From Stars and Stripes-
The Rev. Peter Walsh has always treasured the tactile job of performing
last rites for his congregants before their deaths, noticing with awe
the way that anointing a person with holy oil and laying his hands on
their body seems to make them approach their last moments more easily.
But William Pike, a 91-year-old member of Walsh's Episcopal church in
New Canaan, Connecticut, was dying of the novel coronavirus.
Walsh realized he would need to do something he had never done before: He administered the last rites by FaceTime.
Pike was unconscious, but a hospital staff member recharged his iPhone
and held it up to him, and Walsh believed that his friend could hear
him. "I told Bill I loved him, that he was mightily loved by his whole
community. That he was a great man," Walsh said in an interview. "I
believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to do things that we cannot make
sense out of. I simply imagined that the hands of the Lord were laid
upon him, and not my hands."
More here-
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/in-life-s-last-moments-us-clergy-minister-to-the-sick-and-dying-via-facetime-and-zoom-1.624617
Opinion – 21 December 2024
1 day ago
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