Fr Seamus Maguire

This is a series of short stories by Fr Seamus Maguire that have been inspired, for the most part, by his experiences as chaplain at the San Fernando GeneralHospital.
Fr Seamus hopes that this series of anecdotes may help to foster vocations to the priesthood and religious life.
Fr Seamus served the San Fernando Parish between 1995 and 2006. He has since returned to West Virginia, USA.

Today is a special day for all the angels in heaven because Matthew has joined them with his own song of joy. He was about 35 years old, and had little or no formal education; he could not read or write, and was a little “slow” in understanding things. For this reason he had a hard life at home.

He told me how his father mistreated him and finally threw him out of the house. However, Matthew lived with a grandparent, and got the shack they lived in when the grandparent died. “The neighbours threw stones at me,” he told me, “when they found out that I had AIDS.”

I knew Matt at the AIDS ward in the hospital. I met him about five years ago when he first visited the ward, and was probably getting medication for his AIDS. But at that time he was quite well and active. For the past year or so, he has been a permanent patient, and I continued to try and instruct him in our Catholic faith.

Matt was a good friend of Ursula who had died of AIDS about three years before. He had heard me pray with her from prayer books I left with them. He was anxious to know the faith and be baptised. However, I wanted him to really repent of all his sins of the past, and really long for Holy Communion, so I held him back on the baptism.

Before I went on retreat, I felt that he was getting rather low, so I asked him if he would like to be baptised like Ursula – “Yes,” he nodded, in is own slow unenthusiastic way. I baptised him and sang hymns of thanksgiving. On retreat I wondered about him and another old man in the ward. When I returned, I was glad to see them still alive.

On Monday, I again visited Matthew and prayed with him, but upon touching his forehead, I felt the “cold of death” upon it. I asked him if he would like to receive Holy Communion; he nodded “yes”. I gave him half a host of the most precious body and blood of Jesus Christ. He drank water to swallow it, and we prayed in thanksgiving.

On Tuesday, I went immediately to his room – it was empty. Matt had died at 7.00 a.m. just as I was praying in thanksgiving after my 6.00 Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, San Fernando, Trinidad.

May he now enjoy all the love and joy he missed in his life. God loves him and joins him with his friend, Ursula, for all eternity.

Matthew’s life was completely empty of material blessings. Our culture sees him as a failure. We are told to “Take care of self” – we are number one. We are told to go “inside” ourselves and find out “who we are”. We must “treat ourselves kindly” and “believe in ourselves” and we can be anything we set our minds to be. How narcissistic we have become.

How different we are from the teaching of Jesus Christ, who said, “Take up your cross”. Allow yourself to die, so that Christ might live in you.

But we in our human wisdom say, “So far, but no further”, because “we have to take care of ourselves.” We are not willing to give of ourselves.

Are we going to follow the way of the world, or the attitude of Christ?
Are we going to pamper ourselves or live for others, as our Christian faith teaches us? Yes, I am my brother’s keeper.