Jun 01 | CPE Journal #4: May 27th

I connected with a few people today. One person could barely speak but was so sweet. We prayed together – and I remembered to mention the Virgin Mary this time!

I think during my first encounter I experienced a form of stigmata – not in my own flesh or even in the patient’s, but in Christ’s. I felt he was in the room, and his palms were bleeding. If it wasn’t stigmata, then it was the Sacred Heart. (Can you tell I’ve been working in a Catholic hospital?) I’ve been doing some reading on the Sacred Heart, and while the penitential aspects of it are a bit much for me, I can get into the pierced, bleeding, immolated heart of God’s love. It may seem unsettling to some, but when you’re on the unit you get used to the everyday reality of pain and being mangled. After all, what is surgery but mangling, to some degree and with the best of intentions? To see God in that reality is ecstatic and beautiful to me – God’s great burning heart, wilfully bared, sweetly pierced. I may have to come up with an Anglican spin on it myself – perhaps I’ll work it into my position paper this fall! I find it affects me most because I had prayed for an experience like this – a true and mystical experience of the sweet pain of God’s presence (pain because of its deep holiness, which leaves us transformed, maybe a little scorched). I received it, and it was not a supernatural thing necessarily, like Padre Pio’s bleeding palms or, flippantly, seeing Jesus in a piece of toast. Such a sight, I think, would only really have been meaningful to me and those who truly believe in that kind of thing. An experience like the one I had would touch all people.

I’m so glad I’m an Anglican! We can take what we like from Catholic tradition that works, but I can still be ordained!

-Clarity