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Paul: The Priest Who Listens

John M. Mulder

“Call me Paul.”

So began our somewhat unlikely friendship—the Reverend Paul A. Scaglione, a Roman Catholic priest, and me, a Presbyterian minister. I was searching for “spiritual formation” from a “spiritual director.” I quickly learned that Paul rejected the term “spiritual director” for “spiritual adviser”—my first indication of his humility and rejection of pretense. I needed spiritual formation and advice in the aftermath of a profound crisis in my life. I had crashed in my mid-fifties. I was killing my self—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. At the depth of my crash, counselors described me as “spiritually bankrupt” and afflicted with “a toxic level of shame and guilt.”

Spiritual writer Mary Margaret Funk calls this acedia—“self-icide,” not suicide. Paul Scaglione taught me to choose life, a new life—a new relationship with my self, my family, my friends, and God—all provided through God’s grace and kindness and the forgiveness and love of people I had hurt.

Paul gave me a new life by listening to me. No other act better describes the heart of his ministry. At the end of our very first session, in which I talked incessantly, he asked me to meditate on these words from Psalm 46: “Be still and know that I am God.”

In less than an hour, he had seen the heart of my problem—relentless work, manic achievement, constant expression. I could not shut up; that was my problem. I had spent my life and ministry speaking and writing. In truth, I was shuttered up, shut down, broken down. I had to shut up and listen—to God. I had to listen with my heart, attentive to God’s faithful yet subtle direction. I had to develop lev shomea (Hebrew for “a listening heart”).

As the years went by, our one-sided relationship—Paul listening, me talking—became reciprocal. I learned about him and his unusual ministry—the spiritual lives of dying people. It is a formal retreat ministry for the chronically ill, as well as Paul’s personal mission as a pastor to accompany fellow believers at the end of their earthly journey. He listens to them, prays with them, and encourages them to listen to the movement of God in their transition. In doing so, he nurtures their ability to listen to themselves, to others, and to God.

Paul’s gift of listening has been honed by his own life experience and has become the unique and surprising focus of his ministry. By listening, he helps people find God in the face of death. He is the listening priest.

It began in his own family. Paul was a chosen child. Born in 1947 in the wake of World War II, he was adopted by a childless Italian-American couple in New Jersey, Carmen and Grace Marie Scaglione. They subsequently adopted another child, Judy, and later Charlie was born into the family. “I always considered them my parents,” he says. It was a conventional childhood for a Catholic kid raised in the midst of the postwar American religious revival—family, church, and Catholic school. His father owned a printing business with his brother. His mother was a homemaker, a gardener, and the center of their selected family and extended family. It was all very Italian and very Catholic.

In October 1966, when Paul was nineteen and a sophomore at Brescia University in Owensboro, Kentucky, tragedy struck the heart of his family. One day as his mother was engaged in fall housecleaning, she felt sick and lay down on her bed. Within an hour she was paralyzed from the waist down. She never walked again. From that fateful moment, her life changed permanently. Others would care for her basic needs. She had to be bathed and dressed. She never gardened outside her home again. And her spiritual life was never the same.

“I saw someone with a chronic illness,” Paul recalls. “I saw the effect this has on a family. It played a major role in my decision to study for the priesthood. I bargained with God. ‘God, if you will cure my mother, I will offer myself to you.’” He adds self-consciously, “I know that’s pretty primitive, but it’s true. I’m not there now.”

His mother’s illness consumed the family—her husband Carmen, her children, her siblings, her relatives and friends, and Johnson, a devoted African-American home health aide who cared for her for twenty-five years. Grace and her family stormed heaven with prayer that she would be restored to full health, walking again. In those early years of constant prayer she made handmade signs with one word: “WALK.” The signs were all over the house, in every room. That was their hope. That was their prayer.

Paul finished Brescia University in 1968, graduating with a degree in political science. In his senior year he decided to enter seminary to pursue a process of vocational discernment for priesthood. He studied philosophy, Latin, and Greek at Mount Saint Paul Seminary in Waukesha, Wisconsin, for one year before entering Saint Meinrad Seminary in Saint Meinrad, Indiana. He graduated in 1973 from Saint Meinrad School of Theology and was ordained a Catholic priest on May 26, 1973, in the diocese of Trenton, New Jersey.

While in seminary, Paul confronted his own physical crisis. In January 1972 he participated in a travel seminar on Christian archeology in Rome. There he began to lose weight and suffered daily fatigue. His health continued to deteriorate. On March 17, 1972, he was ordained as a transitional deacon at Saint Meinrad Seminary. He returned to New Jersey and exercised his new ministry as a deacon during Holy Week, preaching for the first time on Easter Sunday morning. On Easter Monday, April 3, 1972, he awakened and could not lift his head from his pillow. He was rushed to the emergency room. His blood sugar had soared over eight hundred (normal is between seventy and one hundred). He drifted into a diabetic coma. After three and a half days, he woke up. The attending physician was astonished, and later that day, he told Paul, “There’s no reason for your recovery. You were in the process of dying. I don’t use this language, but this is a miracle.”

Paul was astonished too. “I kept asking, ‘Why, God? Why are you doing this to me, after all that I have promised to do for you?’ That was my question. Eventually I developed a prayer. It was very simple. As I administered my morning dose of insulin, I thanked God for the gift of another day. I saw it as an opportunity serve in ways that God would make known to me.”

As Paul continued his new ministry as a priest, his mother continued her spiritual journey as well. She surprised everyone in the family. When Paul returned home from his assignment at an inner-city parish in Trenton, he found that all the “WALK” signs were gone. He was shocked. He asked his Mom, “What have you done? Where are all the signs?” She replied simply, “I don’t need them anymore.” Paul responded, “You, all of us, have been praying for you to walk for more than seven years. I don’t understand!”

His mother declared, “Paul, I learned that I have been praying for the wrong thing. I’ve been asking God to take me back to the past. As I prayed for what I wanted, I failed to see and know that God was here with me—as I am! My prayer used to be asking God to help me walk. Now my prayer is thanking God today for his presence in all of you who care for me. I am blessed and healed.”

His mother’s reaction to her own condition left an indelible mark on Paul’s soul. “I learned,” he concludes, “that you cannot be consumed by your need because it may block God from your life.” And like his mother, Paul faced a future of chronic illness—diabetes. The doctor warned him he would die before he was sixty, but he foiled the doctor’s prediction. “My fifty-ninth year was very difficult,” he says. “I told no one. But reaching sixty was an amazing experience.”

After his own confrontation with death, Paul returned to Saint Meinrad, received his degree, and was ordained to the priesthood. He was assigned as an associate pastor to the aforementioned inner-city church in Trenton—St. Joachim. It had two thousand households and a pastor who had served there for more than forty years. It was a traditional Catholic parish that lived in the world of the 1950s. “The people were wonderful, and their life stories beyond belief,” Paul recalls. “It was a miracle St. Joachim’s even existed,” Paul jokes. “It was unique, to say the least.”

His quiet and contagious spirituality quickly brought him back to Saint Meinrad. After only two years in the parish, Paul was appointed in 1975 as associate spiritual director and two years later as spiritual director for the entire seminary. He served eight years in a demanding environment in which vocations to the priesthood plummeted and seminarians wrestled with their callings. He earned a certificate in spirituality and spiritual direction in 1982 from the Institute for Spiritual Leadership in Chicago, affiliated with Loyola University. There he immersed himself in mystical theology, the Enneagram, and Jungian depth psychology. Paul plumbed the theology of Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Merton and the meditations of the Spanish mystics, especially St. John of the Cross. The via negativa or “way of negation” of mystics resonated with his personal experience of God as mystery. “That is the most important part of my spiritual tradition,” he says emphatically. “Their sense of mystery helped me deal with my mom’s situation and my own physical condition. Why? Why? We can’t understand these questions. Anselm said it was faith seeking understanding, but we can ask those questions only because God exists.”

In 1985 he left Saint Meinrad, exhausted by the demands of his ministry of spiritual direction and formation. He was also desperately worried about his mother. His father had died in 1981, and his mother was now living alone. His brother, Charlie, was the primary family caregiver—until Charlie’s job forced a move to North Carolina. Paul went home to take over the role of primary caregiver. It was 1985, and his mother would live in steadily declining health until 1998. For the next fourteen years, Paul served on the staff of two large suburban Catholic parishes, ten of those years as pastor, while continuing to coordinate care for his mother.

“Most of the week was consumed by the church ministry,” he remembers. “But Mondays were for Mommy. Technically, it was my day off; in reality, it was my day to oversee her life, medical, financial, and home care issues.” Her last years were very difficult and included three major surgeries. A full-time caregiver, Vicki from Guatemala, moved in. More than anything else, Paul says, “I was concerned about her being alone.”

After her eightieth birthday and final surgery, Paul’s mother entered a nursing home for one hundred days, was released, and died suddenly on the morning of July 7, 1998. At the same time, Paul found himself alone and sought therapy. He was also traumatized by the murder of a seven-year-old girl in his congregation. The boy who killed her was an orphan, adopted when he was three years old and abused. This tragedy triggered Paul’s memories of his own sexual abuse by a priest when he was a young boy. “It was the lowest point of my life,” Paul recalls. “It’s remarkable that I made it. I was mainly angry at institutions—especially the church. I loved the people. I wished I could only have been a priest without being associated with the church.”

While undergoing therapy, he had a breakthrough: “I discovered I could name my ministry in a personal way, instead of an ecclesiastical way. That was the key. The result was that I can absorb a lot of people’s pain. I’ve learned that healing happens as you create a sacred space so people can tell their own story.”

Early in his New Jersey pastorates, Paul met a remarkable woman, Hilare Reinold, at St. Benedict Church in Homdel. She was a homemaker and regularly attended daily Mass. She told Paul she liked to visit people who were sick at home. She also knew about Paul’s mother and invited Paul to join her on her visits. Soon Paul began to accompany her to the homes of sick people in the congregation. “I was overwhelmed with how isolated they were,” he remembers. “No one knew these people. They usually had few friends and no nearby caring family members.”

Paul prayed about his visits and wondered if he and the church should be doing more. “Is this enough?” he asked God. “I stayed with that question.” He listened for God’s guidance, and as he listened, he worked. During his time at St. Benedict, Paul and the pastor, Father Bill Anderson, were on call 24/7 at the local hospital as well, ministering to dying people and their families. “It was a baptism by fire,” Paul says. “I was absorbed by it. I loved it. I could have done it for the rest of my life.”

Through Hilare Reinold, Paul met a woman who had inoperable stomach cancer. She was divorced and had not remarried—and was alienated from her family. She lived in a tiny bungalow in a blue-collar neighborhood. She went in and out of the hospital, and her only care came from neighbors and friends—plus Hilare and Paul. The day she died in the hospital, she was surrounded by a nurse, the hospital chaplain, and Paul. They held vigil by her bedside, holding her hands and praying and crying with her. She was waiting for a visit from an estranged son, but he never came.

At the end, “it felt right,” Paul says. “She died, but at her death she had a deep confidence that God was with her. God was her strength and anchor. She trusted God. The moment of her death was completion. You could see it on her face. God transformed her suffering and took it upon himself.”

But Paul later found he was angry. “I felt lonely because of her loneliness, and I was mad that she was alone. I was angry that she had been neglected for whatever reason by her son. It convinced me that no one should die alone and forgotten.”

The home pastoral care visitations in the parish continued, but Paul persisted in asking Hilare, “Is this enough?” They began to explore a ministry to people isolated by illness. Paul was transferred to a new parish, his first pastorate at St. Thomas More Church in Manalpan, New Jersey, but he continued pursuing this idea with Hilare. Together they called friends and professionals to share their concern and open a process for prayerful discernment. Over several weeks, they prayed and searched the Scriptures, all the while seeking God’s direction. The discussions were exhaustive and many options were explored. But Paul urged patience and refused to implement something immediately. He waited. He listened. “I gave it time,” he says.

One alternative was the hospice model, but Paul envisioned something different. He wanted to support people in their illness and prepare them for their death. “Suffering in itself has no meaning,” he says. “It’s fruitless to get into the question, ‘Why did this happen?’ Instead, I wanted to help people understand the meaning of suffering in their lives. I wanted to help them answer the question, ‘Where is God in this?’ I wanted to help them understand that God knew the burden of their suffering and would embrace it with them. This was the liberation of the cross. It wasn’t just about the forgiveness of sins.”

What emerged was the notion of a spiritual retreat for people with chronic or life-threatening illnesses; Paul and his colleagues call it the Gennesaret Retreat for the Seriously Ill, using Mark 6:53–57 as their scriptural inspiration. They have settled on a three-day model—from Friday to midday on Sunday. The retreat focuses on listening to God, seeking the voice of God in prayer, conversation, liturgies, and group meetings. “There are no jobs and no tasks—except one, to receive the grace of God’s word spoken to them during this sacred time,” says Paul.

Paul and the retreat team had much hard work to do to implement this vision. From the beginning, there were enormous logistical obstacles. The candidates for the retreat needed medical care and equipment. They were invariably strapped financially—and isolated. They saw their homes as their primary security, so they had to be reassured of their safety and comfort on the retreat. “Going on a retreat is a threat,” Paul says. “We have to alleviate the stress of that anxiety.”

The result: Gennesaret Retreats are free. They are open to anyone with a chronic, life-threatening illness (non-Catholics and even some Jews have participated). Full nursing care, medical equipment, and medical care are provided. For a retreat of ten to twelve “guests,” as they are called, a staff of twenty to twenty-five is needed, including at least ten nurses. All are volunteers. A registered nurse does a health history and medical assessment of every prospective guest before the retreat. Paul follows up with a personal spiritual assessment.

After twenty-five years, nearly a thousand guests have experienced a Gennesaret Retreat in Catholic dioceses primarily in the Northeast and in the archdiocese of Louisville, Kentucky.

On the retreat, there is one surprising prohibition—no talk about being sick. “The ill are self-absorbed by their illnesses,” Paul maintains. “The whole intention of our retreats is to help them to listen to God speaking through others and in their own hearts. Our goal is to open their hearts to listen and receive whatever God desires to give them.”

The guests are truly ill. For example, one typical retreat involved sixteen guests, ranging in age from forty-nine to eighty-eight. Their conditions included brain tumor surgery (with postoperative mood swings and depression), multiple diagnoses of cancer (colon, bladder, skin, lung, chest wall), chronic and progressive multiple sclerosis (with rods and pins in one leg), severe degenerative rheumatoid arthritis, stroke, cardiac bypass surgery, valve replacement, aortic graft replacement, osteoporosis, cancer of the stomach, breast cancer, epilepsy, cerebral aneurysm, diabetes, kidney transplant, spinal birth defect, fractured hip, heart valve disease, and a pacemaker implant.

The list of “special needs” for these guests is overwhelming. For example: “uses walker at all times and wears back brace,” “generalized weakness; dietary needs, doesn’t eat meat,” “very emotional and sensitive and suffers some depression,” “must use oxygen at all times,” “has had problems with falls—needs assistance with stairs,” “always uses walker and needs wheelchair for distances,” “tires very easily—symptoms of numbness and exhaustion are increasing,” “has difficulty with gait,” “constant assistance with personal needs and hygiene,” “generalized weakness and depression,” “balance difficulties,” “legally blind,” “is unable to sit up for long periods,” and “tires easily due to heart disease and aging.”

The retreat begins in the early afternoon on Friday. Paul gives a presentation in which he emphasizes listening as the focus of their time together. He urges them to spend time alone or with others—listening. He passes out cards to each guest. “Write what is on your heart,” he tells them. “What do you bring to God, what need or prayer as you begin this retreat?” Each prayer card is placed in a bowl that is present through the retreat conferences and prayer services.

In the late afternoon, the Eucharist is celebrated, followed by dinner. Then Paul talks about the day ahead and suggests that as they say their prayers that night, they consider Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” “We’re very strong on Scripture,” he says, “but we’re not directive about it. Scripture can speak in so many ways through so many texts. But we have to listen to hear it.”

The guests go to their rooms. The staff meet for much-needed prayer. The night watch begins. There is always someone walking the halls, attentive to anyone in need.

After breakfast on Saturday, Paul briefly talks to the guests about the meaning of the cross and gives each guest a small crucifix. He quotes Pope John XXIII: “The greatest challenge of the spiritual life is not to give love but receive love.” Paul tells them, “God wants to give you something, but your fear is a big issue. God loves you as you are. You do not need to change, but you do need to be willing to receive. Our inability to receive is tied to our inability to listen, which impedes our ability to understand God’s will for us. Each of us builds ironclad walls, which we don’t even see. Push your distractions aside and let grace work. We see life as a series of events. That’s ‘time’ for us. But God has no ‘time.’ God is always with us.”

In the second half of the morning, guests receive a healing blanket prayerfully made by a supporting parish community. Paul invites the guests to reflect on the cross as a living symbol of God’s union with them in their suffering. Their suffering is known by God and embraced by God as a place of hope and victory. The vertical and horizontal lines of the cross reflect one’s personal relationship with God and the living witness of God through others. The cross is the sign of victory over the moment of death, Paul says, as well as the promise of eternal life in the company of God and the community of saints.

After breaking for lunch and a rest period, the guests reconvene. Then follows what Paul has called “the most powerful experience of my life.” Paul assembles everyone for a time of solemn prayer called the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Gathered in the chapel, the guests sit in a circle surrounded by the retreat staff. Before everyone on the altar sits a small monstrance, or gold frame, containing a consecrated host (wafer). The Scriptures are read recalling God’s covenant of love for his people. Roman Catholics believe that in the celebration of the Eucharist, the bread and the wine become the “real presence” of Jesus Christ. The living sacramental presence of Jesus is reserved in the tabernacles of Catholic churches for distribution to the sick and dying and for prayerful adoration. This service is one of adoration. Father Paul carries the small monstrance to each guest, who is given time to pray with Jesus for as long as he or she needs as the retreat team sings softly in the background. As they pray, these seriously ill people connect with Jesus, the One who promises to be with them always, to love them without end. “The silence of that service is charged with holiness,” says Paul.

After a period of rest, Paul celebrates the Eucharist again in the late afternoon. Dinner follows, and the closing ritual of the day is the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. In this sacrament, the community of faith—the church—prays for the recovery of the sick and peaceful transition of the dying to the company of God. The anointing reaffirms the promise of God that whenever the church prays and exercises a healing ministry in the name of the Lord, God will raise up the sick persons and save them. Members of the retreat team are offered an opportunity to receive this sacrament as well.

The day ends with “Gaudeamus” (Latin for “let’s rejoice”). This is a continuation of the prayerful gatherings of the day. Now the guests are treated to a program of joyous songs, wonderful food, and abundant laughter. After a long day of conferences and prayer services, all the retreat participants and retreat staff “enjoy gathering for fun, a time to laugh and sing and to recognize that God is in all things!” says Paul.

On Sunday morning after breakfast, Paul invites the guests to take time alone and review what has happened on the retreat. They are encouraged to name a moment, conversation, prayer, or word they received from God during the retreat. After a period alone, the guests come back together. They are offered the opportunity to speak about their experience, though some choose to remain silent. These reflections are shared without comment; they are received with compassion and thanksgiving to God. At the end of this shared reflection, each guest is invited to take one of the prayer cards home with them and to continue to pray for the guest who wrote it at the beginning of the retreat. The gathering ends with staff washing and anointing the feet of the guests. This ritual of honor and respect for the guests captures the spirit of the retreat. With this final action, the guests and staff go to the chapel to welcome family members for Sunday Eucharist, and later a closing lunch for all.

The retreat is an elegantly simple idea: a time of silence so that seriously ill people can listen. They can prayerfully listen and receive the consolation of God’s presence in this stage of life. And in listening, they hear the deepest longings of their own hearts. They receive. They find God.

One example: a woman with terminal cancer registered for a Genneseret Retreat. A week before the retreat, she suddenly cancelled. When the next retreat came up, she registered again. When she arrived, she was defensive and sullen. Eventually she asked Paul if she could speak with him during one of the quiet times. When they met, she told her story—at first slowly and then in a torrent of words. Her husband sexually abused her. Her priest had told her to keep the marriage together despite the abuse. She finally divorced her husband. She had an adopted son, and just before she attended the retreat, he told his mother he was HIV positive.

It was the first time in her life she had disclosed to anyone the pain of her life. Paul said nothing. He listened. At the end, she said, “You are the first priest or even the first human being who has listened to me without comment and without judgment.” And then she cried.

“People want to be received with care,” Paul says. “By listening to ourselves, we receive. By listening to others, we receive. By listening to God, we receive. Listening is so difficult for us. But it is the way we hear the deepest longings of our hearts and the loving words of God.”

“The message of God comes in a thousand different voices,” Paul declares.

At the end of one Gennesaret Retreat, when Paul was clearly drained, I asked him, “Why do you do these retreats?” He replied, “This is what I am meant to do.”

This book contains the voices of a few of those who showed in their dying how they learned to listen and receive the loving embrace of God. At the end of their lives and in their own unique and different ways, they found God—with the help of a priest who listened.