For Deacon Frank J. Campisi, bringing Communion to the sick and homebound has been among the most rewarding times he has spent in ministry. Under COVID-19 restrictions, he has been unable to make those Communion calls, so he has written a book about them.
In “Communion Calls,” he writes about a number of individuals he has visited, how they have reacted, and how the experience led to his own spiritual growth.
Deacon Campisi, who is currently assigned to Saints Peter and Paul Parish in Turnersville, was ordained in 2005, but the experiences he writes about also include his time as a layperson, serving as an extraordinary minister of holy Communion.
His first encounter is with Scott, a young man he meets when another lay person, Jackie, asks him to take over her duties at a nursing home while she is out of town. Before she leaves, she takes Deacon Campisi on her rounds.
Before entering the first room, she asks him, “Have you ever met anyone with ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease?”
He hadn’t, and he openly describes his discomfort when he first sees Scott, a young but frail man who can barely move. He also describes how gently Jackie takes the man’s hands and talks to him. She explains to Deacon Campisi that he needs to break off a tiny bit of the host because Scott would choke on a whole host.
“What amazed me was the stillness that came over Scott for just a few seconds as he prayed,” Deacon Campisi writes. He recalls Scott smiling at him and thinking, “I knew it was going to be fine.”
But when he returns to the nursing home in Jackie’s absence, he finds himself outside the door to Scott’s room thinking, “I cannot do it. I cannot touch his mouth and the drool.” As he stands there inert, praying, a staff member walks by and inadvertently reminds him of Scott’s humanity.
“Are you here to see Scott?” she asks. “He should be in a good mood, the Phillies won last night.”
Deacon Campisi enters to find Scott wearing a Phillies T-shirt.
“He took his twisted arm and twisted hand and put it his chest, over the Phillies logo. ‘Yes, they won last night, and play again today,’ I told him,” Deacon Campisi recalls. By the time he finishes his rounds and leaves the nursing home, the deacon feels the experience has been “a real gift.”
While the Phillies helped Deacon Campisi feel comfortable with Scott, he had a connection to “Mr. Frank” when he entered his bedroom and heard the radio playing Sid Mark’s “Sunday with Sinatra.”
After a few visits, he felt comfortable enough to ask if he could bring his daughter with him one afternoon. His hope was that spending a little time with their exuberantly friendly little dog, Clooney (named George Clooney, the favorite actor of Mr. Frank’s daughter), she could overcome her fear of dogs. It did, and Deacon Campisi’s daughter asked to accompany him on future visits.
The Campisi family eventually adopted their own “Clooney-esque” dog, which, he noted, is asleep on the floor as he writes about the experience.
“Communion, communication and community” are at the heart of the ministry of an extraordinary minister of holy Communion, Deacon Campisi writes. “When an EM takes the Blessed Sacrament from a faith community and brings it to where they are, Jesus allows for any person — no matter age, ability or location — to be connected to family, to that family, of believers.”
On a Communion call, an extraordinary minister of holy Communion is a bridge to individuals who are “not only hungry for the divinity found in the Body of Christ, but also, many times, starving for the humanity found in the visit of the person who brings Jesus to them.”
Writing the book, Deacon Campisi said, was a way of reconnecting with many of the individuals he met, most of whom are now dead, as well as serving as a substitute for a ministry he is currently prevented from fulfilling. A skilled photographer, he used one of his own photographs for the book cover.
He ends his short book with Sandy, a fellow parishioner. Local politics was the root of a tension between them that grew into mutual bitterness. Deacon Campisi admits to feeling indifferent on learning she had become ill — and equally open about the internal struggle he has when, at Mass, he feels he receives the command from Jesus, “Take me to her.”
“Why, Lord?”
“She needs Me.”
“Why me, Lord?”
“You said you would bring Me to them.” …
“But I hate her.”
“But I love her.”
As he walks into Sandy’s hospital room, he sees the walls covered with drawings from her grandchildren. The patient was “a gaunt specter of the sturdy woman” who was surprised to see him. She was eager to receive Communion. “Any sins or bad blood between us were taken up and consumed in the exchange between us in the placing of the host from my fingers to her tongue,” Deacon Campisi writes.
Soon after, while under hospice care, Sandy planned her own funeral. One of her requests was that Deacon Campisi be a reader at the Mass.
“Communion Calls: Bringing Him & Finding Him There” by Frank J. Campisi (Yorkshire Publishing) can be ordered through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online booksellers.
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