Day 6: For the Caregivers

The sixth day of the Saint Peregrine Novena turns to a category of persons that the novena tradition has long recognized as needing the saint's particular intercession: the caregivers. The patient with serious illness does not suffer alone. The family members who provide daily care, the medical professionals who manage treatment, the parish priest and chaplain who minister sacramentally, the friends who keep the long companionship through the months of treatment, all bear a share of the weight. Today we ask Saint Peregrine to intercede for them.

Today's invocation

O great Saint Peregrine, you have been called the Mighty, the Wonder-Worker... (the full opening prayer)

Today's meditation

The Catholic tradition of medicine and care of the sick is one of the great Catholic apostolates of two thousand years. The Catholic Church has been, throughout its history, the principal institutional caregiver of the sick: the Catholic hospitals, the Catholic religious orders dedicated to nursing (the Sisters of Charity, the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God, the Camillians, and many others), the Catholic hospice movement that pioneered modern palliative care. The Catholic theology of caregiving is grounded in the Lord's words at the Last Judgment: "as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40).

The family caregiver in particular bears a peculiar Catholic vocation. The wife caring for the husband with cancer, the adult child caring for the elderly parent in dementia, the parent caring for the child with terminal illness, exercises a continuous daily love that the world rarely sees and that the medical system depends on but does not always recognize. The Catholic Church recognizes this love as a particular form of redemptive suffering: the caregiver's exhaustion, the caregiver's anxiety, the caregiver's grief in advance, are all joined to the Cross of Christ and are themselves means of grace.

The medical professionals (doctors, nurses, oncologists, chaplains, hospital staff) bear another form of the Catholic vocation. The doctor who delivers a difficult diagnosis with compassion, the nurse who attends faithfully through the long shift, the chaplain who sits with the dying patient at three in the morning, are participating in the Catholic mission of the Lord Himself, who "healed every disease and every infirmity among the people" (Matthew 4:23). The Catholic hospital chapel, the Catholic chaplain on rounds, the Catholic medical association, are the visible signs of this Catholic mission.

Today's intention

Today, in addition to your principal intention for the patient, name to Saint Peregrine the caregivers in the situation. Be specific: Saint Peregrine, intercede for my husband (wife, parent, child, friend) who is caring for the patient. Strengthen them in love. Protect them from exhaustion and despair. Give them the patience to walk the long road. Bless the doctors and nurses caring for the patient. Guide their hands and their judgments.

If you are yourself a caregiver, today is the appropriate moment to bring your own state to Saint Peregrine. Saint Peregrine, I am tired. I am afraid. The road has been longer than I thought it would be. Strengthen me.

Reflection

The Catholic spiritual tradition has long observed that the caregiver's prayer is sometimes more efficacious than the patient's prayer. The patient is sometimes too weak, too distracted by physical pain, too sedated by medication to pray well. The caregiver, who watches and waits and continues to function, can pray for the patient with the singular effectiveness of one who is paying attention. The Catholic family with a seriously ill member is, in this Catholic understanding, a community of prayer in which the prayers of all the members converge on the suffering one.

The novena, prayed by the family together over the nine days, has a particular Catholic fruitfulness. It draws the family together at the time of illness; it teaches the children (often present in the household with the sick grandparent or sibling) the Catholic disposition toward suffering; it gives the family a shared Catholic vocabulary for what they are experiencing. The Catholic faithful who have lost a loved one to cancer often say afterward that the novenas prayed in the family were among the most spiritually significant moments of the family's history.

Closing prayers

Conclude with the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Saint Peregrine, intercede for the caregivers and the medical professionals. Strengthen them in love.