Published March 24, 2006
Find Jesus in your neighbors, however vulnerable they are
Editor’s Note: Here is a Lenten reflection by Daughter of Charity Sister Jean Marie Williams, who studied Russian in Anchorage for several years before relocating to Magadan, Russia, last fall. Sister Williams and two Polish sisters together formed a new Daughter of Charity community to serve the poor through the Parish of the Nativity of Jesus and assist in its outreach ministry efforts.
MAGADAN, Russia — On Ash Wednesday, Father Milosh Krakovski celebrated Mass at the Church of the Nativity and called all of us to see Jesus in our neighbors.
"Look into the face of another," he said, "and hear Jesus say: ‘It’s me. I am here.’ "
That Lenten message stayed with me later that day as I headed out with Nadia Orneva, a young parishioner, to visit our elderly friend Nina Nicholaevna in her small apartment. Nicholaevna is a survivor of Stalin’s slave-labor camps that permeated Siberia until the 1950s. She’s also a longtime parishioner who came faithfully to the parish for daily Mass and to pray the rosary until her failing short-term memory and fear of falling forced her to stay home.
Since she became homebound, the three priests at the parish have visited her regularly, bringing holy Communion along with the love and prayers of parishioners.
My fellow Daughter of Charity, Sister Barbara Repetowska, and I check up on Nicholaevna weekly. We help clean the large wound on her face caused by skin cancer, we clip her nails and clean her bedroom.
Nicholaevna shares her two-room apartment with her daughter, granddaughter and great-grandson. But they suffer from alcoholism and are unable to care for Nicholaevna’s simplest needs.
About three weeks ago when Sister Repetowska arrived for the weekly visit, no one answered the door.
A week later she tried again. This time someone answered the door. Inside, the apartment was filled with people drinking and smoking.
Sister Repetowska was shocked to find Nicholaevna lying barely responsive in a bed soaked with feces and urine. The smell was almost overpowering. There were bedsores on Nicholaevna’s side and she was so weak and her legs were so painful that she was unable to stand.
Sister Repetowska prevailed upon one of the less-inebriated family members to help carry Nicholaevna to the bathroom. Sister Repetowska bathed her and dressed her in some clean clothes and cleaned the bedding.
Once back in a clean bed, Nicholaevna drank four cups of tea and then ravenously ate the food that Sister Repetowska brought for her.
Since this incident, we in the parish have made it a point to visit Nicholaevna every day.
Recently, Orneva and I went to see Nicholaevna. We washed her face and hands, changed the sheets, washed her body, cleaned and dressed her bedsores. Then we changed her clothes, massaged her back and rubbed her dry legs and feet with lotion. Then we covered her in clean blankets.
She drank some orange juice and hot, sweet tea and ate some chicken vegetable soup, just enough of it to take the medicine prescribed for her leg pain.
While Nicholaevna ate, we chatted about parishioners — who is sick, who is getting better, how the young people are doing, what the priests are up to. When she was finished eating, we prayed a decade of the rosary with her and packed up our supplies and her laundry to wash at the parish.
Then we kissed her on the cheek and asked her to pray for us as we do for her.
Nina Nicholaevna showed me, in her need, the face of Jesus who suffered and died for love of me.
Once she was clean, warm and well fed, I looked into her grateful eyes and heard Jesus say: "It’s me. I am here."