Later on, when I was in college, I had a job as a nursing assistant at a local, state-run nursing home. Though not used to getting up early, I found myself at 5:30 a.m. confronted with my first patient.

She was an elderly woman who had suffered a devastating stroke thirteen years previously. This stroke had left her unable to move any part of her body, thereby causing severe contractures of all extremities. Furthermore, she was unable to speak or make eye contact. Her only mode of communication was grunting.

On this dark, early morning, I found her tied to a shower chair, completely naked. She had just had a bowel movement. My job was simple: get her cleaned, dressed, and ready for breakfast.

I felt powerless to perform my new job. Furthermore, a sense of horror gripped my heart and I wanted to escape as quickly as possible. I ran into the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and asked the boy in the mirror, "What are you doing here?"

Almost instantly I "heard" a silent, calm, peaceful reply deep within my heart that infused life into me. "It is I who am sitting there waiting for you."

Over the course of time, I came to know and love this woman, and when she died about a year later, I grieved her passing away as one would the loss of a friend.

Last year, at the start of my final year as a family practice resident, a similar "meeting" occurred. In the middle of the night, an angry physician from the emergency room called me to admit a patient to the hospital.

When I came down to the ER, I was "greeted" by a number of people—nurses, technicians, doctors and others who told me to get "that smelly thing" out of their ER.

The "thing" they were referring to was a middle-aged man who had become paraplegic as a result of a car accident. He was living alone in a trailer without electricity on the outskirts of town. Old friends would periodically stop by and bring him groceries. Some would try to clean up the place; others stole from him.

Because of his poor nutrition and loss of sensation, he had developed severe bedsores over both his buttocks. He had been rejected as a patient by doctors and told to not come to the hospital since he was "non-compliant."

He had tried to take care of his wounds as best as he could at home, but things were getting progressively worse. Going against his wishes, one of his friends had called an ambulance, which had brought him to our hospital.

When I saw him, he gently took my hand, looked deep into my eyes, and said, "I’m sorry…. I didn’t want to come in."

I sat down and he continued to hold my hand as he relayed his story, finishing with a simple "thank you." Despite the maggots in his enormous bedsores, the overwhelming stench, and the many medical staff telling me "he should have stayed home and died," I found Jesus in him that night.

It was one of the most beautiful experiences of doctoring I have ever had. Thank you, Mother Teresa!

I have had countless other experiences when the privilege of seeing the face of Jesus has been offered to me. Though I have turned away many times, he still keeps coming and revealing himself.

As a whole, I am ashamed of my profession’s numerous attempts to destroy the face of the suffering in the unborn, the abandoned, the aged, the confused, the weak, and those who just don’t "fit in."

The medical profession has become a harlot to numerous political interest groups and ideologies. The Hippocratic Oath has long been replaced by more "progressive" forms. Men and women enter the field to pursue self-interest and gratification instead of a life of service and sacrifice.

At my current job, patients are called "consumers" and doctors "providers." It is considered our job to provide whatever will make the consumer "happy": birth control, needless plastic surgery, abortion, medicating away feelings and guilt, encouraging promiscuity, giving a false sense of prolonged youth, etc.

I pray that people will begin to realize that Christ is the real physician of both soul and body as the Catechism states (CCC #1421). We are only physicians to the extent that we bow down before the awesome miracle of life and acknowledge his dominion over it.

May Mother Teresa and other prophets of the Gospel of Life continue to call us back to the beauty of the face of Christ in all human life.

Dr. Adams has recently finished his training and is currently working as a family medicine fellow. He and his wife Sarah have four children, ages 7, 5, 3 and 1, and a fifth is on the way. They spent a week at our Cana Colony last summer. Dr. Adams welcomes any questions or comments. E-mail: raymondpeter75@gmail.com