts. The journey through CPE from the head to the heart can be as rough and dry as the Arizona desert. We had some intense experiences through CPE in a general trauma center. Eighteen inches may not seem like such a long distance. But for those patients who may only need a heart with ears, eighteen inches is a journey worth taking.