Lent
Director of Care
Hospital Order of St. John of God
On 8 March 2020 we celebrated the patron saint’s feast and solemnity of St John of God, founder of the Hospital Order with which I have been working for almost two years. Far from imagining at the time what it would be like to suffer from a global pandemic epidemic, this time with a highly contagious, and deadly disease in some cases, which imposed new codes on life in terms of the relationship between human beings, the medical community and even the way we live and celebrate our faith.
However, a year later, in the same celebration we look to the recent past with a kind of amazement at our capacity for resilience, to overcome adverse situations, to grow and to adopt new ways of life from rebuilding our reality with a force that strengthens us and leads us to a physical and spiritual growth only understandable in the light of faith.
In the same line we look at the present, which is presented to me as a complex reality, full of nuances, uncertainties, also of tiredness and, at the same time, with illusions and hopes… And the question arises: what does God want from me in this Lent?
The experience of working as a doctor in a Church social assistance institution in Cuba today entails an incalculable wealth both professionally and spiritually, for it combines two vocations that I have always wanted and make me very happy, the exercise of medicine and serving my Church as a committed layman.
This health situation has been very complex for all health professionals, much more for those of us working with vulnerable people, as this means greater care. We all know the terrible effects of this disease on seniors, so every effort has been little to safeguard the integrity of the elderly with severe disabilities and mental disorders in geriatric ages that we attend in our institutions: the San Rafael Clinical Home and the San Juan de Dios Sanatorium.
In both clinics the internal organization has had to be transformed to work and live with those assisted for periods of fifteen days, time that we are out of our homes, away from the family, from the comfort of home… These have been intense working days that have been extended in a long time, to which we are not able to define a clear horizon of completion.
Everyone, starting with patient assistants, nurses, general assistants and all the staff who care directly for our elders, have been continually tested for PCRs, and everyone, without exception, has been required or we have self-demanded it, appealing to the sensitivity of where we work.
The response of our collaborators has been wonderful, regardless of their various areas of work. It has not mattered to stay another day, enter when you have not rested enough because the other “crew” has not been completed (a word used to designate the work equipment that is constituted by these time periods)… The spiritual wealth emanating from service to the needy is unimaginable, even more so when not only patients become “needy”, but also collaborators. When, moreover, the scenario where you learn has been transformed so much from the very reality that constant learning is lived and becomes, although uplifting, immensely rich and fruitful.
The presence (small in physical number but large in commitment and service) of the hospital brothers, their accurate advice, their timely silences, their confidence in medical decisions, in the fulfillment in the orientations of the health authorities, their attachment to the charism, to that hospitality that discovers new horizons… has been an example to all. Likewise, the sisters of the Charity of Santa Ana, who for years accompany our journey, living witness in the home San Rafael, have continued to attend to the old lady and take care of the needs of the neighborhood and the people who come to the institution in search of any help, whether neighbors or the collaborators themselves. They continue to share and encourage the celebratory moments in the new conditions imposed on us by the pandemic.
Even in the most difficult times of recent times with the imminent danger of getting sick, we have seen solidarity, sensitivity and love grow. We have seen people who, without abandoning their work role, have taken on other performances and have provided emotional support to those who have been “isolated” by being contacts of a positive case, with the long wait that implies an outcome that defines their health and that of their family.
New ways of bringing hope and encouragement through social media, WhatsApp groups and messages from our cheer-laden priests have been discovered. Thanks to these forms of contact, people with some medicine have given it to the one who needs it at any given time… Anyway, many creative and valid ways that mitigate the social need of these times.
When I think again of the question, I believe that the answer is not singular, but plural: God wants so many things from me! God wants a more forceful, more mature, more committed response of faith.
I give infinite thanks to the Lord for allowing me to live in the midst of this Galilee, to stand there so that I may do my vocation, that which he has whispered to me and which I ask will encourage me every day to build with a simple faith. Ω
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