Catholic chaplain's book offers spiritual lessons

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Rosemary Baron

SALT LAKE CITY – Rosemary Baron, a St. Ambrose Catholic Church parishioner, has worked as a clinical chaplain for the past nine years and is a board-certified member of the palliative care team at Intermountain Medical Center, a 500-bed hospital in Murray. Her experiences and the lessons several patients have taught her are the basis for a book, The Gift Within: 10 lessons of spiritual awakening and the end of life from a trauma center chaplain, which tells the story of 10 individuals who were critically ill, dealing with loss or caring for someone in those circumstances.

From the Vietnam veteran who said his only interaction with God was to swear at him sometimes to the stroke survivor who thanked God daily for her blessings, all these people had valuable lessons to teach her, Baron said.

“From each of them I have learned the humble walking of their journey, their vulnerabilities, ways to address the spiritual in serious life issues and sometimes helping them end their life journey,” she writes in The Gift Within.

Baron pursued her ministry as a chaplain after 40 years as an educator in Michigan, North Africa, Guam and Utah. Prior to her retirement in 2008, she was a middle school principal in Utah public schools for 23 years. She embarked on her journey to the vocation of chaplain after attending the graduation of Fr. Lourduraj Gally Gregory, now pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish (Magna), from a clinical pastoral education program.

“When I heard Fr. Gally and the others speaking, I said, ‘This is what I really want to do,’” she said. “It was God calling me to do this work.”

After 18 months of intensive study, Baron became a board-certified clinical chaplain. Those she has interacted with have much to teach others, she said.

“Every one of these patients has a unique story that no one else has,” she said. “We all have our own stories, and that’s what gives us that difference but also those strengths. I also believe that being with people who are chronically ill and facing what their lives are actually like day to day and talking with them about it really provides a dimension of understanding of the human connection that I would not have had otherwise.”

Baron has learned valuable lessons of her own through her work.

“My faith has been strengthened tremendously by the work that I do as a chaplain,” she said. “I continually talk with patients about a belief in God, no matter what their religion or no religion at all.”

Baron’s book grew out of a monthly column she writes for her hospital’s newspaper and the copious notes she had kept on patients she had ministered to and their families.

Among the most heartbreaking stories was her encounter with Jan, a young homeless woman who had just given birth to a stillborn son. While Jan’s many problems were evident, her despair and feelings of loss were most poignant. When Baron’s efforts to help and comfort were largely rejected, she learned a lot about ministering when it is difficult and painful and then turning the situation over to God, she said.

Others she interacted with shared with her their faith and friendship, including Michael, a young man left a paraplegic after a suicide attempt, and Pollo, a patient experiencing kidney failure, who faithfully accepted his upcoming death with the words, “Anytime God wants to take me, I’m ready.”

Baron had her own experience with being a patient during final editing of the book when she was hospitalized after a mild heart attack.  It “provided clarity and opportunity to formulate what is most important to me,” she writes in her book. “I know how it feels to be vulnerable, to look within, to find something bigger than myself. “

“I would hope that this book helps people to better understand the dimension of spirituality that is alive in all of us,” said Baron, who plans to continue serving as a chaplain indefinitely. “When we are ill or when we are well, but particularly when we are ill, and oftentimes at the end of life, it becomes more evident, but the Spirit is alive in each one of us.”

The Gift Within is available at the King’s English Bookshop and on Amazon.