Preparing us to Live with God: Dominican Healthcare Ministry

By Praedicare Staff

In 1897, the Dominican Friars working on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in New York City, at the parish of St. Vincent Ferrer, opened a mission on East 68th Street and placed it under the patronage of St. Catherine of Siena, patroness of those who care for the sick.

And shortly thereafter, by God’s Providence, the best hospitals in the city—and in the country—began to spring up in the immediate neighborhood of the Church of Saint Catherine of Siena.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, one of the nation’s premier cancer hospitals, became a neighbor of St. Catherine’s in 1939. There was also NewYork-Presbyterian, which opened on East 68th Street in 1932. And then the Hospital for Special Surgery opened a few years later.

The Dominican Friars have continued to work in this region of the city for more than 125 years, and are now directing a multifaceted and extensive ministry at those hospital systems.

The province has assigned five priests to the Dominican Healthcare Ministry (DHM), including Fr. Columba Thomas, O.P., who is a medical doctor and an assistant professor of medicine at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University, and serves as the Director of Bioethics for DHM.

Fr. Hyacinth Grubb, O.P., the Executive Director of the Dominican Healthcare Ministry, told us about their work:

“In 2002, our ministry was revamped to include not only direct care of the sick, but also a new focus on bioethics and education. It became apparent that there was a need for a Dominican presence in the world of medical ethics. So since then, we have a twofold mission—both to the sick locally, and also to medical professionals through the larger hospital culture in the U.S.”

Q. What is it that you do on a day to day basis?

We are the full time chaplains at those three hospital systems. We visit anyone who asks for us, Catholic or not. These are people who are facing mortality in a new way, through all the difficulties of illness. When we are sick all the parts of our life become more poignant and sharp, both the good and the bad. There are many people who are confronting family dynamics or issues that are made more pressing by illness. People need the guidance of the Church in that. Nurses and physicians, and patient families will request us and then we go.

Q. How does your staff share the duties of being on call at these hospitals?

We have four [friars] who share a pager, 24/7, 365 days a year. There is never a time when a priest is not available.

Q. Could you talk a little bit about Last Rites and how a Catholic should look at them?

Last Rites is a little bit of a misnomer. It consists of confession, Communion, and anointing of the sick, together. Confession and Communion we should be receiving throughout our lives, and anointing is something we should be receiving throughout the course of an illness. Last Rites is…a preparation for eternal life. [These sacraments] are about preparing us to live with God, and share His life fully. So the Last Rites are a powerful moment of grace, and they are something people are very open to receiving. We hear confessions from people who have been away from the Church for 20, 30, 40 years on a daily basis. These sacraments help us overcome the particular trials and temptations that come with approaching the end of our lives.

Q. How did you become involved in this ministry?

Typically, work in a hospital is a unique environment—the Church does not own these hospitals, so having the proper training is very important… Every student brother has some sort of hospital experience…I was at St. Patrick’s in Columbus, working with a chaplain at the Ohio State Hospital. I had never been exposed to medicine or healthcare in any way before, but I really enjoyed that summer. I also had a great experience working with the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne [who work with terminally ill cancer patients who cannot afford hospice care].

Q. How do you go about dealing with patients, and the families of patients, at the last moments of their lives? 

Sickness and death are something that we carry [along] with our families. One of the hardest parts of being sick is often the kinds of suffering that it puts our families through. Marriage vows include the “in sickness and in health” part, because we typically don’t need vows for the happy times in our lives. Families and loved ones sit by the hospital bed in the same way that the Blessed Virgin and St. John stood by the Cross of Christ. Their vocation is to witness and pray, just as the duty of the sick person is to offer themselves to Christ. For the dying, it is important to pay early attention to our own spiritual care. When we are very sick we are quick to go to physicians, which is good – that’s why we have doctors – but we should also seek out the sacraments early in any illness, and continue to receive them frequently up until the end.

Q. What is a lesson you think the healthy should learn from those who are dying well?

I think the first lesson is that we will not always be healthy. Every one of us will at some time be in that hospital bed ourselves. This is one of the unique things about this corporal work of mercy, of visiting the sick. All the other works are directed towards people in circumstances we may never share, but we are all destined to be on the other side of that hospital bed. We should practice the ordinary daily virtues, particularly of prayer, because they are good in themselves, and also because when we are sick, we will already be prepared to pray well through that. We should meditate on the Gospels, and the role of the crucifixion narrative. The most important thing Jesus did in His life was suffer and die on the Cross, and the most important thing we can do is to suffer and die with Him. We offer our prayers and sufferings for our families, our friends, even our city, and country. That’s how God worked redemption first, and that’s how He’ll work it for us.

Q. Do you have any final thoughts for our readers?

The only thing I would leave readers with is a request for prayers on behalf of the sick. The most important thing we do when we are sick is pray, and so that’s also the most important thing we can do for them.