Where Two or Three Are Gathered

Abstract

Remembering Christ's words of His presence when two or three are gathered, a physician and a patient's wife join in prayer, knowing that Christ shares our wounds as much as He heals them.

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20)

He was a pioneering Christian missionary, literally traveling the world to spread the Gospel of Jesus. Whether it was in Asia or in South America, he effortlessly got to know the locals, built longstanding friendships, and planted the seeds for hundreds of churches. Even when he was not officially working, he was always open to talking about his faith, including his doctors’ appointments. Years ago, while he was living in New York City during one health scare, he and his Jewish physician both agreed that “God was looking out for him.” More recently, when he was bound for the airport on another mission trip, he had had a curious spell and sought a neurological assessment. A mutual friend had recommended me as a neurologist, so I put his name on my waitlist for the next cancellation.

He wore a smile I could still see behind his mask. He had grown up in the Philippines, my parents’ home country, so we swapped stories of hearing the balut (duck embryos, a popular street food) sellers hawking their wares with their distinct call. His wife and son, who flanked him in the wooden clinic chairs, shared their observations. His neurological examination was nonfocal and he aced his cognitive screening. After a thorough assessment, I still did not have a definite answer to the event in question, and so recommended additional testing.

A week after establishing neurological care with me, he was hospitalized with what would turn out to be a devastating stroke.

I knew my next encounter would be in our neurological ICU, where he would have traded his button-up shirt for a shapeless hospital gown. I had checked in with the stroke team, so I knew the prognosis before I entered his room. He was on sedation and intubated as I greeted him and his wife, vigilant at the bedside. My timing was good, a rare quiet moment between visitors and the clinical care he was receiving. He was comfortable and his family was coming to terms with his condition, so the air was sorrowful but peaceful.

As I prepared to leave, I asked his wife if they would be open to praying together. She agreed and we clustered around his bed. I do not remember exactly what I said aloud, but what mattered more was we were gathering in His name. We closed with the Lord's Prayer.

Lifting our hearts and minds to God together in the hospital was not something new. He had a steady stream of family and friends who had alternated turns to abide by COVID visitation policies. His family played his favorite Christian music over the chatter and beeps of the ventilator and monitors. His longtime pastor came to spend time with him as well. The cardiologist who had taken care of him for years offered words of support. They set up virtual meetings with friends from Asia, who would sing for, talk with, and pray for him. When they had the formal meeting with his wife, three children, and the doctors involved in his care to discuss care on a ventilator versus tracheostomy and view the stroke on his MRI brain, they closed with a prayer. His wife decorated his room with family photos and Psalm 73:26 above his bed: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

While not everybody who took care of him shared the same religion, his family always felt supported in their faith in Jesus. Being able to share their faith with the doctors, nurses, and care team throughout his hospitalization was meaningful because it made his caregivers real. Revealing this aspect of his life and belief also made him more than just a bed in the ICU or another victim of a stroke: he became a real person to his doctors. His wife drew immense comfort from our ability to acknowledge and respect his faith and express it in a meaningful way during his hospitalization.

When I reflect upon Matthew 18:20 and gather in His name, I do not immediately envision myself sitting in my white coat with my patient in an examination gown in the hospital. Yet most physicians I know, whether religious or not, consider the practice of medicine a calling of some sort. In Christian terminology, we would say a vocation, a career for which God has given us the talent to serve. We hold as sacred the bond we share with the patients for which we care and, in our imitation of Christ, we seek His inspiration as our Heavenly Physician.

Similarly, a patient comes in search of a cure. Much like the paralytic at the pool of Bethsaida (John 5:1-9), in the context of a doctor's visit, the patient seeks primarily physical healing. Sometimes pain and suffering extend beyond the corporeal. Spiritual, emotional, and psychological wounds can wreak just as much havoc on the individual's health as any physiological ailment. In the course of healing, both the physician and the patient may need to recognize all of these facets of the individual.

With that visit, though, his healing was beyond our control. We could see on the MRI how much of his brain had been affected by the infarct, as reflected in the focal changes seen on his neurological examination. I knew the limits of what we could achieve through medicine just as much as his family did. We are people of faith; we know that God's presence is made manifest in the miraculous and the quotidian, in ways obvious and subtle, in ways expected and unexpected. Christ shares our wounds as much as He heals them. Sometimes the healing we need the most is within ourselves.