Where joy meets poverty
An intense experience of young people in Albania: Testimonies from the Heart of the Missionaries of Charity in Scutari
by Cecilia Marazzi and Nicoletta Erle
Returning home frightened and deeply touched, when her mother asked her, if she was able to live as a Sister of Mother Teresa, she replied out of the blue, “If the Sisters can do it, so can I”.
This was Clarissa, a young girl originally from Kenya, who could not get this question out of her mind, “But where do the Sisters get the strength and joy with which they do this work?”.
The question came to her during the “Come and See”, the short-term experience offered by the Order of the Missionaries of Charity for young girls attracted to their way of life.
That joy she had seen in the nuns she had never experienced: it was a deeper Joy she had not found before making that encounter. So she returned, determined to begin the journey with them, to seek this joy, attracted also by the moments of prayer that the Sisters live daily: Mass and Adoration.
Sitting in a circle listening to Sister Clarissa’s testimony, we are a group of twenty-three young people of different ages from Como, Vicenza, Padua, Croatia and Albania. It was already more than a week that we had been serving at their home when she and Sister Immaculate Rose agreed to tell us their story.
“Mother Teresa never used to talk about her work, she would simply say ‘come and see’ (“come and see”). “But now,” Sister Clarissa tells us, ”you have taken part in what we do, so something you have seen”.
We saw a green gate, half-hidden along one of Shkodra’s main streets, opening onto a deep courtyard, with cloths laid out, a few metal roundabouts, a few flowering plants on the sides of the driveway.
Beyond that gate, we met eight nuns (two were out of town on a spiritual retreat), a dozen health workers, and fifty-seven “children” with different types of disabilities.
These “children” were there, taken in by the nuns, because elsewhere, they had no one to care for them.
We met those who live in a building detached from the main building, the most independent ones, who help the sisters in the facility or in some cases work outside.
We were introduced to those living on the ground floor of the main building who need more assistance, although they are independent in their movements or, if they are not, they are aware and involved in what is going on around them.
On the second floor of the facility, we met “children” in the most delicate condition, needing constant assistance with everything from being fed, to bathing, and here the majority were not even able to walk.
For two weeks, we spent our mornings with them in contact with a reality that for most of us was completely foreign to our daily lives.
We took care of everything from cooking, to washing the floors and of course, to entertaining the “children” who made us experience a little bit too, that joy Sister Clarissa had told us about.
Activities with those on the ground floor took place almost exclusively in the courtyard, under the shade of a green plastic tarp. The assignment given by the sisters, here as on the upper floor, was to “party.” So they danced, sang, played ball, as long as the bodies could withstand the mugginess and temperatures.
There was no need to invent particular activities, no matter how hard they tried to come up with new ideas: the “party” was simply having fun together.
On the other hand, the second floor, where the girls who were less autonomous or had self-injuring tendencies lived, offered a different atmosphere: gazes often pointed elsewhere, difficult to intercept, arms and hands hidden in fabric, hips secured by belts or ribbons to baby carriages or high chairs.
Even here, however, a little music is enough to bring the party to life.
There are those who take one girl at a time for a walk, perhaps to stretch their legs by getting their feet wet in the “little pool” in the inner courtyard, those who devote themselves to massaging their hands, so often contracted, and those who make the rounds bringing each one a drink.
Around eleven o’clock dishes begin to arrive from the kitchen.
The staff and sisters give quick and precise directions: for each girl there are different customs or attentions. The amount of force required is considerable: many need to be fed and attended to individually for the duration of the meal.
A few minutes later, lunchtime also arrives on the ground floor. Here, the able-bodied girls help the others: like big sisters do with little ones, they distribute the plates, help put on bibs, make sure that even the less obedient ones eat everything…
During our stay, a picnic was organized for the girls on the second floor and a morning at the beach with the ground floor: for some of the “children” it was the first out-of-town trip of their lives.
Clearly, a few extra hands is a relief and gives the sisters a way to be able to devote more time to individual girls with special needs, as well as others to do activities that otherwise there would not be the strength to organize.
It is equally clear, however, that we are guests and that our presence, welcomed as a celebration by many of the girls, is not necessary for the conduct of the normal daily routine.
Theirs is a family unit. Certainly, a very large one, which welcomes with joy those who want to come and see it, but within which the members take care of each other with equal joy.
Everything is welcomed as a gift: the outside help as much as each individual person inside.
“They are our angels”, says Sister Talita, referring to the girls. “And you are theirs”, replies Father Peter.
Part of the service, like that of the sisters and the workers, is instead practical work: throughout the early part of the morning, large quantities of food are cooked, diversified according to the girls’ ability to chew and swallow, and vegetables and fruits donated by local producers or stores are cared for.
Providence is amazing: “What we need always arrives”, smiles Sister Talita. Meanwhile, on the second floor, sheets, clothes, bibs and linens are washed by hand and then laid out in the courtyard along the driveway.
But why not have a washing machine? Sister Candela repeats Mother Teresa’s words to us, explaining that they dedicate their lives to serving the poor, “freely choosing to be as poor as they are, so that we can understand their poverty”.
The choice of poverty, without compromise, questions us: wouldn’t accepting a washing machine be a way to have more time to devote to the girls? To offer them a better quality of life?
The sisters only take in people who have no one: little girls abandoned on the streets or left to them by families who do not have the financial ability to care for someone who needs uninterrupted care. “These are not easy situations for families: don’t judge those who abandon either”, Sister Candela admonishes us.
Their service is essential and rendered with a care and loving care that makes it look easy. It seems like a small drop, but in reality they take on those basic human rights that these people are not guaranteed by society and to which no one asks them to respond.
The families they abandon are in turn left alone.
The people “to whom God sent Mother Teresa” (and after her the Missionaries of Charity), as Sister Immaculate Rose points out, “need Him because, marginalized by men, they think that not even God cares about them: through her, God says to each one of them ‘I love you, you are close to my heart, you are precious in my eyes’”.
The joy that makes the Sisters’ smiles tireless and bright, Sister Clarissa explained, “comes from our union with Jesus, who is both in the poor and in the Eucharist”.
“What did you go to see in the desert?”
The nuns take on the poverty of the poorest, without compromise. But would the washing machine be a compromise? Perhaps so, because not everyone has the choice to have it. Even what we call “basic rights”, until they are actually enjoyed by every person, are nothing more than privileges of a few. But if you can give something to someone who lacks it, why not?
“Being a bride of Christ is not about being social workers and solving problems”. For Mother Teresa’s sisters it all boils down to the “Gospel of the five fingers”, “you did it to me” (Mt. 25), because “the mission is not to serve the poor, it is to love Jesus, loving the poorest of the poor”.
(September 1, 2024)