Priest's calling with wounded soldiers
To watch Capuchin Father James Stump at work is to see a Christ-centered “ministry of presence” in action as a matter of daily routine.
A chaplain at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto, Father Stump makes his rounds with one purpose in mind: to invite sick and wounded veterans to encounter the living Christ.
Father Stump is quick in his step and quick with a joke as he goes about his work.
Watch the speed limit, he jokes to a wheelchair-bound Marine on the move in the hallway. They chat about the Marine’s spinal reconstruction surgery. But in a moment, without a break in the informality, the priest is praying over the patient and asking that Jesus “show his face to you, have mercy on you.”
And as the two part, the priest, simply says: “Heal up.”
Father Stump does all he can to put the veterans at ease and in a good mood. In doing so he creates an environment where the presence of Christ can become a part of almost any encounter he initiates.
“Just the way we enter a room is important: being a little upbeat, wanting to be there,” Father Stump said.
The Kansas-born Father Stump came to the priesthood late in life. He was a corporate lawyer until he was about 40 years old. He yearned for more meaningful work, gravitated toward the priesthood and joined the Capuchin community at St. Francis Friary in Burlingame.
The Capuchins assigned Father Stump to the VA chaplaincy to succeed an older priest. He wasn’t sure how he would take to hospital work, but it would turn out to be an opportunity that would lead to the opening up of his gift for the one-to-one encounter.
“If that’s a gift, it’s a gift of the spirit,” Father Stump said. “I feel at ease...I just feel very comfortable being a priest.”
Hospital chaplaincy is a ministry that could easily become as heavy as the illness and death that surround it. But Father Stump strives to be consistently open and welcoming.
“I sometimes pray that the angels and saints go before me to take care of any problem,” he said.
Father Stump is a member of the VA Palo Alto Health Care System’s interfaith chaplaincy team. The group includes three other Catholic priests: Father John Coleman, a priest of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the chief of chaplain services; Capuchin Father Richard Lopes, and Father Augustine Koilarampil, who works at the hospital system’s Livermore site. Other Catholic chaplains include Sister Margaret Keeler, a Franciscan Sister of Penance and Christian Charity; Maryknoll Brother Duane Crockett, and Deacon Louis Charles Dixon. The team is supported by many volunteers, some of whom serve as Eucharistic ministers.
“It’s a great group of folks who are very cohesive, who make people like me feel welcome and warm,” said Paul Jordan, recently a patient in the hospital’s blind center.
Jordan visited with Father Stump every Sunday during his recent long hospital stay. “His message each week is one that is more down to earth, real life, versus back in the dark ages,” he said. “It’s important to refer to that, but it’s more important to refer to today’s perspective.”
Father Stump’s daily role includes celebrating Mass in the hospital chapel. After Mass, he sets out to greet patients in the hospice and ICU wards, working from a list of Catholic patients.
When he finds a door open to a Catholic patient’s room, he announces his presence. If he is invited in, he is prepared to offer whatever the patient might be looking for, including prayer and the sacraments of Eucharist and Anointing of the Sick.
The sacraments are at the heart of Father Stump’s ministry, because it is through them that he feels the power of Christ at its most intense.
In administering Eucharist, Father Stump sometimes recites the Our Father and adds as he dispenses the host: “‘This is Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. This is Jesus, who loves us, heals us, forgives us and blesses us with his peace. Happy are we who are called to this holy sacrament.”
In the sacrament of anointing, Father Stump recites James 5: “He should call for the priests of the church, and they should pray over him and anoint him in the name of teh Lord, and the prayuer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed any sins, he will be forgiven.”
Father Stump has met many inspirational people through his ministry, but perhaps none more than Gregory Peters. Peters was a high-school All-American football player who was drafted to serve in Vietnam and led a combat squad.
“He was captured twice, and he escaped one time and another time he was rescued,” Father Stump said. “He had this mantra prayer when he was being beaten, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ We had a banner made and put in our chapel because of that.”
Peters spent much of the rest of his life in and out of the VA hospital.
“He always wanted to get better, well enough to help around the chapel,” Father Stump said. “He’d pedal his wheelchair over from the nursing unit to the chapel. He was always close to the Lord and had a great love of the Eucharist and the Mass.”
The wounded soldier was instrumental in his roommate’s conversion to Catholicism, Father Stump said.
“You just think about your little trials and tribulations you go through during the day and what somebody like him went through,” he said. “He maintained this great faith in God and love of the Eucharist. It kind of gives you inspiration.”
By Rick DelVecchio
From February 5, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
