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Pastoral Care Week Priest’s early adversities shape faith, ministry by Chaplain JohnBosco Ikemeh Pastoral Care As we celebrate Pastoral Care week, Oct. 21-27, I think of my personal journey to pastoral ministry.      Growing up in Biafra (Southern Nigeria) during the devastation, hopelessness and death caused by the Nigerian Biafran civil war, left me with a broken memory and a broken heart. Since then, I have met many broken women and men, and with them, I have asked the inevitable question: “why?” Why do we suffer, and how can we be healed?      My quest took me to the philosophers during my college days. I found the existentialist and the phenomenologist more realistic; they were true companions on my journey. They asked questions as I did: why pain? Why suffering? I still hear those questions echo today. Why? Why do we suffer? The philosophers ask many questions, but give few answers. Every answer is inadequate and in fact raises more questions.      Then I turned to the theologians for answers; some of the answers were more problematic than helpful. Some were quite apologetic, defending their god. How could God be described as unmovable or unchangeable? I rejected the impassable God of the philosophical theologians; the God who is not human and does not experience pain. They wanted to defend the transcendence of God and ended up creating an image of a god who does not suffer.    Like Jurgen Moltmann, a German Protestant theologian, I prefer the God who understands suffering, the God who hurts when His people hurt, the incarnate God who is like us in all things but sin. This is the God who hears the cry, the sigh, the anguish and the affliction of his people. This God weeps in the face of the pain of cancer, leukemia, diabetes, multiple scleroses, and all the deadly diseases that afflict us.      I love the God who is moved by the cry of a hungry child. This God is a healing God, a comforting God. He comforts us in our affliction and thus enables us to comfort others. In celebrating Pastoral Care Week, we celebrate the men and women who believe in healing faith. During this week, I think of the words of George, a cancer survivor who said, “I don’t know how people who have no faith in a higher power will make it through this.” George puts into words the belief and motivation of pastoral ministry. We need some power to be able to deal with our daily struggles. And when we are powerless, we must reach out to a power or powers greater than us to see us through.   Viktor Frankel, the holocaust survivor who developed Logo therapy; one of the most effective psychological therapies; tells us that most people who survived the experience within the walls of the prison had their reason for survival outside the walls of the prison.   As pastoral ministers, we try to help our patients discover the power that is greater than them and to empower them to appeal to that power. This is important because, when we are not able, our Higher Power, the Nameless One, the Holy One, the Almighty, is able.      We do not pretend to have the answers to the question of “why?” But we try to be the listening ear to the quest. We try to hold some sacred space for our patients and their families to tell their stories. We call up families in the middle of the night to come to the ER. And we go from the emergency department through the waiting areas and to the rooms trying to help families pick up the pieces.      This is the role of a hospital chaplain.     Friday, Oct. 19, 2007 Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Island Publications at 849-1778, ext. 201.