In My View

Visiting the sick – a view from the Vicarage

Revd Lorna Bradley responds to a plea for more hospital visiting

There’s a canticle which reads – Be in the heart of each to whom I speak; in the mouth of each who speaks unto me and it comes to comfort me whenever I am unsure of the welcome. Often this is when we’re called to visit a family ahead of a funeral of a churchgoer, where the family are not churchgoers themselves.

We’re all conscious of the gap that has developed in the lives of families between church goers and younger people – where the only contact with the clergy is through occasional offices or from watching TV vicars - their expectations being a mix of Revd Bernice Woodall and Revd Adam Smallbone, if we’re lucky.

It’s a great privilege to enter these people’s lives, it’s an opportunity to become a real rather than a fictional vicar; it’s a chance to show a scriptural vicar not full of judgement but encouragement.

Caroline Evans, in the last edition, writes about the lack of visiting vicars. She is an easy win to visit – a congregational member and dedicated Christian who has volunteered with the Church in Wales for many years. But her situation is not uncommon. She mentions COVID and its ongoing influence on visiting hospitals and demands on Clergy time. Lay support set up during COVID has run for four years and it’s only when the Vicar is needed – things are getting bad – that the Vicar is ‘bothered’.

So is this the hard truth, that congregations want the Vicar to focus on mission rather than visiting the sick and dying, focus on the Children and Families who are needed to replace them by a congregation who are looking forwards to a time when the gap can no longer be breached?

I believe a balance is needed because visiting the sick, comforting the dying continues to be part of the hope of the Gospel we’re called to teach. It opens the doors to families, albeit not in the upbeat entertaining way, but in the moment of need when difficult discussions are happening and the oddness of a family witnessing spoken prayer or recital of a psalm awakes something.

Perhaps the lesson lies in Caroline’s quote from James – “Call unto him” – let the family know, let the friends and neighbours know – that the vicar is not being bothered when the call comes to do a visit – just the opposite – we’re grateful for the chance to minister as we’ve promised we would.