08/30/2026
The Ministry of Presence
When There Are No Adequate Words
There are moments when words fail.
A family has just been told that someone they love is not going to survive.
A service member receives news from home while thousands of miles away.
A police officer or firefighter returns from a call carrying images that cannot simply be forgotten when the shift ends.
A patient hears a diagnosis that divides life into before and after.
A prisoner receives news of a death and realizes there will be no opportunity to say goodbye.
A caregiver who has spent months holding everyone else together finally reaches the point where there is nothing left to give.
A person sits across from a chaplain and asks a question beginning with one terrible word:
Why?
Why did this happen?
Why didn’t God stop it?
Why him?
Why her?
Why my family?
Why me?
There are moments in ministry when there simply are no adequate words.
And sometimes the most faithful thing a chaplain can do is stop trying to find them.
For The Ordinariate of Saint George for Chaplaincy, this truth stands near the heart of our understanding of chaplaincy. Our motto is Praesens Inter Servientes — Present Among Those Who Serve.
We have reflected before upon those words as a description of our identity and mission. But they also contain an important theology of pastoral ministry.
Before we can speak about the ministry of presence, however, we must understand the God who is present.
Christianity proclaims something extraordinary about God.
God did not save humanity from a distance.
“The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” — John 1:14
The Incarnation is God’s great act of drawing near.
In Jesus Christ, God entered fully into human existence. Christ knew friendship and rejection, celebration and sorrow, weariness and pain. He stood among the sick. He touched those others avoided. He encountered the frightened and the grieving. He ate with sinners. He wept.
And eventually, He suffered.
Christian pastoral presence therefore begins not with a technique but with Jesus Christ.
We go among people because Christ came among us.
We remain because He remained.
We enter suffering because He entered ours.
This does not mean that every painful situation can be explained.
One of the dangers of pastoral ministry is the temptation to believe that because we represent the Church, we must always have an answer.
Sometimes we reach too quickly for words.
We search for the perfect Scripture verse.
We offer an explanation.
We attempt to make sense of tragedy.
We say something because silence makes us uncomfortable.
And sometimes, despite the best intentions, those words add another burden to someone who is already carrying more than enough.
The Book of Job offers a striking lesson.
After catastrophe falls upon Job, his friends come to him. They see his suffering and initially do something remarkable: they sit with him.
For seven days and seven nights they remain beside him, and Scripture tells us that no one speaks because they see that his suffering is very great.
Then they begin talking.
And much of the trouble begins.
Their instinct is familiar. They want suffering to make sense. They want a system capable of explaining what has happened. Surely someone must be responsible. Surely there must be a reason that can be neatly identified.
But Job does not need a theory about suffering.
He is suffering.
That distinction matters enormously in chaplaincy.
A person sitting beside the hospital bed of a dying spouse may eventually want to discuss the theology of suffering.
But perhaps not tonight.
A firefighter processing a terrible scene may eventually want to speak about God’s providence.
But perhaps not five minutes after returning to the station.
A parent who has lost a child may someday be able to hear words about resurrection and eternal life with renewed hope.
But at the moment when the world has collapsed, the first ministry of the Church may simply be to weep beside those who weep.
There is a reason one of the shortest verses of Scripture is also among the most profound:
“Jesus wept.” — John 11:35
Jesus knew what He was about to do at the tomb of Lazarus.
He knew resurrection was coming.
And still He wept.
He did not rebuke Martha and Mary for grieving.
He did not stand outside the tomb and offer an abstract lecture about mortality.
He entered their grief.
That is holy presence.
For a chaplain, presence means resisting the idea that our usefulness is measured entirely by how much we say or how quickly we can solve something.
There are circumstances we cannot solve.
No chaplain can undo a death.
No chaplain can erase trauma.
No chaplain can make a diagnosis disappear.
No chaplain can return the years someone has lost.
No chaplain can remove every consequence of war, violence, illness, imprisonment, disaster, or human brokenness.
Recognizing that is not pastoral failure.
It is humility.
The chaplain is not the Savior.
Jesus Christ is.
Our responsibility is to be faithful to Him and to those entrusted to our pastoral care.
Sometimes that faithfulness means proclaiming boldly.
Sometimes it means teaching.
Sometimes it means administering the Sacraments.
Sometimes it means offering absolution, anointing the sick, opening the Scriptures, praying the familiar prayers of the Church, or speaking the promises of the Gospel when someone can no longer find the words to pray for himself.
But sometimes ministry looks much simpler.
Pulling up a chair.
Sitting beside the bed.
Standing quietly in the hallway.
Listening to the same story for the third time because someone needs to tell it again.
Allowing tears without rushing to stop them.
Letting anger be expressed without immediately defending God.
Holding someone’s hand.
Remaining after everyone else has left.
And occasionally saying nothing at all.
Silence does not necessarily mean that nothing is happening.
Christian silence can itself become prayer.
The chaplain may quietly carry before God what the person beside him cannot yet articulate.
This is particularly important within the vocation of The Ordinariate of Saint George for Chaplaincy because chaplains minister among people who are frequently accustomed to being strong for everyone else.
Military personnel are trained to accomplish the mission.
First responders run toward situations from which others flee.
Healthcare workers continue caring for the next patient even after witnessing suffering in the previous room.
Law enforcement officers may be expected to remain composed amid chaos.
Caregivers learn to put someone else’s needs before their own.
Clergy themselves can become accustomed to being the person everyone calls when something goes wrong.
But those who serve are still human.
The strong become tired.
The caregiver grieves.
The protector becomes frightened.
The professional becomes overwhelmed.
The person who knows exactly what to do in an emergency may have absolutely no idea what to do when the emergency belongs to him.
And there should be someone willing to sit beside him when that happens.
This is why our motto does not say merely that we preach to those who serve, advise those who serve, counsel those who serve, or provide religious services to those who serve.
It says:
Praesens Inter Servientes.
Present Among Those Who Serve.
Presence comes first.
But Christian presence must never become empty presence.
A chaplain is not merely another warm body in the room. We come bearing an identity that precedes us.
We come as representatives of the Church.
We come as ministers of Jesus Christ.
We come carrying the prayers of generations before us.
We come believing that even when we cannot understand what is happening, God has not ceased to be God.
We come believing that suffering does not have the final word.
We come believing that death itself has been confronted by the crucified and risen Christ.
We come believing that no hospital room, battlefield, prison cell, disaster scene, nursing facility, police station, firehouse, workplace, or grieving home lies beyond the reach of God’s grace.
Sometimes those truths should be spoken.
Sometimes they should simply be carried into the room until the person suffering is ready to hear them.
That requires discernment.
The ministry of presence is not passive ministry. It requires patience, attentiveness, humility, emotional maturity, prayer, and the willingness to place another person’s immediate needs ahead of our desire to feel useful.
It also requires courage.
Saint George, our patron, is remembered for courage and fidelity to Christ. We often imagine courage dramatically: standing against persecution, confronting danger, or refusing to surrender one’s faith.
Those are certainly forms of courage.
But chaplaincy teaches us another kind.
Sometimes courage means entering the room everyone else is afraid to enter.
Sometimes fidelity means staying when there is nothing you can fix.
Sometimes Christian witness means allowing another person’s pain to remain the center of the moment rather than making ourselves the center of it.
Sometimes the Church’s most powerful sermon is simply that the Church did not leave.
That is the ministry we seek to embody within The Ordinariate of Saint George for Chaplaincy.
We will preach Christ.
We will teach the faith.
We will administer the Sacraments.
We will pray.
We will counsel.
We will speak truth.
We will offer the hope of the Gospel.
But we must also learn to sit quietly beside the suffering and remember that God’s grace does not depend upon our ability to produce the perfect sentence.
Because eventually every chaplain encounters a moment when there are no adequate words.
When that moment comes, we can still offer something.
We can offer presence.
And through our faithful presence, however imperfectly, may another human being encounter something of the presence of the One who promised His Church:
“I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” — Matthew 28:20
That is the ministry of presence.
That is part of the vocation of chaplaincy.
And that is what we mean when we say:
Praesens Inter Servientes — Present Among Those Who Serve.
Per Crucem, Ad Lucem, In Fide
Fr. Liam M. Helms
Chancellor and Canon to the Ordinary
The Ordinariate of Saint George for Chaplaincy
