Visitors to the Sick & Elderly

The visitors/ministers bring the healing presence of Christ as they spend time with the sick, the shut-ins and elderly, either at home, in hospitals, or in convalescent/nursing homes.

In their visits we extend our love and compassion. They are our parish family's representatives sharing Holy Communion and our companionship.

The visitor/minister is a chaplain in he or she visits hospital's patients. He or she becomes God's ambassador sent in the "Front Line", for every hospitalization is a trauma which one comes out never the same.

This is more than a ministry or a volunteer job. It is a call, a vocation. To be - Jesus who visits the patients - seeing the suffering Jesus in every patient...

At one point in our lives, we may all be grateful to those messengers of God's healing love...

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"If you don't bring me My Lord? Who will?"

In the parish of St. Theresa Catholic Church, there are 24 volunteers who serve as external ministers to approximately 65 sick and elderly parishioners in their homes, in the hospitals and in the nursing homes and day care centers in the city of Palm Springs.

Most of those we visit are elderly, but not all. Many are patients recovering from surgery, or accidents, or who have illnesses that keep them away from attending church services so as in the days of the early Christians, we are sent to them by the church to bring comfort, support, peace, and the Body of Christ.

For each minister who goes forward to visit the sick or someone confined to their home, there is a different story. Every person we visit is unique; each has a different need. No two ministers have the same manner or way of being of service to those we visit. It is difficult to describe just what an External Minister really does because no story is the same...

We would like to share some of these stories with you and through these experiences perhaps you can formulate what it means to be a minister to the sick and elderly...