Eucharistic Visitors are trained and commissioned parishioners who take and share communion with those who are unable to be physically present at All Saints’, visiting private homes, hospitals and long-term care facilities.
Training includes completion of diocesan requirements for Safeguarding God’s People as well as going through an orientation. A volunteer can expect to serve no more than once a month (and may skip months as needed) and visit one parishioner on any day of their assigned week that is convenient for their schedule.
Video Transcript:
Hi, I’m Gretchen Chateau, and I invite you to sit and listen to what you’ll find in the world of Eucharistic Visitation. The simplest description of Eucharistic Visits is sharing communion post-service with All Saints’ members unable to leave their homes. That would be akin to describing Mt. Everest as a big rock. It’s accurate, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Eucharistic Visits are:
Sharing communion with Miss Mary, almost 100 years old, sitting by the window, watching the birds, and meeting her adorable pup.
Sharing communion unexpectedly because you have the communion kit in your car from last Sunday, and a dying Lutheran friend wants to enjoy Eucharist one last time.
Sharing communion with nursing staff, at the nurse’s station, because the parishioner you came to visit is out, and the nurses couldn’t go to church because they’re…nursing.
Sharing communion with my wife’s family as they said goodbye to her stepmother, and shared what they cherished about her.
It is expressed perfectly in the presentation hymn from last Sunday, “We meet as in that upper room they met, thou at the table, blessing yet dost stand; ‘This is my Body’; so thou givest yet: faith still receives the cup as from thy hand.”
These are just a few of the stories I could tell. As so often happens, I went to bring blessing to someone and instead, it was I who was blessed. It is continuity and connection to that first Eucharist, ever expanding.