Hospital Visits: The Relief Work Nobody Talks About

When people hear that Freemasons are a charitable organisation, they usually imagine large public donations, cheques presented to charities, fundraising dinners with photographs in the local paper. That is part of the work. It is not the largest part.\n\nThe largest part is quieter. It takes place in hospital corridors, in hospice common rooms, in the front rooms of people too unwell to leave the house. It is a brother of the lodge turning up at a visiting hour with a book, or a newspaper, or nothing at all except the promise to sit for an hour and listen.\n\nThe Almoner of every lodge keeps a register of sick brethren and of the widows and dependent relatives of departed brethren. Every week, he — or a brother deputed by him — visits each name on that list. He does not take photographs. He does not issue press releases. He simply sits with the person, asks after their needs, reports back to the lodge, and makes sure that whatever is needed — a wheelchair, a bill paid, someone to walk the dog — is quietly arranged.\n\nI have been present at some of these visits. I have sat in a hospital room while a brother read aloud, for forty minutes, to a man who could no longer turn the pages of a book himself. I have watched the Junior Deacon of a lodge spend three Saturday afternoons assembling flat-pack furniture for the widow of a Past Master whose arthritis meant she could not use a screwdriver.\n\nNone of these stories will ever appear on a lodge website or in a local newspaper. That is the whole point. Masonic relief of this kind is not done to be seen. It is done because every brother, on the night of his initiation, promises to help a brother in need — not with grand gestures, but with patient, ordinary, unrecorded kindness.\n\nIf you are a brother and you know of someone who should be on the Almoner's list, tell him. If you are not a brother and you have read this far and are surprised by any of it: this is what the craft is, underneath all the symbols.