A Chaplain’s Pandemic Lament

By The Rev. Joe Calandra, Jr., M.A., M.P.M., ‘17

Trouble, Sorrow, Need, Sickness, and Any Other Adversity

Many facets of COVID-19 and its effects on our country having been thoughtfully addressed in recent Chapter posts, I’d like to pivot our attention to the effects of this pandemic on the physical and emotional well being of our communities’ seniors, their loved ones, and caregivers. As an eldercare chaplain, I am daily privileged to come alongside some of our most vulnerable populations, along with those who care for them. Every day I learn more of what it means to lament and to “pray for those in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, and any other adversity.”

Trouble

I’ve seen COVID-19 and mitigation efforts against it cause “trouble” for those who work and live in my ministry context in myriad ways. For months, the healthcare organization I serve has wisely heeded government social distancing mandates designed to help preserve the lives of those entrusted to our care. As chaplain, I cancelled all in-person Eucharistic celebrations, memorials, prayer meetings, and support groups throughout our multi-site care continuum which serves 3,000 seniors annually. I also cancelled all in-person prayer services available to corporate staff during Lent and Eastertide. While this was the right decision, it was not without a heavy emotional and spiritual cost. 

These services offered many residents and caregivers an opportunity to receive Communion, enjoy fellowship, and worship Jesus together. Though some of these activities resumed on a smaller, still socially distant scale in late July, losing access to these opportunities became a real heartache for acute care residents in particular. While one-on-one chaplain visits still occurred daily, the weekly “in-house services” that brought them together for an incarnational experience of comfort, connection, and peace had been taken from them. The absence of facility-based worship programs left a spiritual gap in the lives of many people that could not be bridged elsewhere, as health departments placed similar restrictions on every public meeting space, thereby barring parish-based, in-person services and routine support visits from volunteer chaplains and local clergy. Beyond feeling this as a mere inconvenience, residents and staff alike were pained by the inability to engage in public worship in ways to which they’d become accustomed. Larger scale worship services throughout our system have still not resumed as of the time of this article’s publication.

Cancellation of assisted/independent-living grief support groups and Bible studies became a genuine grief as well, when residents no longer had access to a community spiritual care context that offered them a secure, confidential venue to express emotional distress and study Scripture together. Both of these programs helped manage depression and increase a sense of belonging among those who routinely attended. This new reality generated concern for many because the loss of these outlets represented diminished capacity for effective faith-based stress management and non-pharmacological mental health intervention. Cancellation of memorial services remains a genuine difficulty for residents and staff because it short-circuits the natural grieving process formerly mitigated by a facility-based venue for communal recounting of shared loss among caregivers, residents, and families of the deceased. 

“I miss teaching them, hearing their stories, walking alongside them in fellowship, experiencing joy and grief together, and I miss breaking bread and praying with the entire community.”

-The Rev. Joe Calandra, ‘17

Perhaps hardest hit by the impact of necessary and prudent anti-viral mitigation safeguards are residents living with Alzheimer’s/dementia and their loved ones. Despite the best efforts of staff, residents with advanced memory care issues often feel a pronounced sense of isolation because they cannot understand why they aren’t regularly seeing loved ones after formerly having unrestricted daily in-person access to them according to their own availability.

Sorrow

These factors have led to true sorrow for each one of the 3,500+ souls in my care. I think Langston Hughes was right when he said, “a dream deferred” could “make the heart sick.” Over the past few months of listening to the deferred dreams of residents, staff, and families, I’ve learned that the simplicities they dream of having restored are “normal” things we all once took for granted. They want to see people’s faces again. They want to hear chapels filled with live music and halls filled with children’s laughter. They want warm hugs, free access to the company of other human beings, and the joy of sitting with friends who are socially connected, not distant. Mostly, they don’t want to feel so scared anymore.    

Since the outbreak intensified in March 2020, our residents have been isolated in their rooms, when not participating in rotating times of refreshment spent outside in facility gardens where they can visit with socially distanced staff and fellow residents. Recently, families and friends have been able to visit loved ones once per week for 30 minutes, outdoors. While this measure has certainly helped, it also hurts because the brevity of these visits, while sweet, is also a reminder of what has been lost. Communal dining remains suspended, along with many other social activities that helped enhance quality of life. Add to this, several patient deaths and an increasing number of positive COVID cases among residents and staff, and there’s more than enough sorrow to go around. In addition to all of this, effective mourning itself is undercut by medical recommendations not to attend funerals or memorial gatherings that exceed ten people.  

Need

People need each other. The Genesis creation narrative teaches us that God Himself exists in a mysterious, majestic, singular, unified plurality. Acts 2:42 shows us how essential it is for the Church to reflect this reality in its activity. From its inception, the church has devoted itself to, “the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” 

Residents of congregate care facilities experience the Early Church’s vision of community through the kind of programming that has been forced into temporary cessation for the time being. During this pandemic, even my own physical ministry has been isolated to one care center rather than divided among my company’s ten other locations in five different cities; as potential cross-exposure between sites must be avoided. I miss the staff and residents I’ve built relationships with over the last three years. I miss teaching them, hearing their stories, walking alongside them in fellowship, experiencing joy and grief together, and I miss breaking bread and praying with the entire community. 

“I also know that now is a time when those facing adversity and uncertainty need us to lean into the self-emptying, humbling love of Jesus to discover new ways to minister to people experiencing new kinds of hurt.” -The Rev. Joe Calandra, ‘17

Other staff with whom I maintain close relationships have shared with me that this season has been one of significant sorrow and need for them as they’ve lost a sense of connection with family members, parishioners, friends, and coworkers from different locations. Losing the opportunity to fully process grief or adequately verbalize and mourn their own inability to change hard situations for hurting people has resulted in a significant decline in psycho-social health. Add to this, uncertainty about the educational futures of staff members’ school-age children, job losses/furloughs for staff spouses, and the exacerbation of personal/family concerns that were perhaps present but manageable pre-pandemic, and sorrow grows all the more. This new grief is compounded by a lack of many normative outlets for spiritual and emotional rejuvenation, like going to church, engaging in physical touch, gathering in large (or, in some cases, even small) groups of friends to process major life stressors, going to movies, or experiencing basic freedom of movement without fear or restriction. 

Sickness

Naturally, I see a great deal of sickness in its unpreventable physical manifestation at work. I have been present for countless deaths during my four years of chaplaincy. However, what I’m seeing just as much during the current crisis is a preventable disease of mind, will, and emotion manifesting in people who once genuinely loved each other prior to the beginning of mandated shutdowns in Mid-March. I’ve noticed, both in person and especially on social media, a true disordering of structure and function in the way even Christian people think about each other, treat one another, and react with malice when wounded by the way others perceive their public statements or private thoughts about COVID-19 and efforts to contain it. I have seen close friends made enemies as coworkers, family members, and parishioners turn against each other over just a few words expressed with passion and conviction that didn’t comport with the other’s idea of what constituted truth or goodness. I honestly believe that as much as we need healing of physical bodies for the very real plague that’s before us, we simultaneously need spiritual healing for the disease of sinful pride, vanity, and self-conceit that’s ravaging Christ’s Body at the same time. The good news is that, while we still don’t know quite how to get the former, we know exactly how to obtain the latter, if we would only just embrace it. After all, we speak the cure every time we pray the Offices and read the Summary of the Law and our Confession.

Any Other Adversity

Throughout the last few weeks, I’ve had a prayer on my heart for all of us who face the external adversity posed by the virus itself as well as the self-imposed internal adversity represented by our own propensity toward graceless reactivity during this season of increased stress. 

Every son and daughter of Nashotah House knows the prayer well because of all our times reciting it together:

“Bless all who may be trained here; take from them all pride, vanity, and self-conceit, and give them true humility and self-abasement . . . that they may speak with that resistless energy of love, which shall melt the hearts of sinners to the love of thee. . .” (emphasis added).

Not trying to persuade for or against any particular course of action regarding protocols, timelines, or ways to deal with this pandemic, I intend for my words to invite you to see the present situation from a perhaps previously unconsidered perspective, and then, with that new vision, join me in prayer and lament.

Since we are sons, daughters, and supporters of this House, we are people who know how to pray and work. Among our number are bishops, priests, deacons, chaplains, wives, mothers, fathers, husbands, sons, and daughters who shine the light of Christ’s love in their communities with intentionality and courage. It is my fond hope that my words remind you that now is the time when those we serve need us to be stripped of our pride, vanity, and self-conceit as we respond to this season’s many hardships. Though I certainly know it’s easier said than lived, those we serve need to hear compassion from us as we work among them.

I also know that now is a time when those facing adversity and uncertainty need us to lean into the self-emptying, humbling love of Jesus to discover new ways to minister to people experiencing new kinds of hurt.

A Final Word of Encouragement 

Although we can’t change any of the testimonies of grief I’ve presented here, we can all work toward making the future brighter as we recommit ourselves regularly to speaking with resistless, energetic love - not only with our lips but with our lives. Here are just a few meaningful ways you can do this for healthcare workers and their patients, especially those living assisted-living facilities and nursing homes in your communities:

Call or email the facility’s chaplain and/or activities director to inquire about needs that you can meet. Even though, for now, you can’t go into a care center to spread good cheer, your parish can, for example, sponsor a meal for staff from a local restaurant as a morale-boosting thank you for their ministry. Often, retailers even agree to donate the meal if members of the parish want to deliver it. In the facilities I serve, several parishes and retailers have done this to great effect, including donations from pizza shops, bakeries, and chain restaurants. Your parish’s children can write notes and draw pictures for residents. If you drop these off or mail them in, they are received by gloved staff, left to sit for three days, and are then distributed to the delight of many grandfathers and grandmothers. These are just two ideas for your consideration. No matter what you decide to do, I ask God’s blessings on your times of prayer and work for others’ good and His glory.

Fr. Joe Calandra, ‘17, serves as a priest in Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) serving with the Special Jurisdiction for the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy. He’s the Director of Chaplaincy for Guardian Angels Senior Services, a multi-site Minnesota eldercare company employing more than 500 staff and providing assisted-living, independent housing, and long-term, acute, memory, and transitional care to over 3,000 seniors annually. Fr. Joe is an Air Force veteran and a current Chaplain Candidate with the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary (Civil Air Patrol). He holds a B.A. in Religious Studies and M.A. in American Government from Regent University. He graduated from Nashotah House Theological Seminary with an M.P.M. in 2017. In addition to his full-time cure of Guardian Angels' residents and staff, Fr. Joe is concurrently engaged in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) with the Institute for Clinical Pastoral Training to become a Board Certified Chaplain and CPE Supervisor with the Spiritual Care Association and the Association for Certified Christian Chaplains. Fr. Joe is married to Jaclyn and they have three children.