Roman Hospital

…to remember her call to the least and last, both individually and institutionally.

The invocation from today’s Phoenix Seminary fundraising breakfast by Dr. John Delhousaye…

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, you hold the universe together. We know you this way as mystery—as science attempts to trace your effects.

But you also became flesh and are with us until the end of this age. Immanuel, you are the Perfect Physician, always present to take our misery to the cross. You are in it with us.

In A.D. 321, after the Council of Nicea, what we call a hospital came from your heart—to every Cathedral city. But we have forgotten where the hospital came from. Our culture suffers under a collective amnesia; and now, as nearly every Phoenix hospital has been secularized—as if your presence were confined to a chapel—many doctors and nurses feel isolated and limited in their capacity to help the whole person.

Around A.D. 1000, what we call the university came from your mind. The university of Bologna, the first, came into being to study the digest of law from the Christian emperor Justinian, so that justice would be grounded in Truth, not the sway of public opinion. The University of Paris, perhaps the second—closed in the French Revolution, which brought in a fog of atheism yet to dissipate over Europe—came out of the cathedral schools whose founding desire was to know you as Lord in creation and Scripture. It was never faith against science. Faith nurtured science. But we have forgotten this, and secularized universities—as if your presence were confined to the study of religion—have lost their way; they are incapable of providing robust, virtuous, and attractive Truth.

But, Lord, you have never left. Everything belongs to you and is at your disposal. In our exile, we are called to join you in seeking the good of our city. You are the Crucified yet Resurrected one, and you have gone ahead of us to protect the weak, to care for the sick, to feed the hungry, to instruct the mind, to comfort the broken, to provoke the lazy, and to humble the proud.

But how will they know it is you, Lord, the source of all hope and comfort, unless we proclaim your name? For those who suffer from Dementia, family has the sacred task of reminding them who they are. Restore our memory, renew our mind, enflame our heart, until we are born again into new creation. Amen.

*John is professor of New Testament and Spiritual Transformation at Phx. Sem. Some day he will publish his translation and commentaries. They will be must-reads. For those who read theology, they are a bit like Frederick Dale Bruner meets Tom Oden, i.e. first rate biblical scholarship meets church history.