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Spirituality: Greg Malovetz
33 Plays5 years ago
Season 1, Episode 6: Msgr. Greg Malovetz is the pastor of St. Charles Borremeo Catholic Church in Montgomery, NJ. Listen to Greg discuss the connection between our spirits and medicine and his experiences providing spiritual care to the sick and dying.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Wound Dresser Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
You're listening to The Wound Dresser, a podcast that uncovers the human side of healthcare. I'm your host, John Neary.
Introduction to Monsignor Gregory Malovitz
00:00:20
Speaker
Today, my guest is Monsignor Gregory Malovitz. Father Greg has been the pastor of St. Charles-Bereaux-Mareau Parish in Montgomery, New Jersey for over 30 years. He also serves as the chaplain of Stewart Country Day School in nearby Princeton.
00:00:36
Speaker
As a priest, Father Greg attends to the spiritual needs of the sick and their families in various capacities. Father Greg, welcome to the show. Glad to be here, John. I think it's important to first note that this is the first live episode of Medicine Man, so I'm not just loafing around in my pajamas this time. I'm actually in here with Father Greg, so glad to be here with him.
00:01:00
Speaker
First, I want to just ask you the seemingly simple question.
Understanding Pain and Healing
00:01:08
Speaker
What is pain? Pain is a variety of things. I think for the most part, pain is a feeling of abandonment, feeling of uncertainty. It can express itself physically or spiritually or emotionally. So that's my experience. That's abandonment, lack of control, fear.
00:01:30
Speaker
Going off that, what is healing? A lot of people may consider healing an absence of pain, others more an acceptance of pain. How would you characterize healing as a whole? I think it could be all of the above. Sometimes it's the healing of some physical pain. I had an accident in which I broke my leg and I needed surgery and medication and therapy to heal me.
00:01:56
Speaker
But we've also had broken hearts, and we need other things perhaps to help heal us of broken hearts of more emotional or spiritual pain. So healing is coming, I think, to a place of peace and a sense of wholeness in your
Role of Spirituality and Faith in Illness
00:02:11
Speaker
life. And so now could you talk, what role does spirituality, and I guess the Catholic faith in particular, play in healing?
00:02:21
Speaker
Well, I think spirituality and then the Catholic faith can be two different things because spirituality may be a variety of experiences and a variety of different traditions that people have. They understand a power greater than themselves. In the Catholic tradition, it comes from the message of Christ, which is that, you know,
00:02:42
Speaker
We're not always quite certain why people's lives unfold the way they do, why people experience pain, why people get sick, why people experience trauma. But the promise that Christ makes is that there is a grace, there's a strength that helps people walk through it to be able to embrace the moment and to find peace in their life. You know, in the time of Christ,
00:03:07
Speaker
It was really believed that illness was punishment from God, that it was somehow either you had done something wrong or maybe your parents did something wrong. And now, when Christ comes along, he says that, no, that's not what it is. Life is what it is, and what God is there is to give you the strength and the grace to walk through whatever it is you're experiencing.
The Social Aspects of Jesus's Healings
00:03:35
Speaker
Going off that, specifically in the Catholic faith and the Bible, can you talk about Jesus as a healer? There are obviously many
00:03:48
Speaker
miracles that he performed on different people with lepers and people who had various illnesses, but just almost holistically speaking, as a healer, can you kind of talk to that concept? Well, John, I think again, part of the healing, people can read the Bible and they can see us listen to stories about Jesus curing somebody who's blind, curing somebody who is lame,
00:04:16
Speaker
people who are deaf, and you begin to say, oh, that can almost seem like magic, how cool this is. But the context, again, that we can never forget is that the people who were experiencing those illnesses and those disabilities were shunned from the rest of society. They did not find themselves actually in the midst of things.
00:04:39
Speaker
The reality is also that when you hear a lot of talk about demonic possession in the New Testament, many people think that a lot of that might have been mental illness and emotional illness. And so even more so folks who were experiencing very bizarre behavior or making irrational choices,
00:04:58
Speaker
were really kept to the side of society, thought that there's something, they don't belong. So when Jesus comes as this holistic healer, it's not only to say, okay, John, you no longer are blind, or John, you're no longer possessed by some demon, you belong, you're part of the community. And so the healing, the restoration is not only a physical and emotional one, but to a certain extent, it's a social one as well.
00:05:24
Speaker
When we lose sight of that, then the image of Christ curing people just becomes a momentary thing that he does that's interesting and cool, but not necessarily how does it affect my life, especially if I'm not being cured of something. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point.
Identity Beyond Illness
00:05:47
Speaker
kind of alienation is not usually viewed as a side effect of a lot of illnesses, but it's certainly something that, as you're saying, is kind of addressed in the Bible. Well, you know what I would say, John? I hear how you're coming at this, but my experience as a priest, and especially a priest for about 36 years, and 36 years can seem like a long time.
00:06:13
Speaker
hugely long term. But the amount of medical changes that have taken place over the past 36, 40 years are huge. So when I was a young priest, people didn't talk always about cancer because there was a sense of like,
00:06:29
Speaker
If people know I have cancer, they're going to treat me differently. I'm going to feel ostracized. Certainly, I became a priest in the early 80s when HIV AIDS was becoming a huge crisis in our country and in the world. And that's a pretty good example of how people felt ostracized and alone. So the message of Christ is that we not only want to help people be physically healed if that's possible,
00:06:56
Speaker
but also to say that your illness doesn't define who you are. Your illness doesn't define, you know, who you are. So sometimes there are some people who I've met who have had cancer, and I understand that people have different opinions about this. Some people don't want to be called a cancer survivor. They don't object to other people saying that, but their experiences, that doesn't define who I am.
00:07:19
Speaker
And that's just some people come in that way. So I would say there is still in many ways a reluctance for people to speak about their illness because of the fact that they feel that somebody is going to think less of them or feel that they don't belong. Yeah, I think that's I like what you're saying about
00:07:45
Speaker
It's easy, even when good or bad things happen tremendously, kind of like the extremes to kind of put people in this box of trauma survivor, survivor of XYZ or champion of XYZ. And as we all know, that doesn't really kind of define any person. So it's nice that part of being spiritual is doing somebody as a whole person. Well, to that point, I don't know if you'd seen the news
00:08:18
Speaker
figures of the last century and this century is Jean Vanier and he died recently at the age of 90. Jean Vanier actually was one of the first people in the early 60s who saw people with intellectual disabilities who were put in institutions and he had this great because of his own Catholic faith believed that there was a dignity to those folks and they shouldn't be put away even if they couldn't be cured of
00:08:38
Speaker
recently, but one of the great Catholic
00:08:46
Speaker
where they couldn't be, they would always have these disabilities, to put it that way. And his whole thing was bringing them into the mainstream. And he called the group that he founded, and it's like in 35 countries now in five continents, it's called L'Arche. And L'Arche and French means the Ark. And his idea was that part of coming to healing in life is the sense of I'm included, that I'm part of the Ark. And so again, I think that's a great
00:09:15
Speaker
development in, certainly in spirituality when it comes to healing of both physical and intellectual and emotional wounds and illnesses. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about your roles, particularly in the medical context. And I know you can speak to a lot of the rituals and traditions and
00:09:42
Speaker
duties you have within the Catholic Church, but can you talk about more of your experiences and functions working with patients in the ill? Yeah, well,
Providing Support in Medical Decisions
00:09:54
Speaker
you know, throughout my priesthood there have been
00:09:57
Speaker
the usual hospital visits if you know that somebody's in the hospital to go and see them. And for the most part, those visits are simply trying to assure the people that they're not alone and also do they need anything when they get out of the hospital. But I have found over the last number of years that families are faced with a lot of very difficult
00:10:24
Speaker
decisions to make, sometimes when about should a person have surgery, often it's end of life care. And it's not always quite black and white. And they often will need someone who comes from a moral and spiritual point of view to kind of help them weigh what the consequences and what the various outcomes are of different treatments. So I see a change when I was a much younger priest.
00:10:53
Speaker
I would just go to the hospital and I would see you and I'd say, hey, John, how you doing? And oh, you broke your leg and et cetera, et cetera. Whereas now that still happens, but people aren't in the hospital that much long, you know, with insurance people are out in and out. They can be out before I even know they're in. I'm finding more that people are in the more complicated
00:11:17
Speaker
situations that cancer brings about with it, or ALS, or some of the diseases that are really much more prominent now than they were when I was younger. They need help in negotiating their way to how do I live with this, or how do I accept death? I find it more complicated now as I get older than years ago going into the hospital.
00:11:43
Speaker
Do people sort of formally ask you advice in these various medical situations or kind of just ask for a blessing? What does that look like? Or is it different for every situation? I think it's different for every situation. And going back again, what I've seen is a development in the role of, I would say, a priest. And I would also say other men and women of religious traditions, those who are clergy, is that years ago, for me, going into the hospital or going to see somebody who was sick,
00:12:12
Speaker
was more sacramental, meaning to say it might be bringing them communion, might be listening to them, what's going on, hearing their confession, and in some cases doing an anointing of the sick for them. And that continues very much today. But what's layered onto this now is people will say to me, I'm really confused about what I'm gonna do. Or the family may say to me as I'm standing in the hospital with them, we're really concerned about
00:12:42
Speaker
surgery that John is going to have. And they need somebody to talk to about their fears, their concerns, their worries. I think people in the medical profession are wonderful. I've met wonderful doctors and nurses and all kinds of lab technicians. But sometimes there isn't that space that somebody's right there to say,
00:13:03
Speaker
this really stinks, doesn't it? Or it's really hard or not certain what's gonna come of this or how are we gonna move through this that I can provide that listening ear. And most of the time it's, I'm not an oncologist so I can't tell you whether this treatment is right or that treatment is right, but I can listen and I can say, it sounds like you're really afraid or it sounds like you really would like to move in this direction. And I think that is often
00:13:33
Speaker
For me, one of the great parts of ministry is that people can feel that somebody listens to them. Because I'm not certain people always in illness want all the answers, because sometimes there are no answers, or there isn't a clear
The Sacrament of Anointing the Sick
00:13:47
Speaker
answer. They want to know somebody listens to them and heard them. And I think clergy provide, I think, I hope I can provide that for people that somebody listened to them.
00:13:57
Speaker
You mentioned the sacrament of anointing of the sick. Realistically, people probably aren't too familiar with it, especially even Catholics and non Catholics, obviously, because you don't encounter it until the end of your life. So could you describe kind of what goes on there and
00:14:15
Speaker
what sort of grace it adds to the Catholic faith. Right. Well, you know, kind of a really quick thumbnail history of this is that the Catholic Church believes this comes from the book of James.
00:14:30
Speaker
the letter of James, rather, in which the author speaks about if someone's sick among you, have the priest come in and pray over them in the sense of asking God to heal them. But if you look at some of the language in that original text, it's not simply healing of a physical illness, but healing you of
00:14:53
Speaker
the fear of healing you so that you experience God's presence in whatever you're going through. So the church develops the sacrament of the anointing of the sick develops. Somewhere along the line it becomes the sense that
00:15:10
Speaker
It started to be, people would wait until the end of their life to have it, and it became known, some people would call it extremumction, it's the last, it's the last anointing. So they're developed this tendency
00:15:25
Speaker
particularly I remember as a young person where you did not call the priest to do the anointing unless death was near. Now, since the Second Vatican Council, which was when the church, you know, renewed itself and updated itself in the early 60s, they said any illness
00:15:42
Speaker
that causes a person grave concern is a moment to receive an anointing so that person knows that they are loved by God, that they're reminded that his presence is there. They can receive the grace that they need in the midst of their whatever other unanswered questions.
00:16:04
Speaker
That's developed where it's not only people who are going into any surgery might be anointed, but also people who have ongoing illness. If a person has an ongoing situation with diabetes or an ongoing situation with
00:16:18
Speaker
Any kind of illness that causes them difficulties, they can be anointed. People are still anointed at the end of their life. Again, no one calls it the last, right? So you still find people of a certain generation calling it that. At that moment,
00:16:34
Speaker
It is a prayer and a moment of anointing in which a person is, if they're conscious or not, we ask for God's forgiveness for whatever has happened in their life that they need that kind of healing for and that this is now sort of safe passage to life with God. So it moved from being simply this idea of the end of life
00:17:02
Speaker
to the idea that there are various moments in life where one's illness might cause them serious concern or worry and they need God's help with it. Are there any other medical traditions or in the Bible or the Catholic faith that you're aware of?
00:17:24
Speaker
What do you mean, medical traditions? What do you talk about? Something kind of set out or specifically for those who are, I guess a lot of the Catholic faith is that we all have our brokenness and illness and things, but any sort of, I guess, blessings, even saints who were doctors or things of that nature. Right. Well, you know, one of the great devotions that has been in the church for about, I would say about 200 years maybe is
00:17:54
Speaker
There is the belief that Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared at Lord in France, and that there were healing waters that came from the grotto that she was in at Massaibier. And so people go in pilgrimage to that place in Lourdes to pray for healing, to pray for either themselves for healing or for those who need to be healed. There are various prayers that are associated with
00:18:24
Speaker
Our Lady of Lords. I've even known people who have gone to Lords and brought the water back to sort of bless people with it. And I think again, it's, are people cured? There are testimonies of people who have been cured from going there. There have been testimonies, there's been experiences where people were not cured. But again, it gave them great solace and great peace to know that they were connected to this sort of wonderful tradition of Mary having appeared at Lords.
00:18:52
Speaker
The great, just as you know, for the doctor thing, it's believed that Luke, the gospel writer of Luke, was a physician. And the reason why it's believed that he was a physician is because when you read his gospel and you look at it in Greek, when he records various, various miracles that Jesus is a part of, he uses specific medical terms
00:19:23
Speaker
in his telling of the story that are not found in any of the other three Gospels when they tell similar stories of a person who was healed of leprosy or healed of being crippled. So it's an interesting thing that Luke is often known as the physician because they clearly look at that, you had to know that information in order to
00:19:48
Speaker
use those Greek words in describing things. So there is a tradition right from the beginning of Christ's story being told that somebody who was in the medical profession was involved in it, you know? To me, it's such an interesting thing how like your spirit and your health are tied together, both physical, mental, emotional.
Link Between Spiritual and Mental Health
00:20:08
Speaker
I think it's just a
00:20:11
Speaker
Part of the reason why I created the show is just to explore those things in all different parts of the field. I think it makes a lot of sense that someone like Luke would be predominant in both the church and a medical setting. Can I just comment on that and say that what you just said about a person's mental well-being and their physical health?
00:20:34
Speaker
that I have been so often in situations in which I have seen how there is such a close correlation to that, whether you call it their mental health or their spiritual life. Not that people who are strongly spiritual are necessarily, you know, okay, I don't care what's happening to me, but there is a great
00:20:57
Speaker
There is a great difference when people, when they are depressed, you can't muster up the grace and the energy to have hope if you're depressed because you have cancer. And so often what happens then is clergy and people of faith are needed not to be cheerleaders.
00:21:17
Speaker
but to kind of help people maybe widen their vision a little bit to be aware maybe of if there are blessings that they're forgetting in all of this and to kind of help lift up the spirit so that they can really face the illness and do the treatment for perhaps that they need. Is spiritual kind of well-being and mental health, are you saying that they're kind of one and the same? They're kind of tangential, they're two separate things or hard to say?
00:21:47
Speaker
Well, I think there is a link between your spiritual health and your mental health and your physical health. You know, sometimes I have experiences where people are coming to me for what they think is a religious problem, a religious spiritual problem.
00:22:07
Speaker
it may be at some level, but there is also some, there's some also emotional or mental issue as well. So, you know, people can, again, I'm speaking in a very broad stroke sort of way here, but I've had people come to me and they're talking to me about they don't, they can't feel God in their life and they feel a struggle and they feel lethargic about their faith. And then you start to unpack it a little bit and you kind of say, I think she's depressed.
00:22:38
Speaker
And you have to name the, this is not necessarily a religious, spiritual issue, as it is really a mental health issue. And the spiritual can help you find your way to better mental health. That's a part, what I think is a very important component in the healing. But if you just, some people just see it as a spiritual issue. If I just prayed harder, I wouldn't feel so bad.
00:23:03
Speaker
Well, that's not why you feel bad. You feel bad because you have a chemical imbalance. And that may be why you're experiencing this sense of lowness. So they're very interrelated. And you have to sometimes with people have to really sit and talk to them for a long time.
00:23:24
Speaker
and get to know them and to say, I'm not quite certain. Or sometimes it is a spiritual issue. Yeah, you're fine. My analysis of you is you're not suffering from anything that makes you dangerous to people or to yourself. It's that you need to maybe relook at your spiritual life. I think a lot of those questions are just being really continued to be an answer in our medical field and spiritual. That stuff's so interesting.
00:23:53
Speaker
It seems like the thing that ties them together so cohesively is just fear. If you're afraid, when you think of fear, that's anxiety. That's a medical condition, but also all of our spiritual traditions across the board are ways to cope with fear as well and things that might happen. And it's just such a hard thing to kind of
00:24:21
Speaker
accept the past and prepare for the future. And I think that's a characteristic that people who are spiritually unwell and mentally unwell have fear. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that for the spiritual life, as well as for our mental health, it's not a matter of never being afraid or not having fear. They think in both from a spiritual point of view, if there are fears or from
00:24:50
Speaker
an emotional mental health point of view, there are fears. You know, there's that famous phrase, you can't fix what you don't acknowledge. And you have to first say, I acknowledge that I am afraid. And how does my spiritual life help me?
00:25:09
Speaker
name that fear and walk through it. And how does my... How do mental health professionals or programs or helps get me to a place to walk through and to have peace? But in both cases, you have to acknowledge it. And something else you said made me think about
00:25:34
Speaker
You know, we live in a time right now where, yes, you have to look at your life holistically. I think you need all the components. But people are, my experience, are very rushed. They want every answer to be solved yesterday afternoon. And if I could just go on a website and figure this out, I would be able to, you know, I'd be able to, by tomorrow afternoon I could have an action plan.
00:26:03
Speaker
And it doesn't work that way. And so the idea of people saying, I need to look at this holistically, means people have to take a step back. That's part of the spiritual life. It's part of mental health. It's part of physical health. You have to take a step back and kind of look from the bigger picture. I think that's what clergy help people do. Could you just take a step back for a minute? Not literally, but could you get away from the ledge for a minute and just sort of stop for a minute and take a look at
00:26:33
Speaker
What are the various issues that are going on? Yeah, what you just said reminds me of a physician who told me the job of a physician is to amuse the patient until time takes its role and heals. And I think that's a lot of times that's missed by people nowadays because they want the answers and they won't let time run its course and just kind of play things out.
00:27:04
Speaker
Is there a way you kind of tell people in the midst of some sort of physical or other illness to say, hey, you just need some time? Well, you know, the short answer to that is yeah, but the reality is that I think this would come to a lot of people who are in any kind of helping profession. You have to first figure out what can this person hear.
00:27:30
Speaker
They have a certain expectation of what they want to hear. Whether they go to a doctor or they go to a priest, a lot of people want to have, could you just tell me what the answer is? And keep it to like three sentences. It's sort of like that. But sometimes people in a first meeting, you size it up, you say, I don't think he can hear. They're not ready. They're not ready, or they're just focused. So you need to get to know them, to know what their fears are, to know what their concerns are.
00:28:00
Speaker
A lot of this, something you said just before it made me think of this, that the big fear for a lot of people is that you don't have control. You're not in control. And that's big for people. When you come up against an illness, when you come up against any kind of disability, you're not in control. And that's hard for people.
00:28:30
Speaker
There are too many people who wanna say nice things to them in terms of like, oh, it's gonna be okay, and don't worry, and I have never as a priest told anybody it's gonna be okay, or even not to worry, because that's not my place to tell them that, because I don't know that it's gonna be okay, and I don't know if there might be something to actually worry about, but it's one thing to name those things, another thing to give them power, and to let them kind of control the way you live your life.
00:28:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's funny. I know EMTs are specifically trained not to say everything's going to be okay in a lot of dramatic situations. I feel like it's part of the human condition, right? Trying to feel like we're in control. I was actually just reading a book by the Mayo Clinic.
00:29:21
Speaker
And prayer is listed as an alternative form of medicine. Can you talk to the, A, the healing powers of a person's individual prayer, and B, do you believe that kind of practices in your spiritual realm like prayer, like meditation, can have an actual effect on the physical realm? Well, the first thing, the first way I would respond to this, John, is that
00:29:52
Speaker
I'm not certain, did you say that the Mayo Clinic said that prayer is an alternative to medicine? Well, it's considered a, I guess perhaps not a, the term alternative medicine or integrative medicine is something they are like techniques and practices that don't have a lot of science and data back it. And I think we can all say prayer doesn't have, you know, a hundred clinical trials to say it'll work to heal you or not. Um, so that's, that's kind of where it came from.
00:30:21
Speaker
Yeah, okay, because I don't want anybody, I would not want people to think that I would ever think that, you know, don't take the chemo, say the rosary instead, you know. But, you know, in my life, I have seen where prayer is a help to people in terms of being more centered as they go through the
00:30:48
Speaker
Experience of being ill and what I mean by that is that you know prayer me just to say the word prayer Can mean a hundred different things to you or me or anybody listening to this or people will meet this afternoon If prayer for a lot of people there's nothing wrong with it, but prayer for a lot of people is sort of a wish list you know, this is what I'd like and could you do it today and if you could do it by this afternoon that would even be better and
00:31:16
Speaker
You know, so that's, I think that's an initial part of prayer that we need to request that I want to get better or I want Mary to get better or Bob to get better. That's nothing wrong with that. But prayer is also at its most, at an ancient, ancient root in the Christian tradition is about surrender. It is about entering into a place of peace. It's about entering into allowing God and the grace of God to lead you.
00:31:47
Speaker
So when prayer is very much directed toward wish list sort of stuff, and again, I'm not being pejorative by that, I'm just saying when it's that,
00:31:58
Speaker
That only goes so far. When people tell me, you know, all our prayers got answered because so-and-so got cured, I'm grateful for that. But at the same time, I think of a lot of people whose prayers didn't get answered and the sadness that they're feeling. So that's some people have that experience. But as a priest, my experience where it has made a huge difference
00:32:20
Speaker
is where a person is able to surrender the control, to surrender the fear, to surrender the anxiety, and to come to peace. Because I think if you're peaceful, then you're able to accept and to walk the journey that is ahead of you, rather than be fighting. I knew somebody many, many years ago, many years ago, who had cancer.
00:32:50
Speaker
And, you know, she was a person who had her own struggles, but she said to, you know, she's a person who was, prayer was very important to her. And she said to me, you know, Greg, I believe this is how my life is supposed to unfold. So my prayer now is that I will walk this life rather than fight it, because I can't change this. And around the same time I knew another person who really believed
00:33:20
Speaker
This person really believed that they were a strong, strong, strong believer, but they couldn't let go. They could not let go. They kept fighting and fighting and fighting. And I always wonder if at the end the person was really as peaceful as that person could have been.
00:33:37
Speaker
because they spent so much time denying and fighting and praying for the cure that they didn't pray that this is how my life is unfolding and I want to enter into it. So it's not a judgment about either one, but it's a way of my answering your question to saying that my experience is that the person who said this is how my life is unfolding
00:34:01
Speaker
came to a greater peace in her life, I think, and cherished her life, was more grateful for her life than I think the other person's experience. And don't get me wrong. It's easy for me to sit here in this room and say that to you. When you're in the middle of that, it's hard for people. It's hard. But that, to me, is the effective prayer. I want to switch into some more clinical nuggets, so to speak.
00:34:30
Speaker
I know here at the church you have an Alzheimer's support group, correct? And that's an illness that really can bring a lot of grief to families because they see their loved ones in their old age declining, especially cognitively. How do you see through to their spirit when there's just really not a ton of cognitive function left
Personal Experiences with Alzheimer's
00:34:59
Speaker
Well, my own father died of Alzheimer's disease three years ago. So I started the group, and I continue to be one of the people who kind of facilitates the group. And you're talking specifically about the person who has the disease. How do you? Yes, but we can also extend it to their families afterwards. Yeah. Well, I would say my learning is that, particularly with my father, there's always a mourning and a
00:35:28
Speaker
Sadness when the day comes and he looks at you and he says to you he seems himself and he's Bright-eyed and he looks at me and he says do I do I know you have we met? So there's there's a grief that happens with that The challenge that we learned in a couple of years my father had the disease for about four years and before he died is that you have to begin to accept people where they are this is where he is and this is who he is right now and
00:35:57
Speaker
You know, what am I being called to in this moment as his son? I'm being called not to try to get him to be back the guy he was, because that doesn't work. I'm being called to say this is who he is right now. What am I learning from this in this moment? That I need to be more patient with him? That I need not to try to control him? Certainly, if there is anything that's violent or dangerous, you got to kind of keep your tabs on people.
00:36:25
Speaker
And I think that's the big learning of the Alzheimer's group when we as sons and daughters and husbands and wives and brothers and sisters sit and talk about this. The big learning for a lot of people is you gotta stop trying to make them be who they, remind them of who they, like get them to be back who they were five years ago or two years ago or even last year, because that's not gonna happen. And what you're called to at that moment is to be present to who she is or who he is right now. So it's a tough place to be.
00:36:55
Speaker
because you're mourning what's happened, but you're not going to bring that back. There's no prayers that are going to bring that back. But you can say, rather than there came a point with my father's illness as it progressed was that you stopped if he sort of said that he's gone on a locomotive tonight to New York City. Instead of saying, no, you're not, we're like, really? What time is the train leaving? Yeah.
00:37:21
Speaker
like traveling on the train. So there's a sense of you have to move into a different place. And that's where people who are in the caregiving situation, they need to have a strong support as also they have to say, they need spirituality that says, I am not in control of this. So God, give me the grace to listen to this guy right now and to answer in a way that honors where he is at this moment.
00:37:47
Speaker
It's a very complicated illness and it's very hard for people who are caregivers and there's a lot of challenges, but I think the spiritual life, that's why these people come to the group, not only to get some practical advice, but to say, I'm not alone in the fact that I have to let go of what my hopes would have been here and ask for that grace to accept where we are on the journey. All of us are so,
00:38:15
Speaker
identified with our minds and to have your mind kind of go downhill seems like you're losing your identity. You're no longer Joe. You're just kind of a person and someone's body. You can't function as well. I guess with Alzheimer's really that body and mind of the body mind spirit is gone. So how do you still see the soul though in someone who's going through Alzheimer's?
00:38:42
Speaker
Well, I can only speak to my father. My father basically looked the same. He's still the same guy. My father had these really great blue eyes. And so you have to ask for that wisdom to sort of say, yeah, I recognize you. You don't know who I am, but I know I see you. I see you. And this is an example with Alzheimer's, but it's also the example of
00:39:11
Speaker
how to come to people who have any sort of illness, that I see you. Meaning to say, I may not understand what you're going through, I may not be able to do a thing for you, but I see you in pain, and I see you upset, and I see you uncertain, and you're not alone. And that was the most that you can do in those moments is to take joy in the things that are
00:39:39
Speaker
you know, where there are moments of remembrance. My father died on Christmas Eve. I said, I was laying on the bed next to him two days before he died and I told him, I knew he was going to die. And I said, you know, dad, your son's a priest. This is not the best time of the year to be doing this. But, you know, a couple of months before in September, he celebrated, they celebrated his 60th wedding anniversary and he remembered, he was able to sing the song that they danced to.
00:40:04
Speaker
So you have to say there are glimmers of life that you celebrate. And I think in every illness, that's what God is calling us to do, to celebrate where there are glimmers of life and there's glimmers of beauty. And sometimes my father would say, and we've shared this in the group, my father would say the most bizarre things that were absolutely hilarious.
00:40:32
Speaker
What I came to understand is that God calls us, this is the spiritual life, God calls us not just in big moments of life, but in these sort of the weird moments. My mother and I used to say, and I think God is calling us to say, you gotta lighten up sometimes in the middle of this.
00:40:51
Speaker
It's really tragic what's happened to him, but he's making us laugh our heads off that there's still a reason to have joy. And that to me was, that was God's grace in those moments. It's work, but there's beauty in it. There's real beauty in it as hard as it is. Another more general situation that obviously takes a toll on the family
00:41:15
Speaker
I guess in Alzheimer's case, too, is kind of somebody in a hospital bedridden kind of spending their last days. And I'm sure you've been called into situations like that where you've been present with people. What do you say to a patient? And what do you say to their family as their days are
Comforting Patients and Families at End-of-Life
00:41:35
Speaker
dwindling? Well, the patient piece can vary very much because sometimes people are already
00:41:44
Speaker
when I'm called that the end is in days or are already in some unconsciousness. So you're not quite certain what they know, but there's the great wisdom of people who deal with end of life care is that they say that the hearing is the last to go. So you keep talking to them. And my feeling is that I always want to assure them that they're surrounded by love. And I will always say,
00:42:14
Speaker
to a person whether they are conscious or not, and whether I know them or not, I will say to them, thank you for everything you did for people in your life, and thank you for the person you were. And, you know, there's sometimes family members are sitting there or around, and you could tell that touches people very much because it's what they want, they want to say. You know, my learning, John, is that
00:42:45
Speaker
When people come to the end of their life, unless their death is a terribly tragic, sudden one, people want to know that their life mattered. And sometimes people have had really hard lives, and they just want to know that their life mattered. And I think, unless it's a lie because it was a horrible relationship, you don't want to be making stuff up at the end. But I think for the most part, people can never forget to say,
00:43:15
Speaker
Just keep saying, I love you, thank you. Thank you for everything you did. I wouldn't be the person I am today without knowing you. And sometimes even if that was a turbulent relationship, I wouldn't be the person. I had to learn a lot of patience because you weren't that easy. I wouldn't say that to the person. But I think there's enough of those kinds of things that people in the end can be saying to one another. And that really becomes the prayer. That becomes the prayer. There are, if people are particularly religious,
00:43:45
Speaker
I think that even if the people standing around are not religious, sometimes I have to remind them, this is not about you. It's what we need to help her to kind of go home to God. So maybe she loved the Hail Mary. So pray the Hail Mary, let her hear that, to accompany her as she goes home to God.
00:44:07
Speaker
I think that the most interesting tidbit to me was that you said, even if you didn't know them, you know, and it's perhaps to some that might seem bizarre, but it's just kind of almost the inner
00:44:19
Speaker
Like, you know, the interconnectedness of us as humans is that we all kind of matter to each other, regardless of how well I witnessed your importance. I mean, you know, I don't think, and I don't mean to be glib about this, I don't think that I've ever been in the hospital of that if somebody was a serial killer, you know, or I think most of the people in the 36 years I've been a priest that I have either buried or seen at the hospital, particularly to the end of their life,
00:44:48
Speaker
are complicated people or simple people or people who have their gifts and people who have their strengths. And there are some people who are just exemplary and there are some people that are hard to love, but you still can thank them and in some way use words that say that you mattered, you really did. And I think we don't, the problem I think is we don't say that enough to people.
00:45:16
Speaker
when they're alive, because we take it for granted that, you know, you know, John, you matter, you know, and, you know, it's like, well, not really. No, I don't. At least not from you, I don't, you know, but so I think that, you know, this goes to, again, it's a holistic way of being a spiritual person, that to be a spiritual person in times of illness and tragedy or death or ongoing disability,
00:45:45
Speaker
You gotta, it's a talent, not a talent, it's a quality that you have to develop through your whole life. It's not just something you pull off the shelf and I think more people would do that than when the end of life comes, than when those difficult moments come. And I've seen that.
00:46:02
Speaker
They've seen that, not that it's a matter of somebody being better or somebody being worse, but people who have some spiritual sense about them, some tools, if you will, that they believe there's a power greater than themself, they find a way, not that it's easy, not that there aren't tears, but they find a way to walk through it that is sometimes a little bit harder for people who don't have that. And they can develop that in those moments.
00:46:33
Speaker
But they seem to have a different way when there's a spiritual life, a different way of coming at it. And you know where you see it, John? Sometimes if, you know, if, you know, Grandpop is the one that's dying and the children don't all have the same
00:46:49
Speaker
spiritual way of looking at things and that's where sometimes it gets a little complicated because you know one is telling them you don't go home to God and the other one is you know fighting you know don't go don't leave us and so there's there can be sometimes complications with in those situations but I think it's you got to develop that side of you in your in in the dalliness of your life yeah definitely
00:47:16
Speaker
I like the word tools as a way to say, you know, these are things you're going to build over time. Couple of fun questions to close here. Fun questions, okay.
Family and Emotional Support
00:47:29
Speaker
I know you have an identical twin, is that correct? I do have an identical twin. Could you tell us about him? What do you want to know about? Social Security number. For my birthday, he sent me a bunch of stuff. He saw one of the books in my office, but he also sent me a mug. What's his name? His name is Jeff. He lives in Dallas, Texas.
00:47:51
Speaker
Is he also a priest or? No, no, no, no. He's a vice president of a company in Dallas. He gave me a mug for my birthday that said, to the world's OK-est brother. I like this guy already. Yeah, OK-est. My brother and I are
00:48:17
Speaker
For being identical twins, we have very similar temperaments, but we're very different in our interests and our, you know, obviously where our life path has taken us, but we're very similar in our temperaments, in our, just like our temperaments and like, you know, what we respond to, what we don't respond to.
00:48:44
Speaker
So there's that. Do you make your way down to Dallas to see him? I haven't been down to Dallas in about two years, was the last time I was down there. But Texas is really, really flat. And hot. And hot. And I was there in August. So yeah, it's a nice state. I don't see the lore of it for myself. So my brother and I, we're close. And it's funny that you're talking about a medical thing, and I'm not going to get into the details of it.
00:49:14
Speaker
It was funny that my brother was going through something when he lived. He was not living in Dallas at the time. He was living in, I think, Newtown, Pennsylvania. And I didn't know this, but I had gone to the doctor and I said to the doctor, there's something that's bothering me. And I showed him where on my arm or whatever, what was bothering me. And he said, really, Greg, I don't know what the problem is. There's nothing there.
00:49:40
Speaker
Then I find out, like, about two weeks later, my brother had some kind of minor surgery on his arm, right there. And I said, like, OK, I don't think I've had a lot of experiences like that with my brother. But it was kind of funny that we've often said we have the sort of same aches and pains, even if we don't know about or tell it to one another. So there is something to be said for that. We don't have mental telepathy or anything like that. I can't speak to that. And one last thing.
Personal Story of Support from a Pet
00:50:06
Speaker
I know you have a dog, correct?
00:50:09
Speaker
Could you tell us about he slash he and how they heal you? Okay. I don't, let me try it this way. I don't have a dog. The dog that I have here all the time actually is a dog that I watch for someone, but I've been watching this dog for about 10 years. And there comes a point where I tried to explain that this is not my dog. And it just gets, I say what my, the person who's dog Australia's always says, um, dogs don't belong to anyone. They belong to the universe.
00:50:38
Speaker
But I did have, before watching the story, I had a dog that lived to be 17 years old, a golden retriever mix. I do believe that dogs have a great power to heal and to calm. I'll tell you a very quick story. My dog, her name was Cameron. I said she was a retriever. She mostly golden retriever. It wasn't purebred though. I had had a situation in which
00:51:05
Speaker
I was called to a house in which someone took their own life. This is many years ago. It was really, really, really difficult. And I was there from about four o'clock in the afternoon until about nine o'clock. Then I left and I had to come back to church for a meeting in which I had to do with the sacrament of confirmation. And one parent came out of the meeting and just come
00:51:32
Speaker
complained and complained about, didn't like the program and blah, blah, blah. And I just took it. I just took it and I said, we'll try to fix it tomorrow. And I'm like, you don't know what I just was involved with, but I'm not going to say it. I went home, said, I'm going to bed, put the dog out. I brought her and she came into my room. My dog would always lay at the feet of my feet in the bed. Inexplicably that night, she came up and she laid on my chest and she kept trying to cuddle up next to me. And I looked at one of my
00:52:01
Speaker
Oh my goodness, you know. You absolutely know what happened today. And you just said, I know you need a little healing here. So that's my experience of dogs do heal. Father Greg Malovits, thanks so much for joining the show. Thank you for having me, John. Enjoyed it.
00:52:29
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Wound Dresser. Until next time, I'm your host John Neery. Be well.