(On the Feast of Christ the King)
You were meant to be a routine visit
On my chaplaincy rounds in hospital,
Nothing special on your file.
But you were a surprise.
You had deep and feverish black eyes,
You haven’t seen a barber for years,
You had no teeth and no speech,
You breathed heavily.
Your body was twisted as with pain –
You could have been disabled from birth,
Or losing a battle with an illness,
I could not tell.
But I wondered where you came from.
You were too sick to have lived in the streets,
And too dishevelled to have been cared for.
Etched in my memory is a patient
In a condition that I haven’t before seen.
Above your head a sign
“Nil by mouth” – red and clear.
You hadn’t swallowed for years,
I was told, you had no swallowing.
I could not give you Communion.
So I said you can hold the pyx
And we will pray.
You took no notice of me,
You grabbed the pyx in my hands,
And clenched so hard
I thought my knuckles would break.
Your eyes burned more intensely
And your hands tightened the grip.
Though your body was limp,
You lifted the little you could.
You were gasping – for air,
Or the Host you could not have?
It was then,
In your bewildering hunger,
That the air by your bed gently swirled,
Then thickened, became white,
And began to take shape –
Emerging was a silhouette
Of a man in white garments.
I felt that I was intruding
And that I should not be there,
So I turned around and waited
With eyes shut and bowed head.
When the time came to leave,
And take the pyx from your hands.
I said a blessing and a good word,
But you had no interest in me.
For hours later
I sat on buses, talked to people,
Walked the streets,
But really,
I was still by your hospital bed.
I never thought when I went to see you,
That I had entered Emmaus road.
What could have been once in my lifetime,
By your bedside, Luigi,
I saw the Risen Lord.