March 2006

So I’m walking along the 4-South wing, and I see the name of a patient posted outside a room. It looks familiar, so I decide to pop in and say hello. The problem is, both patients in there are men, and I’m looking for a woman, so I’m wondering what’s going on. I’m also a little embarassed, because each patient has company, making for quite a few people in the room when I suddenly barge in looking confused. The conversations abruptly stop, with everyone staring seriously at the man in the collar, wondering why he’s there and who he wants to see.

Forwarded from a reader:

NET Ministries of Canada is offering our current parish Lenten mission. This is the first time they undertake this kind of ministry, and I’m glad that they were so ready to accept, as it is a good way for their work to become better known.

During the course of this parish mission we were all challenged to come up with our own personal mission statement. For myself, one leapt to mind immediately:

To prepare the world for the second coming of Christ, and to work to hasten that Day.

I recently had a chance to attend to a woman afflicted with a terminal illness. She was always very pleasant, and was very happy to receive a simple blessing when it was offered. But she always refused the sacraments of Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick. Her reason? “I don’t want to be a hypocrite.”

This evening the Healing Ministry of the Catholic Charismatic Services of Montreal (CCSM) sponsored an evening Eucharist, followed by prayers for healing. Yours truly was present, as I am the diocesan liaison to this particular ministry. Every Mass is a “healing mass” of course, but the sacraments of Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick were made available in abundance, as well as the opportunity for people to be prayed over by teams of specially trained lay persons. It was a very beautiful, prayerful environment. Many thanks to Fr. Pat Donnelly of St.

Today I got a call on my pager, 15 minutes before I was going to leave the hospital to teach downtown. Calling the ward desk, I was told that a patient wanted to see me. Could it wait till tomorrow, I inquired? No, it was urgent, was the response. OK, then, I headed downstairs right away.

The nurse let me to the patient’s room. He was quite upset to be stuck in the hospital. I asked him what he wanted to talk about, and it turned out he didn’t want to talk about anything. He wanted me to feed his cat.

Excuse me?

It has been quite a week. I wrote my post for last Monday, entitled “Yet Another Irritating Distraction”, and then all puragtory broke loose. (I say ‘purgatory’ because I don’t think it was quite as severe as if it had been ‘all hell’ :-)

Apart from the 50+ comments that can now be found attached to that blog entry, I also received quite a bit of email, subdivided into 3 kinds:

This evening was the John Allen / Cardinal Ouellet double lecture I had mentioned earlier. The room was packed, with people from all backgrounds in attendance. If you’d like to get a good sense of how it went, may I suggest reading John Allen himself on the topic? (note: If you get an edition of his column later than March 3, just snoop through the archives)

This evening was the John Allen / Cardinal Ouellet double lecture I had mentioned earlier. The room was packed, with people from all backgrounds in attendance. If you’d like to get a good sense of how it went, may I suggest reading John Allen himself on the topic? (note: If you get an edition of his column later than March 3, just snoop through the archives)