Field Hospital

Maybe I’m stretching to connect it to the readings for this Sunday, but I think the image of the Church as a field hospital is perhaps a helpful way to understand Christ as the Good Shepherd, as we hear Him described this weekend.

Pope Francis used the metaphor of the Church as a field hospital a number of times in 2013 during interviews. He understands the Church's mission to heal the wounds of humanity as a share in Christ’s own life, emphasizing that we need to be with those who are hurting, rather than waiting for them to come to the Church.

The image of the field hospital is of a Church that is actively engaged in addressing the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of people in the world. And in this way, it reminds me of what a shepherd is called to be for his sheep. He leads them, but he also accompanies them and cares for them.

Still, we think sometimes of the Church as a castle from which we go forth to fight the world, as if our primary mission were to defend the keep. Or we think of it as a kind of fort to which we retreat from the world. But if the Church is the Good Shepherd, then it is with us in the fields, like a field hospital on the battlefields of life.

Like any ordinary hospital, there are some who work at the Church, always present, tending to patients night and day. Hundreds of outpatients come by every Sunday for their scheduled treatment, while some visit more often for intensive care.

Some are admitted for weeks and months at a time, seeking healing from severe wounds that call for deeper rest and lengthier recovery, receiving specialized care in the form of communal devotions, office visits, and Daily Mass, until being discharged.

But the point is to get well and then to go back into the fields. There are those who, although they are well, volunteer their time to minister with the staff, even as there are some spiritual hypochondriacs who think themselves always ill; all of these are dear to the Good Shepherd. He cares for them too.

The image of the field hospital is a good one, I think. It shows the Church in movement with its people, courageous and enduring, concerned for the soldiers and with them in the fields, like a shepherd. But it also shows the Church to be more than a barrack. It’s a place where we receive the care of the Good Shepherd, Who restores us to the fields to continue the fight for peace, as lambs among wolves. +