As the college student rang the doorbell and delivered the pizza, the man who answered growled, "What's the usual tip?"
"Well, sir," the student replied, "this is my first delivery, but the other guys said that if I got a dollar out of you, I'd be doing great."
"That so?" grunted the customer. "Well, in that case, here's ten bucks." "Thank you, sir," the grateful student said, taking the bill. "This will be a big help at school."
"By the way," the customer asked, "what are you studying?" - "Applied psychology."
This psychology student has learned not just to see what people do but why they do it - and what will make them act differently. Jesus, in today's Gospel, prays that we will do the same. He calls us to see the truth in its totality - not just to recognize a series of facts but to understand how those facts connect to reveal reality and truth.
The Risen Christ challenges us not to approach truth in terms of wins and losses or of power or of the comfort of convention, but to approach truth as where and how God is present in our lives and our world. To be a person of authentic faith means to face and seek out the truth - regardless of our doubts and cynicism and fear. To be "consecrated in the truth" begins with embracing the Spirit of God: the wisdom, the wholeness, the love of God who is the first and last and constant reality.
And his prayer is a call to follow in his way offering prayers of comfort and hope as we live into his spirit of truth. We are called to use our words and actions to spread that truth and love of Jesus. Today, I think of Nurses who are the unsung heroes in so many of our conflicts and in our lives today, who consecrated in the truth that all need healing and wholeness in their lives.
I think of Florence Nightingale – Lady of the Lamp
Probably the best known nurse - her nursing career began before the war where she was astonished how badly nurses were trained and how bad conditions were in hospitals. She began to remedy this before she went and served in the Crimean War. Her nursing was an epic of heroic patience and compassion. She often worked for 20 hours without a break, supervising every detail of the insanitary and evil-smelling hospital. She visited the wards alone every night, lamp in hand, to comfort the men. The scene has been told by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem “Santa Filomena":
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room
On England’s annals through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song
That lights its rays shall cast
From portals of the past
A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good
Heroic womanhood.
She carried out her duties with such efficiency that the death-rate in the army hospital fell by 40% in four months. Much of today’s modern nursing harkens back to her work. (http://www.pioneerassociation.ie/pioneer-magazine/154-december2010article)
But she wasn’t the only nurse in Crimea.
I think of Mary Seacole – “Mother Seacole”
Mary Seacole, a Jamaican/Scottish nurse widely known to the British Army as “Mother Seacole” - when the Crimean War broke out, Mary’s application to assist was refused despite her nursing experience. Determined to help, she used her own limited resources to travel and set up a hotel behind the lines in Crimea. Here, she tirelessly tended to the curing and comforting of wounded soldiers coming off the battlefield and people from all walks in need: “The grateful words and smiles which rewarded me for binding up a wound or giving a cooling drink was a pleasure worth risking life for at any time.” She also nursed the wounded on the battlefield - sometimes under the hail of gunfire. Google doodle honored her work in 2016 for her legacy as an empowered healer and humanitarian. (https://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-mary-seacole)
In 2016, a statue of Mother Seacole was erected opposite the Houses of Parliament on the grounds of St Thomas' Hospital & is inscribed with words written in 1857 by The Times' Crimean War correspondent, Sir William Howard Russell: "I trust that England will not forget one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead." (http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-36663206 )
I think of Clara Barton – angel of the battlefield
Clara Barton knew that she was needed most on the Civil War battlefields where the suffering was greatest. She prodded leaders in the government and the army until she was given permission to bring her voluntary services and medical supplies to the scenes of battle and field hospitals.
Following the battle of Cedar Mountain in northern Virginia, she appeared at a field hospital at midnight with a wagonload of supplies drawn by a four-mule team. The surgeon on duty later wrote: "I thought that night if heaven ever sent out a[n]... angel, she must be one - her assistance was so timely." Thereafter she was known as the Angel of the Battlefield.
A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War by Stephen B. Oates says it all:
“During this and many other battles, we witness Clara Barton, the American Florence Nightingale, setting up candle lanterns so that the surgeons could amputate all night, or ladling out mouthfuls of soup so that the dying could relieve their thirst, or distributing crackers to the starving or cloaks and blankets to the cold. These were among the ways she tried to improve the odds of the wounded and mitigate the agony of the doomed. We watch her pause to hold a man as he slips into unconsciousness, then bend down to another as he whispers a plea that she write to his mother to report his dying devotion. Eventually we follow her to Andersonville, the notorious Confederate prison camp in Georgia, where, after the war, she led the effort to identify the Union dead.”
Barton helped to establish field hospitals and distributed supplies to Union soldiers after the failed siege at Charleston. In the process, Barton herself became gravely ill and was evacuated. Later in life, she helped found the American Red Cross in 1880 and even brought aid to the Armenians suffering through a genocide by the Turks. (https://ehistory.osu.edu/biographies/clara-barton-angel-battlefield)
I think of Augusta Chiwy - The Forgotten Nurse of Bastogne
Augusta Chiwy in December 1944 was visiting her family at their home in Bastogne, when an American Army doctor knocked on the door. He was desperate for help. The battle of the bulge had begun and he was alone in a makeshift medical aid station.
Augusta was a nurse & immediately went to work at the station. At the time, black nurses were not allowed to treat white soldiers - but the doctor got around the regulation by reminding wounded white soldiers that Ms. Chiwy was a volunteer - and added, "You either let her treat you or you die."
During the siege, the station's ambulance driver was killed. Augusta and her friend, Renee Lemaire, put on Army uniforms and drove the ambulance to the front and back. Because they were wearing Army uniforms and not nurses' garb, they could have been shot had the Germans captured them.
The two women combed the battlefield, often coming under enemy fire, to find the wounded in the deep snow. A bomb blast on Christmas Eve near the station killed her friend Renee and 30 wounded American soldiers. Augusta herself was blown through a wall, but survived.
The siege at Bastogne ended the day after Christmas. Several hundred American GIs owe their lives to the young nurse who worked at the two aid stations for more than a month.
Sixty-seven years after that horrible winter, Ms. Chiwy was honored by the Belgian government for her humanitarian care. She said simply, "What I did was very normal. I would have done it for anyone. We are all children of God." [The New York Times, August 25, 2015.]
The quiet dedication and generous service to the children of God by Augusta Chiwy, Mary Seacole, Clara Barton & Florence Nightingale follow the call of Jesus. Nurses continue to serve us in hospitals, in other care facilities, in bringing hope, love and healing to our broken world. Today let us offer a prayer in remembrance & thanksgiving of nurses of the past and for the nurses among us today. May we all have such hope & caring in our lives, embracing that healing Spirit of God. As we know, in the Gospel, it is not the measure of the gift but the measure of the love that directs the gift that is great before God.
The Flame of Florence Nightingale's Legacy (Nightingale Prayer)
“Today, our world needs healing and to be rekindled with Love.
Once, Florence Nightingale lit her beacon of lamplight to comfort the wounded.
Her light has blazed a path of service across a Century to us --
through her example and through the countless nurses and healers
who have followed in her footsteps.
Like Mary Seacole, Clara Barton & Augusta Chiwy.
“Today, we celebrate the flame of Florence Nightingale's legacy.
Let that same light be rekindled to burn brightly in our hearts.
Let us take up our own ‘lanterns of caring,’ each in our own ways —
to more brightly walk our own paths of service to the world —
to more clearly share our own ‘noble purpose’ with each other.
“May human caring become the lantern for the 21st century.
May we better learn to care for ourselves, for each other and for all creation.
“Through our caring, may we be the keepers of that flame.
That our spirits may burn brightly to kindle the hearts of our children and great-grandchildren —
as they, too, follow in these footsteps.” Deva-Marie Beck, PhD, RN © 1996
Amen.
To carry on her work of care, visit here.
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