HOSPITAL CHAPEL AND NURSING SERVICE: JUBILEE THANKSGIVING WITH MASS, CONFERENCE

Twenty years since the then county bishop, Miklós Beer on his initiative, the hospital chaplaincy service of the Váci Diocese was established, which this year also includes spiritual care, and on Saturday they commemorated the important anniversary with a thanksgiving mass and a conference.

At the beginning of the holy mass, on behalf of the institution’s caretaker, the Patient Nursing Order Koncz Astrik Father said: “I feel it is a great honor that the hospital chaplaincy and spiritual care service of the diocese has felt the hospital chapel of the Nursing Order of Mercy as its home since the beginning, and even after twenty years it considers it important that the venue of the Mass reminds the gathered people of this fraternal relationship. So I warmly welcome you home, a Saint Charles Borromeo bishop, our Divine Saint John our father, and I believe that since recently St. Teresa of Calcutta also enjoying the protection of Mother, between the holy walls that have been thoroughly prayed for by patients over the past 350 years. All three of our saints are considered to be great admirers of the Eucharist, and in this Mass I will ask for their intercession for all of us who, like them, have dedicated our lives to the service of the sick, and that God may strengthen us in this holy service with the Eucharist.”

Zsolt Marton the county bishop reminded that after the Turkish subjugation, this was the priest training institute of the diocese, that is where the altarpiece comes from, as the name giver and patron saint of the priest training institute of the Vác diocese was St. Károly Borromeo, who is also the patron saint of the sick and those in social services.

– Many thanks to Bishop Miklós Beer, who called the service to life, that we can be together in this thanksgiving for the past twenty years. At the same time, we also give thanks for the present, and we also look to the future and ask for God’s blessing on the service, on the colleagues, to follow his path, to build his country in this service as well – said the archdiocese’s pastor.

As he put it, the hospital chaplain service is on the one hand an organization within the diocese, but also an evangelical community.

– On a birthday, we don’t just pay attention to the person whose birthday it is, we also look up, we thank God for what has happened so far, we thank him for the present and then we ask him for a blessed future. We give thanks, we thank you. The greatest thanks is what happens in the Holy Mass, so with this Mass we give thanks on this anniversary to Christ, who became a man, showed us how to live and love, and gave himself for us, since then our lives have meaning and purpose, we are like this together in the Holy Mass at his word, at his living word, at the festive table of the Eucharist, at our spiritual and spiritual food – Zsolt Marton continued his speech.
Referring to his own recovery from an injury resulting from a sports accident, he emphasized: it is a great gift when someone regains their health.

“A classic saying goes like this: the doctor provides treatment, but it is nature that heals. I was also told to be patient, healing cannot be accelerated, nature needs it to be active, it takes time. But I thought about this sentence and in connection with the verbs assigned for today, I thought that actually more happens when someone is healed, and in this case, and with Tabitha, even more happened, since the apostle Peter was not a doctor, but a tool, a mediator, in quotation marks pretending to be a doctor, he called those affected to health and life, and with him it was not nature that healed, but the supernatural, God. He is the one who really heals, so we can adapt the quoted saying in this way: the mediator who is present as a doctor, conveys the healing love of God. Dear co-workers, you are God’s helpers, you are God’s doctors, as spiritual caregivers, fathers, deacons, sacrificers, volunteer workers, and I see that you are doing everything possible. And this is expressed by the name change of the hospital chaplaincy service from February this year, which Father Joel requested, saying that there is not only priestly and sacramental service here, but more complex and complete mediation,” said the county bishop.

Then he summoned the service leader Horseradish Joel father’s request for a name change: “I would have liked our name to reflect the double reality that this is not just a hospital chaplain’s service, but we also do clinical spiritual care work, so we are talking about cases where the spiritual care provider helps in a crisis for the bereaved or the bereaved to be able to accept his situation and losses, to mobilize his mental strength in order to be able to make a responsible decision independently and move on.”

In closing, Zsolt Marton wished the helpers that miracles would happen in their service as well, i.e. conversions, coming to faith, because it is a heavenly gift if this happens to the patient, his environment, and, where appropriate, to members of the nursing staff.

At the end of the Mass, Father Joel Torma expressed his joy that they were able to give thanks for twenty years together, he thanked them for being able to do their work with the support of the diocese and said that the priests always do this knowing that,k and also volunteers to a kin churches, not only the Diocese of Váci, but also the Catholic Church and God the Creator kthey endure.