Each day, Martha Rivas goes to work at Adventist La Grange Memorial Hospital and helps feed, bathe and transfer patients in the medical/surgical ward. Using her firm but soothing hands to help ailing charges, the patient care technician relies on touch to aid in the healing process.

Because it’s the Rev. Deus Byomuhangi’s job to make sure those hands are blessed by Christ to unite clinical practices with the spiritual realm, he anointed Rivas’ palms with holy oil Tuesday, May 6.

As part of National Nurses Week, the pastoral care staff at Adventist Midwest Health hospitals has been traveling around floor by floor, shift by shift, to perform the annual Blessing of the Hands ceremony.

“It’s a tradition. We go out to these staffs and ask God’s blessing for those who, literally and metaphorically, touch the lives of our patients,” said Chaplain Garry Losey, manager of pastoral care. “This year, we’re offering the service to everyone from doctors and nurses to volunteers, those in food service, housekeeping, building and grounds — everyone participates in one way or another in the healing that goes on here.”

So Byomuhangi and Losey split up, making the rounds to several departments with teams of hospital administrators, including Karen Gonzalez, director of Medical, Surgical and Rehab Services, and Mary Murphy, chief nursing officer.

Staffers were summoned to the nurses’ station and handed a card expressing prayers for compassion, understanding and strength. The prayer leader chanted while the group repeated the necessary lines.

And then Byomuhangi went to each employee, reaching for their hands and anointing the backs and palms with oil, which was used as a medicine base in ancient times.

“Holy God, bless these hands to be instruments of healing,” he said, tipping the oil vial to moisten his fingertips for every hand presented to him. “May the work of our hands bring healing to all the people you touch.”

John Rapp, regional vice president of ministries and mission at Adventist Midwest Health, said the ceremony is an affirming experience for health care professionals.

“We anoint their hands, the channels through which God’s healing flows, with oil because oil in the Bible represents the healing presence of God and the work of the Holy Spirit,” he added.

Michelle Nottoli, clinical coordinator and Rivas’ supervisor, helped organize the event. Touch is an integral part of her staff’s work, and Byomuhangi’s visit is a welcome reminder of the importance of medicine’s religious component, she said.

Rivas, too, appreciated the pastoral care staff’s attention.

“I took part last year, too,” she said. “That spiritual element is good for us and especially for the patients. It just feels good to say the prayer together and be part of the tradition of the ceremony.”

The short service also is being repeated at the Hinsdale campus, where it has been a ritual for the past 12 years, and the new Bolingbrook facility, where the Blessing of the Hands will occur for the first time.

“At the hospital, maybe the physical body is not so good. We want to help heal it,” Byomuhangi said. “You can be healed without being cured, and you can be cured without being healed. We want to do both.”