“What unites us all…is our shared grace and mission, the unique charism of our Carmel D.C.J. We are all Sisters and with all we are at home,” states our Constitutions. What a blessing and marvel it is to encounter a Sister from across an ocean or from a different continent whom you’ve never encountered before, who serves souls day in and day out whom you’ve never met, in a cultural context unlike your own, but whose aspirations, longings, and experiential knowledge of God echo your own aspirations, longings, and knowledge of the God who longs for us more than we long for Him. This is one of the unique blessings of an international congregation.
For the past several weeks our Sisters in Kirkwood have had the immense pleasure of a visit from our Venezuelan Sister, Sr. Maria de Jesus. Her playful spirit and wisdom have been a gift to community life, while her stories of the strife and sacrifices that our Sisters and the Venezuelan people suffer daily have been a sobering reality. It has been a call to draw ever closer to the pierced heart of Christ, interceding and sacrificing for His people, while feeling with Him just a tiny prick of the pain His heart feels in the face of His people’s suffering. Following is an account of Sr. Maria de Jesus from May:
“Talking about the situation in our country makes my heart cringe. Thanks be to God we are all okay because we have everything, thanks to Mother who helps us monthly, but, at the same time, we suffer because our people have a lot of needs. Here we need water, light, food, medicine, transportation. In short, we no longer know how much more our Father God has for us. We are surviving all of this with the hope that one day a change will come for our Venezuela.
Sisters, it has not been easy. We have been many months without water. We have to buy water weekly to be able to keep working with the children. It is sad when people come to us asking for some water to drink. The teachers sometimes tell me, “Sister I bathed with a bottle of water to be able to come to the daycare to work, and that's because the neighbor gave me a little water.” . . .
A week ago we were without electricity in Venezuela for several days. That was terrible because we had to see how to keep the food. It was horrible the amount of people looking for gasoline for their cars. They started to fight and say bad words. It was terrifying. After two days the worst began for our city. They started looting everything and the saddest is that they destroyed all the stores and damaged everything so that they would never work again. Those days were horrible. There were many shots, confrontations, people running, looking for food, dead and wounded people. We did not have peace.
Then we had a week without being able to buy anything. Everything was looted and closed. People could not get food. Thanks be to God I had bought food for the children the day they took out the energy. We helped some families with food and we prepared food packages for our workers, and with this little help that we gave them, they could eat some days.
This has been a lot of suffering for our people and for us. We have kept standing thanks to your prayers, and the trust we have in God. May God have mercy on our people and may we have a new Venezuela. I believe that we have suffered a lot and we deserve something better, but, that, God’s will be done.
Sisters, it is a daily struggle to survive in Venezuela. Please keep praying for us.”
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