This story comes from my years in the Turkana Desert in northern Kenya. It is one fittingly of “Mother and Child” …except that this one is all about “Mother and Triplet Children!” In Lorugumu, we ran a small, bedded dispensary and had a vibrant mother ad child health clinic and outreach programme. One mother who was attending was called Helen. She was a teacher in Turkwell where the late Sr. Joannes Meehan MMM was running a kindergarten with Sr. Clotilda, an Ursuline Sister.by Sr. Triona Harvey MMM Ireland 19.02.2021
First published in 1986
Many writers have tried to describe what life and death mean to them. When writing about death, a pilot once said that, for him, the idea of going to heaven was not one of “going up to heaven”, he argued that as he piloted his plane off the runway into the air, his feelings were usually linked with he fact that he was leaving behind family, friends, or loved ones. However, when he was guiding a plane down after the journey, his mind and heart were full of expectancy, as he awaited the encounter of the undercarriage with the ground. He knew that friends and loved ones would be there. It was always good to come down after the journey. It seemed that the earth itself rose silently to meet the plane. The lights, noise and bustle of the airport were all symbols of a great encounter. For him, going to heaven would be like this, but even greater. He would be coming down to heaven, not any longer to symbols of encounter, but to the ultimate and transcending encounter of creature with creator, of a human being with God.
Going up and coming down are experiences full of meaning for missionaries, just as they are for the pilot in the story. As the plane rises into the air, they are sad at leaving behind those with whom they have shared relationships, spiritual, cultural and social interactions. These bonds of attachment are strong, and going up is not without its moments when the pain of separation is felt and expressed.
However, the experience is not a negative one. The pain involved indicates a beginning; departure soon becomes arrival and new birth takes place as the missionary steps forward. Feelings of separation subside as anticipation increases. Although the plane may alight in an unknown land, ‘coming down’ brings with it the challenge of new experiences. Others will be there to meet and greet the new arrival, and together they will go forward to participate in unique encounters of love and relatedness.
Routine tasks must be carried out. The newly arrived missionary must collect luggage, check through customs, and have a neat stamp placed in a passport. Luggage and a passport, in a way, are the items which act as the remaining links with the place of departure. Occasionally, it is not until the last bar of soap, carefully packed in the luggage, has disappeared that the ties with the place of departure are relaxed.
The change in geographical location of the missionary only takes a few hours from departure to arrival. However, the missionary involves the transmission of the Word, the purpose for which one departs. As the home bonds are relaxed, the missionary is free not only to reach our, but to experience the reaching in of another. In the depth of this inter-relation the purpose of mission is achieved, and the Word is mutually expressed. The moment of manifestation is acknowledged, obstacles are overcome, the message is given and received, contemplated and affirmed. The experience of Mary and Elizabeth at the Visitation is relived.
by Sr. Anastasia Onukafor, MMM Nigeria/Republic of Benin 17.02.2024
Value is simply the regard I place on things; how I perceive the importance, worth, or usefulness of something. It is also the belief I have about what is right or wrong, the hierarchy I conceive in my mind about what is most important and what is least important to me.
‘Where your treasure is….there lays your heart’! Matt 6:21. The more I reflect on this injunction of Christ, the more I am convinced that personal values are formed primarily from social environmental factors. Education, exposure, social media may also go a long way to influence us. However, peoples’ value differs according to their cultures, norms society, family lifestyles. And one key factor to consider when judging others is that upbringing, environment and culture shape our values.
Some people obviously value things like money property or even their animals. Others value friendship, people and choose to give their care and attention to the ones they love. We make sacrifices for things or people we value and give less attention to others who fall second place in our hearts.
One experience that has recently challenged my perspective is my encounter with Simon who brought his pregnant wife to our clinic for checkup. It turns out that beautiful Hannah was bleeding and as such needed to be admitted for close watch and proper care. Convinced that Hannah was now in good hands, Simon left and was expected to come back later with money to pay for his wife’s treatment. One hour passed, two hours, three hours…..eight hours gone by and there was no sign of Simon. At this stage, the matron and other staff were worried. Hannah’s husband only returned in the evening of the next day…Twenty four hours, seventeen minutes being waited for to show face! And in that disappearance, he left his pregnant wife without food….without money.
His sudden appearance attracted so many questions but Simon simply explained that he went to look after his cows!!! My mouth dropped in disbelief when he added that the cow was more important than his wife. Naturally, one would think this is an opportunity to challenge that perspective through awareness raising. But in a gentle convincing voice, Simon added in the local dialect, ‘it is the sales I will make from my cows that help me to take care of my wife and pay the bills’.
After this one experience, we have been working hard to restore the right and dignity of women through sensitization in groups and health talks in the clinic and engaging men in conversations to create awareness on women’s and girls’ rights in the community.
This is a cultural issue and might take a while for the impact to be felt because the women are presently comfortable with their place in the society. Everyone deserves to be valued and treated with dignity irrespective of colour, race, nationality and disabilities because we are all made in the image and likeness of God.
by Sr. Jo Anne Kelly MMM Ireland 15.02. 2024
I woke up this morning, here in Bettystown, to a very windy wet morning. The sea was so turbulent, with waves leaping up, the whole scene white with surf. There was a wild beauty in it.
I read somewhere recently that the graced eye can see beauty anywhere because beauty is already secretly in everything. I wondered about this as I recalled some of the times when it was difficult for me to even think of beauty.
In my first mission I worked with people who had leprosy. Their beauty was in their eyes their character, their smile, their endless patience. But I saw no beauty in the awful wounds and sores on the feet of some. The leprosy itself had deprived them of their ability to feel pain so when they got a wound they just continued walking and working and the wounds got worse and badly infected.
In my training as a physiotherapist leprosy was never mentioned so I had to discover for myself how I could use the skills I had. Sr. Teresa was our nurse with many years of experience and before starting each morning I would check with her if anyone new came in with the mobile team the previous evening whom I might be able to help. One morning she said, “I need your help with this one, you can learn”. The man was Jacob. He was sad and despondent. All his efforts had come to nothing. Both his feet were very bad, and one was beyond ordinary dressings and bandaging. It was awful! Teresa said “This one needs a Plaster of Paris (POP) but first we have to get it clean. She had young people there well trained in cleaning and dressing, but she taught me herself to do this one. It took about two weeks, and it was ready. I asked her who puts on the POP. She said “You can, I’ll show you”. I was accustomed to having patients come to me with POP before and after a fracture but I never before had anything to do with the plaster itself.
All was made ready. I knew how the foot should be positioned. I tried to listen to her careful instructions, and I was assisted by Augustine whom she had already taught. I was quite nervous and apprehensive. Timing was important while the plaster was still wet. A “heel” was included to take the weight away from the area of the sore. We were to leave it on for 5-6 weeks. That was the first of many!
Meanwhile Jacob was given wooden crutches made in the carpenter’s shed and he went to work in the shoemaker’s shed to make himself a pair of “padded sandals”. In those early days we did not have leather or plastazote. The sole of the sandal was made from the strong rubber of old motor tires with a lining of foam. The straps were made from old tubes.
Five long weeks past. Teresa said we’d wait another week. The day came. I watched Augustine cut the plaster with big shears. With Teresa watching I very hesitantly removed the dressings and behold, there was a new fresh pinkish skin where the wound had been. That was beautiful but the look on Jacob’s face when he saw it was even more beautiful. He just put up his hands and said “Praise and Thank you God!!”
Pope Francis says “The world needs beauty more than ever as beauty can awaken a thirst for God. Beauty puts us in touch with the Divine goodness and inspires our faith.”
by Sr, Sheila Campbell MMM Ireland 13.02.2024
Recently I came across this story in an early MMM magazine, and it brought back many memories for me, not of Africa, but of the rural areas of Northeast Brazil.
“I still marvel at some of the customs here in Nigeria, and indeed I envy some if them! Our well is at the bottom of a steep incline. My small boy and I take our pails, like Jack and Jill, and go down the hill for water. I almost have to get down on all fours to get down to the well or to get up the hill again. Then my “small boy” comes swaying along with a four-gallon tin on his head, saunters down the hill, and as leisurely returns with the tin full on his head, not spilling a single drop. He just as easily carries on his head a bottle of medicine or a weighty box or baggage you or I could not move. The women carry the baby in a basket on their heads while the little boys set off for school in gleaming white shirt and pants, complete with slate and in bottle on their heads. Everything is carried on their heads; everything is safe there.” (Sr. M. Elizabth)
This story reminded me that some customs are universal and surely must come out of “best practice”. How best to distribute weight than to let the whole body carry it, not just the arms? I remember once seeing a very poor woman at the side of the road, trudging along with a huge stalk of bananas on her head. Her hands were free, so she was talking animatedly into her cell phone as she trudged along! That is the clash of two different civilisations, I thought at the time. Not I see it differently. It is someone taking the best of the past wisdom and combining it with technological advances.
Recently our world is in conflict again, with wars and “trouble spots” arising. Can we not learn from the wisdom of our peace-making forebearers and find new paths of peace?
by Sr. Sheila Campbell MMM Ireland 11.02.2024
Today is the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. It is also the Feast of our Lady of Lourdes, patroness of the sick, a feast very dear to MMM, but for the moment I will stay in this pre-Lenten time.
In Brazil where I worked for many years, the whole weekend and up to Wednesday is a time of celebration. Of course, nowadays it has become commercialized with large street festivals and competition between the various Carnival groups or blocks, as they are called. There is a lot of loud music and alcohol! But the origin of the festival is much simpler. Lent is coming. Let us remember the joy of life and the good things that God has given us before we turn our attention to Lent. This is the time we will examine the ways in which we have not lived up to that goodness to which we are all called and a time of preparation before the greatest Christian feast of all, Easter.
Thinking about this these Carnival days, I often reflect that I do not pay attention to these small moments of great joy that are sprinkled throughout our lives. I am thinking of things like sharing the joy of a new mother on the birth of her baby, or watching the sunrise or sunset, enjoying the company of my cat when she curls up on my lap. For dog owners it will often be the soulful look which says, “Come outside and play with me!” We all have these moments, so today, in the middle of Carnival weekend I am going to thank God for these simple pleasures and bring them more to the forefront of my imagination, and just not ignore them as dull and routine.
by Sr. Ruth Percival MMM England 09.02.2024
The story I want to tell you comes from my time as a new missionary in Makiungu Hospital, Tanzania. Makiungu stands at the top of a steep escarpment, so travelling by road up and down to the plain can be quite an adventure!
Our ambulance was a Land Rover and off I set one early afternoon to bring in a newly delivered mother and baby who both needed hospitalizing. When I set out in the early afternoon it was like any other journey. The wet season had begun, and I wondered what the road would be like. It was a sandy road that goes through scrub and then drops spectacularly over a thousand feet down into a valley where cotton grows, and baobab trees thrust their roots spectacularly into the sky.
We arrived without incident at the place where I thought we were going, but I was told to continue onwards. However, our progress was almost immediately blocked by road works. A new bridge was under construction over a swollen river which had appeared since my last visit. Undaunted, and following directions, I went “off road” and through a swamp to the river’s edge again. It was a ford in the best of times, but not passable on that day. I persuaded the husband to wade across the river with his bicycle to fetch his wife and child who were “Just over there”. He was to come back to the new bridge which I felt would be safe enough for the weight of foot passengers. He had difficulty crossing the river but managed it.
We headed back to the new bridge. There we were met by a little man who was the guardian of the place. I explained our problem about not being able to ford the river, even in a Land Rover, and his eyes twinkled. With a truly Shakespearian flourish, he told us to use the bridge. I doubted my correct understanding for what I saw was a construction site only. Cement, steel supports, piles of gravel and wood, but not exactly in the right places. I thanked him and told him I would wait!
He insisted that we use the bridge and I equally insisted that we would wait in safety. Then he showed me the tyre marks going in the direction of the bridge and said that a Land Rover had passed that morning, I drove up and sure enough it looked all right. I put my foot on the accelerator and tried not to look at the water flowing on either side. Soon we caught up with the man pedalling furiously. After picking him up, we drove a further 19kms before we came to the “very nearby” house.
On the way back I thought about the new bridge and thanked God for it. Many times since then, I have wondered about the “new bridges” God has given me in my life and I have preferred to wait in safety. I wonder what new bridges are ahead of me in life’s journey?
by Sr. Sheila Campbell MMM Ireland 07.02.2024
In 2022 I wrote a blog called “Already There”. It flowed from an insight I had about eternal life and what it means to have been created by a loving God and at the end of life return to that same loving space. As I am held alive by God’s love, part of me is already there, at the centre. I don’t think I expressed it well, but it made me aware of how sometimes phrases just “stick” with us.
Recently I read an article that used the phrase “I am still here”. It was referring to the plight of indigenous peoples, displaced in their own land by migrants and settlers and yet not overcome and obliterated. “I am still here” say the indigenous peoples of North and South America, of Australia and New Zealand, of the Middle East. It is a phrase of resistance and self-determination.
There are other ways we can use the same phrase. I am still here because I am stuck, not knowing how to move forward in life. I am still here because I love this place and don’t want to leave it. I am still here because my work here is not done yet. I am still here because there is more for me to do before I continue on my path of life.
There is a famous phrase that says, “Be still, and know that I am God”. In a song, Deirdre Ni Chinneide breaks it down even further – “Be still, and know that I am”, “Be still and know”, “Be still”. Each time the phrase takes on a slightly different meaning. But the essence is stillness. I think the phrase “I am still here” resonates so much with me these days is because of that stillness. No, I am not still!! I scurry around in a busy life, meeting deadlines, answering correspondence, listening to world news. But in my heart, I crave that stillness. To say “I am still here” today means that I continue on the journey to find that stillness.
Maybe in the end it is not unconnected with my “already there” phrase”. Perhaps they are both linked to that pang of longing for the infinite.
by Anne Marie Kenny AMMM USA 05.02.2024
At this point in my 71st year experience on this good earth, my communication with God has changed. Today, the rote prayers, which in the past brought me closer to my spirituality, seem to fall flat. Instead, I pray in a mostly unspoken, soulful manner, seeking the Divine in all whom I meet, in the nature around me, in the work I do, and the circumstances I encounter.
The last one is the hardest, because when the circumstances are difficult, or seem involuntarily thrust upon me, I would rather run or turn a blind eye. Until I realize that it’s God’s communication with me, asking me to at least say Yes to looking closer, to answering that metaphoric knock on the door. Yes to trusting that I’ll be guided.
So, my life is my prayer, a humble and very human one. But I feel God’s acceptance, so long as my intention is sincere. And it is. So far, however, in the beginning of my elder years, I’ve yet to be tested by a debilitating health situation, or by struggling in parts of the world where war, climate, and violence are devastatingly rampant. Some of our Sisters and Associates are facing these kinds of hardships now. May our prayers for each other be felt and alleviate the burden.
On the last AMMM zoom call, where we U.S. Associates gather remotely each month, the topic of the MMM Mission Statement arose quite spontaneously. We shared with each other how profoundly inspiring its message was for us. At the end of the zoom session, we read it aloud together as our closing prayer. For me, it is a prayer that not only comforts me internally with peace, but also sets me in motion as a call to action. Each time I say it, one of the phrases will jump out — something different each time — and will get my attention, lift me up, answer a question, or affirm my intention.
“As Associate Medical Missionaries of Mary, in a world deeply and violently divided, we are people on fire with the healing love of God. Engaging our own pain and vulnerability, we go to peoples of different cultures, where human needs are greatest. Our belief in the inter-relatedness of God’s creation urges us to embrace holistic healing and to work for reconciliation, justice and peace.”
by Sr. Sheila Campbell MMM Ireland 03.02.2024
Yesterday was Candlemas Day. It was also the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. But today I want to talk about that older name. February 2nd marks the midway point between the darkest day of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere) and the Spring equinox. It marks the beginning of light again. Usually, I go walking in the early morning and it is around this time of the year when I begin to notice the stretching of the days and the small changes that herald Spring.
The use of candles in religious practice predates recorded history. In ancient civilizations, from the Greeks and Romans to the Egyptians, candles were associated with various deities and revered as conduits between the earthly and divine realms. The flickering flame became a symbol of life, enlightenment, and the eternal spirit.
In the Church, candles hold a central place. We all remember the Advent wreath, lit during the weeks leading up to Christmas, with its candles symbolizing hope, peace, joy, and love. In each Catholic church, the sanctuary lamp, often a red candle, signifies the presence of the Blessed Sacrament and during the Easter Vigil, the Paschal candle is lit, representing the resurrection of Christ. It is no coincidence that candles are lit at baptism and at a deathbed – they light up all the important passages of our lives. I am just remembering that when I made my religious profession of vows, it was with a candle in my left hand and the profession formula to be read in my right hand!
Nowadays, many people do not have a formal religious practice, but candles continue to be a source of solace and reflection. Beyond organized religion, people light candles in times of prayer, meditation, and remembrance, creating a universal language of peace and hope.
Let Candlemas this year bring deep joy into the depths of our soul. Candles, with their soft glow and flickering flame, transcend cultural and religious boundaries, embodying the shared human quest for spiritual connection.
