The capacity to pay attention to an afflicted person is something very rare, very difficult; it is nearly a miracle. It is a miracle.
-Simone Weil
Healthcare chaplains practice their profession in settings of crisis and serious illness, often at times when old truths undergirding faith and meaning are disrupted or questioned—that is, in times of deep suffering. In the cultivation of a ministry of presence, the chaplain attends to the manifestation of the sacred in whatever form it takes for the care-seeker—sometimes in overtly spiritual or religious terms, at other times connected to one’s inherent dignity, and at others still in the quiet of the encounter between chaplain and care-seeker.
AC, a Peruvian-American transsexual woman in her early 30s, was admitted to the hospital following a motor vehicle accident later confirmed as a suicide attempt. When I entered AC’s hospital room, I sensed a mix of guarded hope and resignation. She initially inquired, in Spanish, if I spoke her primary language. When I responded affirmatively, her demeanor softened, and she smiled. She began by stating that she had no religious needs; I responded that I was visiting primarily to see how she was faring over the past two days.
Our conversation revealed her struggle with feeling overwhelmed by her life circumstances, her desire for emotional connection, and her fear of being a burden to others. She spoke wistfully of the loving support she once had with her late fiancé and her yearning for the same in current friendships. As our dialogue continued, she opened up about her previous suicide attempts and her struggle to find a support system that truly understood her. She shared the ways in which her life had been marked by intense traumas: witnessing her mother’s suicide attempt at 8 years old, enduring her father’s abandonment at 14, and losing her fiancé to cancer at 24. Until our conversation, only her family knew about these events.
Through many tears and honest dialogue, AC expressed a desire to follow through with a treatment plan. I subsequently assured her of the unceasing support she would receive from our care team. At her request, we ended with a “popcorn prayer”—a back-and-forth exchange of prayers that filled the room with thanks and petitions. Our 75-minute conversation concluded with AC expressing gratitude for “helping me find myself again,” a moment that encapsulated the essence of chaplaincy—a sacred encounter that recognizes and affirms the inherent dignity of the individual.
Encounters like this one remind me of the profound impact that attentive, compassionate presence can have on the suffering of our neighbors. In the face of pain and isolation, the simple acts of bearing witness and holding a hand can start a ripple of healing and hope in the lives of those we serve. Beloved Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh encapsulates the essence of chaplaincy’s empathic approach with the crispness of the following question: “Can we look at each other and recognize ourselves in each other?”

Patrick M. Tugwell is a former chaplain at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut and an incoming doctoral student in Religious Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Simone Weil, Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd, First Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition (HarperPerennial ModernClassics, 2009).
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, A Ministry of Presence: Chaplaincy, Spiritual Care, and the Law (The University of Chicago Press, 2014).
Thich Nhat Hanh, “Call Me by My True Names” from Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh (Parallax Press, 1999).