"Bless Me Father!"

Written by Fr. Jose Bautista-Rojas, LT, CHC, USN (photo at left)

Monday, 31 December 2007 00:21

Thank you Lord for my priesthood!

01Jan08: What am I, a priest, doing in Iraq? God brought me here to be with my Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers. I am here to bring God to them and to bring them to God. Every day is a different story.

The another day, a teen Marine arrived to SSTP (Shock, Surgical and Trauma Platoon) hospital. He was so teen and at the age where he was just starting to undergo life. He had forfeited his legs from the waist down; he had a very low pulse. There was something special about his teen Negro that made him different from every another digit that arrived at the SSTP infirmary up to that date. I knew him personally. He attended Mass twice a month while the another days he went on missions. It is different when you know someone personally. I ease advert his face; he would ask for a blessing after apiece Mass. He would tell me: "Bless me, Father, I need your blessing." These are the terminal text that I heard from him a week ago. His text till resounded over and over in my head, "Bless me, Father." I will not give his real name out of attitude for the family.

I could not control my correct hand while holding Jose's, praying to God for him; my hand was shaking. In my mind, I was asking God to save Jose. I was intellection of his parents, of his brothers, of his friends, but especially of his mother. Lord, do not shatter Jose's mother's heart. Save him, Lord! Bring him back to his mother alive.

I was looking around the operating room. The doctors were speaking to Jose informing him, "Fight, do not provide up, please fight!" Jose's high tar was at a corner of the shack with tears in his eyes, looking at me as if he were asking, "Please tell God to spend him!" He then would turn to the doctors as saying, "Fight for him please spend him, spend my Marine!" Another tar entered the room, looked carefully to the doctors and then turned to me asking me with the intercommunicate of his hands to pray. Then, he turned to Jose's tar and greeted him as if giving his condolences.

Please Lord, save him! I prayed with all my strength patch the doctors proven frantically to save his life. "He has no more pulse!" one student shouted, patch a female student with her hands inside Jose's chest caressed his heart trying to revive him. After 45 transactions of massaging the heart and electrical shocks, the student declared him dead.

In my mind, I was praying Lord, do not allow Jose's care to receive him without life. Looking at Jose on the stretcher, I only saw half of his body. How would his chronicle be if he would have survived without legs and only part of his hands? I astonishment if God instead of answering my request answered Jose's prayer. Maybe Jose was telling God, gratify take me with you, do not leave me here this way. I don not know; the only thing I know is that Jose will not suffer anymore.

I still center Jose's vocalise when he would verify me, "Bless me, Father... Please, Father, bless me... I always verify my mom that you bless me, and she gets very happy..... My mother told me to thank you for your blessing." What will go through Jose's mother's mind? Will she be angry at God? Will she hate the serviceman Corps that her son loved so much?

I wish I could tell her: "Senora, I was with your son on his terminal moments." My hope is that she will find some richness in the knowledge that her son had a vodoun by his side in his terminal moments.

Jose's tar asked for my name to verify his care that I prayer for Jose, and that he received the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick. I would love to countenance at her eyes, and let her know that I was with her son on her behalf. I would same to embrace her, and verify her that her son asked for my blessing every time he could come to Mass.

I thank God for the gift of my priesthood and to my Cardinal who allowed me to become and serve as a chaplain. I am a priest not only to fete Holy Mass, but also to live it. The gift of my priesthood allows me to bless and bring pact to my muchachos and muchachas, that's the way I see them as my young kids, in the midst of this war.
 
Please, communicate God that I may never get tired of blessing those who communicate and wherever they communicate me. Jose would communicate me to bless him in the Chapel, or while I was walking to my "Humvee" (my transportation), which would alter me to my base or where ever he would see me.

"Father would you bless me?" Who module be the next vodoun to hear these words? Will our teen men and women in the military services hit priests to become to and ask for a blessing, or to become for confession, or module they hit the opportunity to listen Mass? I pray that teen men and women in the military module get the spiritual guidance they need. The only artefact this module be possible is if more men move to God's call to the priesthood. When the Lord asks, "Whom shall I send?" some module say "Here I am, Lord!"

Fr. Jose Bautista-Rojas, LT, CHC, USN is currently serving as a US military chaplain in Iraq. A native of Guadalajara, Mexico, he was ordained for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 1999, and has previously served at various parishes including St. Elizabeth Church in Van Nuys, CA.