Reflection - Small things with great love

A village in Pakistan, much like the Hindu villages Columban lay missionary Monaliza visits. - Photo: Fr Pat Raleigh SSC

What is our contribution as Christians to the bigger society? Perhaps there’s a lot to tell but nowhere to start! It was a blessing to listen to one of the older local missionaries who posed this question at the start of our conversation. He continued to say that there’s a lot to handle in mission but how we respond to these things is what can give us a positive perspective. It stirred me to think, “Yeah what could it be?” And experiences, one after the other, popped into my head.

What could be their future?

One evening I was sitting with four teenage girls in a village. To begin a conversation, I am always eager to ask who among them is attending school and often I get the same answer - that they are not attending at all. It is an answer that disheartens me every time I hear it, but it also urges me to keep trying to convince them of the importance of education. It may be a slow process, but there is always hope.

In their sharing, some expressed their dreams of becoming a nurse someday but, while listening, I felt like they knew they had already lost that dream and at the back of their mind was the same path waiting for them when they turned 18 years of age. Most of them stopped going to school when they turned 12 regardless of which grade they had reached, and some hadn’t been to school at all.

I wonder sometimes what if they were given the opportunity for higher education. What could be their future? While there are parents who try to fight for their young daughters to finish their education, there are also parents who don’t have the means to let go of them. Some don’t have the courage to risk, and it is a sad reality because of the society they are in. It is a challenge because it involves tradition, custom, and culture. But I trust and pray that as we continue to offer them awareness of their purpose and importance in this society as girls and women, they will be empowered.

God’s instruments are always there when they are needed. One example is when we went to pay respect to one of our TB patients two weeks after her death. It was my first experience of visiting a Hindu village to pay respect to a departed beloved. As we approached the village, the ladies started to cry - a symbol of mourning. We entered silently and sat on the ground in front of their house. There was total silence for a while, and then one from our parish team led the prayer. There was serenity while the prayer was going on. Afterwards, they started talking about the last days of their beloved companion. It was a moment of grief but at the same time a chance to be thankful for her life.

Sitting on the string bed after the formalities allowed me to chat more with one of the ladies. Her openness reminded me that Jesus not only never suggested that his followers should fear strangers, hate them, or reject them, even if those strangers practised a different religion, and even if they were perceived as enemies, but pointedly told his followers to welcome strangers, love them, and care for them.

A little gesture of outreach makes a difference in building relationships with people of other religions. We may have many differences, but God always provides a way to be one with them, especially those who are in need.

On one Friday morning in March, a patient, a very weak woman, was brought to our parish TB health clinic. She could barely walk so the doctor had to go out and look at her in the rickshaw. While observing and asking questions of the men who’d brought her, I could see the weariness on their faces.

These people were living behind the cemetery where life was difficult. They must have been trying so hard to put something on the table each day that they forgot how sick they were. Ignoring whatever pain they have is common to them and when they can’t bear it, that’s when they come to ask the doctor for help. Towards the end of April, a lady called Sita, who I know and who is from that cemetery, came to the church compound with a man and his baby to see the catechist, but they were not able to meet him. They were sitting outside when I saw them. She came to me holding the 5-month-old baby and started to tell me the story that the mother had died a month ago and she couldn’t find the means to feed the baby with milk.

The baby was so thin and looked malnourished. Then I realised that the mother was the very weak woman they had brought to us that Friday. I explained to them that we could provide the baby’s milk for as long as necessary and asked them to bring the baby on Friday for a check-up. That Friday the baby was admitted with TB! Thanks to Sita who took the baby into her care with love regardless of what would happen. She trusts God that this baby will have a life and future after all.

Like one of the famous saints in our church who said, “There are no great things, only small things with great love.” And I think this is what the world needs now: doing small things with great love.

PS: I was happy to visit the people in the cemetery when I came back from my language refresher course. There I received the welcome news that the baby I left in the hands of my team in our TB health clinic was running around strong and healthy and had completed his TB medication.

Columban lay missionary Monaliza Esteban lives and works in Pakistan.