Dear Suzi:

The job of an receptionist involves the virtue of hospitality. You will be among the first people that patients and their families will see when they enter the hospital. This gives you the opportunity to greet the people cheerfully, but compassionately, and to direct them to where they need to go. It will give you the opportunity to minister to distressed family members who need to know the room or other location of their loved-ones.

This is a holy task.

As for volunteering to visit the sick in their rooms, if God is calling you to that then He will give you the grace to do it. But, do not think that visiting the sick is the better choice.

The best choice for you is to be where God wants you. If your talents are best served as a receptionist, then serve the Lord in that capacity.

The bottomline is that whatever you do should not be based on what may be considered a spiritually superior job. Remember the story in the Bible in which the Apostles were fighting over who would sit in the place of honor next to Jesus. Jesus said the first shall bed last the the last first.

St. Francis de Sales said that an ounce of mortification is worth more then a thousand pounds of honor.

If being a receptionist is somehow a lesser job, then perhaps it is the best job for you, to teach you humility (something we all need to learn).

In the end, "Go ask Jesus, and do what he tells you."

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary