Parishes are faced today with many families in crisis. The parish needs a place where these families can find healing and support in working through these problems. Often they need basic instruction in how to relate to others and what their role is in the family. How can these needs be met, and how can this effort be institutionalized as part of parish life? This paper will attempt to describe the possibilities of such pastoral care. Based on six years of experience working with this model of giving pastoral care, it recount the history of this experiment, the theoretical principles underlying it, and the experiences of those who were involved.

This experience began one Sunday evening in January 1992. I was visiting a parishioner who had been, at least to me, one of the "phantoms of the parish." As we sat in the living room he began to relate his history, one of many horror stories I have come across in my years as a parish priest. I realized that more than an hour was needed to help him. What was his need?

How we see the needs of others is a function of our own worldview. As John Paul II likes to say, it is a function of our own anthropology. How do I see the human person? What do I think it is that will make him happy? A Marxist has his own diagnosis. "He was a victim of an unjust social structure." The solution then becomes to change the structure. A hedonist sees him as victim of a repressive moral system. "He needs to be liberated from his inhibitions." A feminist sees the problem as repression by a patriarchial society. And so on.

A Christian has his own worldview. Happiness for him not on the outside. It is on the inside. It is the ability to love the enemy, just like God does. It is not a matter of a change in the external environment. What is needed is a change of heart. I have to begin to change my way of thinking. My definitions have to change. Happiness is not a change in the externals of my life, because no matter what changes on the outside, happiness will always elude me. The one who all his life has lives from hand to mouth, never having "enough" money, may think that winning the lottery will make me happy. But this is to live in alienation from reality. This is not to understand the meaning of the cross. This is to have a deep-seated complaint against God, because I do not have what I think will make me happy. I have made myself the judge of what is good for me and what is bad for me. Because of my judgments I see the cross as a sign that there is no God who loves me. If there were, so I reason to myself, this situation would not exist. This is what John Paul II calls "the questioning of the gift" [of God’s love]. The devil comes to take the facts of our life and give them a twist so as to prove to us tht God is a monster. This is the devil’s catechesis that comes to us in many subtle ways. This is the deep meaning of Genesis 3.

There is in the heart of every human being a doubt about God’s love. This is the deep wound that is the result of original sin. Genesis 3 describes the nature of that sin. God gave a command to our first parents not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What is that knowledge but the knowledge of what is good for me and bad for me. Everyone has in their head an idea of what happiness would be for me. Whatever accords with that plan, we call "good." What does not, what even destroys it, we call "bad." The command of God, then, consists in the prohibition of our own plans for our life according to which we become the ones to decide what is good for us and what is not. It is a command to trust him and his love for us. Whatever happens to us happens because he allows it to happen to us. Because He allows it to happen to us, everything that happens to us is "good" for us, if for no other reason than that God, who can turn everything to our good, will make it good for us. To have this confidence in God is to live in the "Original Innocence."

It was into this paradise that the devil stepped to plant a doubt about God’s love. He suggested that there was another way of looking at the prohibition. God wants to deprive them of the knowledge of good and evil, says the devil, so that he can keep that happiness just for himself. "God is not motivated by love. He is just thinking about himself. How stupid it is for you to allow him to keep you in the dark!. How can you be free unless you are free to know and the choose between good and bad yourselves." This is the catechesis of the devil. "There is no God who loves you. You have to take care of yourselves." The original sin was to accept this as the truth. It put into the heart of all the children of Adam the doubt about God’s love.

God had attached a warning to his prohibition of eating from the tree. The moment they eat of it they would die. Once they eat of it they discover what God meant, because if there really is no God who loves you, for what are you living? What is the point of life? Why get up in the morning? To go to work? Why? To make money? Why? To pay the rent? Why? To have a place to sleep? Why? To get up in the morning, to go to work, to make the money, to pay the rent, to have a place to sleep, to be able to get up in the morning, to go to work, to make the money, to pay the rent, etc., etc., ad infinitum. Without a point outside himself, Man’ life becomes a circle. He ends up doing things just to do them. But they soon lack meaning. Man discovers that he does not have a reason for his being within himself. This is the death, therefore, of which God spoke. It is the death of meaning.

Having tasted death, Man is forever running from death, running from suffering. He is the prisoner of the fear of death. He know that he was made for love and will only be happy if he can come out of himself to love another. But he is afraid of being hurt, afraid of dying in the process. Adam discovers this in the dialogue with God immediately after the fall. When God asks him why he did what he did, Adam’s automatic response is to shift the blame to Eve. The fear of death has overwhelmed his love for Eve. In affect he says to God: "If you’re going to kill anyone, kill Eve."

Everyone who has a problem in life, has his own definition of the problem. Things are not the way he wants them to be. He fantasizes that if things were only different, he would be happy. God has his own difintion of the problem. The problem, from his point of view, is the doubt about God’s love that every Man harbors in his heart. It is this doubt that makes us neurotic, looking for our security in people and things, and setting ourselves up for a disappointment every time. God has to prove his love in order to remove the doubt. The way he has chosen to do that is through his Son, Jesus Christ. He sent his Son into the world to take upon himself the consequences of all sin. Jesus allowed himself to be led to the cross. He entered into death without doubting his Father’s love. He trusted that his Father would turn all things around, so that all would have a proof that God can be trusted. He has a providencial care for us. We do not have to be in control of the events of our lives. This proof God has given us in raising Jesus Christ from death. He did not abandon him, but raised him to glory. The Good News is that death is overcome. Jesus, by dying on the cross and raising to life, has destroyed the power of death to destroy us.

The kergyma is the announcement of this good news. But first we must understand what a good news is. It is a fact that changes the horizon of your life, one that brings you from death to life in some form or fashion. When you have heard a good news, no one has to tell you how to respond. The response is automatic. You shout and jump for joy! If you do not, you have not head a good news, not one that has delivered you from suffering by supplying the key to solve all the problems of your life. Many people can tell you the story of the resurrection, but it is an event that has happen - if indeed it did happen - to someone else. It happened to Jesus almost two thousand years ago, but it has not happened to them. That is why they are not jumping for joy, because their lives have not been rescued from death. The reason why God allows the catastrophes that he does is to give the chance to make such an experience.

Life is full of catastrophes. At any moment we can be cast into turmoil. It is for the fact that life is bigger than we are that Man looks to some god, someone who is bigger than he is, for his security. But because he has the doubt about God’s love, the natural Man, the Man without faith, sees the problem as one of trying to get God on my side, so that "bad" things do not happen to me. To do this he does "business" with God. He makes promises. He gives gifts. Implicit behind all of this is the assumption of a certain "contract" with God. If I am good with God he will be good with me. By giving him a gift, somehow, the natural Man thinks, I have put God in my debt. In this way Man seeks to have power over God so that God will do Man’s will. This is not the way of faith and God resists it. Bad things, in fact happen to good people. Every day, St. Teresa’s comment is verified. "If this is the way you treat your friends, I can understand why you have so few of them."

To believe that there is a God who loves you requires faith, an adult faith. But we would never come to desire such a faith, or even to see it as desirable, except for the sufferings in our lives. This is the inner reason for the problems with the marriage, with the children, with the job, with themoney, with your health, etc.. They put us in the pit of death and open us to "hear" the Gospel as a good news for us today, not just for Jesus a long time ago. The problems call us to conversion, and in this way they are a "good" for us. It is very difficult to call the contented to conversion. They are happy just the way are. They have no reason to change. To make it advantageous to them to change, God has to pull the props out from under them. Only by upsetting their apple cart can God arrange that the contented realize that they have more to gain and less to lose from converting. On the other hand, the "bad" are often much easier to convert. When you have already to hell and back because of your sins, you need less convincing that conversion is better for you. The paradox is that the "bad" have less to lose and more to gain from conversion, and they know it. This is the deep reason why the only one who welcomed Jesus Christ with opened arms were prostitutes and sinners. Their sins were already on their hands, in full view of everyone. Their pride had already been broken. The religious establishment, on the other hand, fought him tooth and nail. They did not see their need for him. Their pride was hidden under the veneer of their good works.

This conversion involves changing my ideas about God, first of all. God does not love me because I am good. His love is not a medal for being good. It is a medicine for being bad. Therefore the worse I am the more medicine I need. That is why he loves the worse ones the most. At this point we encounter the first problem the "good" in converting. They say: If that is so, then why be "good" in the first place? Why not be "bad"? Do you see what is happening? This truth about God begins to scandalize the "good." They begin to suspect that all the effort they have put into being "good" is not being valued. It does not put them in a better position vis-à-vis God than the "bad." "This is not fair!" they protest. At a deep level, when we are "good" we see themselves as better than the "bad." The first step in conversion, therefore, has to be accepting the truth that no one is better than anyone else.

Conversion requires that I also change my ideas about my self and others. This applies especially to the "good." If they resent that fact that, somehow in being good, they missed out on the "happiness" that the "bad" had in being bad, it means that deep with in their hearts they too believe that "Sailors have more fun." To have such an idea reveals that the "good" are not what they think themselves to be in the first place. They too think at sin will make you happy, just like the "bad." There is not difference, except for one of three reasons. Either 1) they did not have the change to committ the sins of the other; or 2) they did not have the guts to do what the "bad" have done (after all, it takes guts to rob a bank); or the hand of God was on you holding you back. If I think any differently, I am filled with pride. God’s simple cure for such pride is to take his hand off us for two minutes. That is all it will take to end up with our name in the papers for having fallen into some humiliating sin. After that, we will be very grateful that God loves the worse one the most, because we know that the worse one is no one but ourselves.

God works on the Emergency Room Principle: Triage, (Worse cases first.). If you are not the worse case, you are out of luck. Therefore, if you have a complaint against your brother and you go to God with the complaint tucked in your heart, God hears the complaint. You are saying that your brother is worse that you are; look how badly he treated me. God then says, "Thank you for pointing that out to me. Here, take a number. I will get back with you after I have finished giving mercy to him." The result is that you end up in the waiting room, cooling your heels until you realize what has happened. By complaining about the brother, you have put yourself on a level above the brother, thus ensuring that you will lose your place on the mercy line. After all, worse cases receive mercy first. As long as there remains a case who is worse than you, you remain in the waiting room. The only way out of the emergency room is to go up to the desk, with your hat humbly in hand, and say: Excuse me, sir. Do you see all these people here? They are much better than I am. If I have not done yet what they have done, it is only because of one of the three reasons." The Lord will then respond: "Well, step right up. You must be the worse one then. Mercy to the merciful."

Healing comes through conversion. It is false to think that your healing depends on the cooperation of anyone else. Your healing is the result of love and forgiveness that you give as a gift. To make it conditioned on receiving the love of the other is to refuse to love unconditionally. You do not need the blessing of the others to convert yourself. Families only begin to heal when one member begins to heal. But to do this, the one who initiates the healing has to look to God and to God alone for love. To do this you need faith. Since faith comes through hearing, the love of God has to be announced to them. This means that the kergyma has to be proclaimed. The Lord is always inviting us to abandon our ideas of how things should be and enter into His will. The Lord’s promise to us is: "You change your mind, and I will change your life."

Many people grow up with a distorted notion. There is much unhelpful baggage attached to the words we use. So that we are not like ships passing in the night, it is necessary to define our terms. Conversion requires that we understand the following:

1.) What does it mean to love?

Families that are hurting are hurting because they do not know how to love. Their idea of love is very neurotic. I have found it important to clarify for them what love is and what it is not. This is my definition: To love is to choose to do, with affection, what in my judgment is in your long-term best interest, whether you like it or not!

• To choose to do: Love is in the will, not the emotions. It is a decision. I have to decide to love someone, whether I feel like it or not. Authentic loving forces an individual to differentiate between his thinking and his feeling system. Acting against your feelings because you believe that a certain course of action is best will help to raise your functioning level in the system. This in turn helps the rest of the system.
• with affection: Love can never be abrasive, not even tough love. There is not reason or excuse for making other people the object of one’s anger.
• what in my judgment: The acting person has to decide how to love the other. He can not allow others to dictate how he is to love.
• is in your long-term best interest: Long-termed is opposed to short term. Everyone’s long-term best interest is always the same. It is our short-term interests that come into conflict. This is where sacrifice fits in.
• whether the other likes it or not. You can not permit yourself to be hostage to the system's implied threat of recalling its seal of approval.

2.) Where are we to find our security?

The world looks for its security in the twin idols of money and affections. These idols will always let you down. The Lord invites us to look to Him and to Him alone for love and security.

3.) Why does God love me?

God loves me not because I am good, but because he is good. His love is not a medal for being good, but a medicine for being bad. The worse I am, the more He has to love me, because the more medicine I need. It is only God’s love that heals what is wounded in me.

How does a Spiritual Emergency Room operate? Here is one way that I have found helpful:

1. Select a time and place where the group can meet each week. Limit the meeting to two hours at the maximum.

2. Get a "doctor," someone who has a sense of spiritual discernment.

3. Begin by invoking the Holy Spirit.

4. Read a short section of the gospel and let the "doctor" break open the word in a way that will highlight the Lord’s call to conversion and his love for the sinner. The "doctor" then invites those present to share what they have heard that helps them see their life in a new way, one that opens up the way to conversion.

5. The group is not there to discuss among themselves the reading. They are there to gain insight into their situation. When one speaks, the others listen. The "doctor" helps the one sharing to go deeper into the pain that brought him to the group. What are the idols in his life? How is the system working? What are the triangles? What sort of control does he have over his feelings? Is he able to act out of his thinking rather than allow his feelings to govern him? What judgments does he have against another in the system?

6. When a resolution has been reached with one participant sufficient to give him support for the coming week, the attention turned to the next in the circle.

7. The meeting ends with a shared prayer of petition, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Kiss of Peace.

I have never ceased to be amazed at what the Lord can do with something as simple as an Emergency Room. To make this more concrete for you, I include in Appendix I below a transcription of the introductions that have been given at actual session of the "Emergency Room." What has been omitted is the dialogue with the participants to protect their privacy. In the second appendix, some of the participants have written a description of their experience.

Father we bless you for your love, we thank you for this night, we gather together in your name, Father you know our needs, our fears, we ask that you disarm us, that you will put us at ease, to help us to look to you, knowing that in your love we have the medicine that we need here tonight for whatever pain that is in our heart. Help us to see the esteem that you have for us tonight, Lord. We ask that this reading, these words, will come to us as a gift. Help us to open them, to break them open, to make them intelligible, so that we may be able to rejoice in seeing the work that you are about to perform, so that your promise will deliver us. Father we make this prayer as we sing, "O Lord send forth your spirit, to renew the face on the earth".