Sr. Zawadi Barungu with a young mother
From Sr. Zawadi Barungu, in Burkina Faso
As I began writing this article, someone rang our doorbell. I dropped everything and went to open the door. It was a veiled woman, visibly elderly, looking for a teacher who works at a center near our house. I went with her to show her the entrance to the weaving center. As we started, she thanked me and wished me twins: “May God give you twins”. No doubt that was the best she thought she could give me, the best she could wish me at that moment.
Poor people offer us more than we think we give them. The “poor” give everything, they give themselves. Thus, we all have this potential within us because we are rich in love to give and very often poor in love because of sadness, worries, and false conflicts. If the joy of Christ dwells within us, we can only give joy and hope to all those who cross our lives, our paths.
Mother Marie Salomé said:
When there is sadness in the depths of a religious soul, it is because her self-giving has not been complete.” (Thought No. 552)
The Lord has given me the happiness of being sent to this community and of truly being a part of it. Our Church is very poor in personnel, yet very rich, because the bonds of fraternity that unite us from east to west, north to south, are very deep. In our diocese, everyone knows everyone, and we feel at home everywhere. What a grace!
Our Archbishop said at a meeting of prison chaplains: “Even if it means traveling 500 km to meet only one isolated Christian brother or sister, I urge you, my brothers and sisters, do not hesitate to do so.”
Yes, we find ourselves in a territory where humanity and human dignity are fragile, a crossroads of all kinds of suffering, where dreams drown in the vast desert or further out in the Mediterranean Sea. Mother Africa constantly weeps for her children who perish ceaselessly on the migration routes from south to north.
“Christian love breaks down all barriers, brings together those who are far apart, unites strangers, makes enemies familiar, crosses humanly insurmountable abysses, and penetrates into the most hidden corners of society… Love is above all a way of conceiving life, a way of living it. Well, a Church that places no limits on love, that knows no enemies to fight, but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today.” (DT 120)
It is this Christian love that sends us out on the various arid desert roads, to visit prisons 540 km round trip in a single day, to pray, to celebrate the living and present Christ among these brothers and sisters who, without our visits, could spend ten years in the same prison without ever being able to see one another.
Our visits therefore create this kind of bridge between them and between the outside and the inside, between their families, most of whom are in Nigeria, Cameroon, Liberia, Mali, Ghana, Niger, and elsewhere… and who cannot come to visit them. We therefore represent that friend, that brother, that mother, and that neighbor who has only their imagination to reach their loved ones behind these four walls.
They sometimes call us, my sister and my mother, and we sometimes hear the guards say, “Your mother is here”… because we are the only ones who visit them. Through this apostolate, I am discovering more and more that consecration and fidelity go hand in hand.
Human freedom is the capacity to look at God in one’s own condition, whatever it may be. A man condemned to death stands up to share his thanksgiving and says: “I want to ask you a question! Is God, the one who led the people of Israel across the Red Sea on dry land yesterday, the same today? Yes, He has not changed! I believe in Him too!”… we are witnesses to the miracles of the faith of the poorest. They enrich us through their sharing.
“By its very nature, Christian love is prophetic, it even performs miracles, it has no limits: it is for the impossible…” (DT 120)
I see the poor person as someone who does not have at this moment what I have, and therefore someone to whom I am called to help fulfill their prayer to Our Father, “give us this day our daily bread”…
This echoes the thought of our dear Founder, Cardinal Lavigerie: “I am a man, and nothing that is human leaves me indifferent.”
Through my relationships in various health services I manage to be the voice of the voiceless: I accompany a migrant woman… She is about to give birth, but she doesn’t have the papers that would allow her to reside legally in the country. Or I go with one person or another to get medical treatment or to pick up medication every two weeks for their tuberculosis. Or I accompany a woman who is afraid to seek treatment because she fears hearing the results. Yes, nothing that is human leaves us feeling like strangers or indifferent.
This elderly woman sitting by the side of the road, tired and visibly ill, whom I picked up in the car, didn’t stop praising God for the good people; as she got out, she wished me paradise.
Yes, Christian love is a way of understanding life, and also noticing when it is lacking, when it is in danger… Our presence is simply a continuation of what our older sisters have always experienced there: our house, our home, becomes for the people and for every stranger seeking their bearings, “a small oasis, a bridge.”
The children are happy to come and play in our courtyard and learn to play together across enemy communities… “Yes, continue to be what you have always been, because at least in your place the air is not polluted, everyone can still breathe freely there.”
We don’t wear uniforms, and yet people recognize us by the way we are present to others and lift them up if necessary. “You, you can go where we cannot.” Isn’t this the “all things to all people” said in a different way by a woman of this land? Yes, we can live the fullness of the Kingdom of God by living ordinary life in a very ordinary way.
Just open your heart and your eyes. And let ourselves be sent where Jesus himself had to go. (Luke 10:1)
Thank you to our congregation which gives us the means to respond generously to the calls of the poor. Thanks to the fact that we can understand and speak their language, whether it be Arabic, French, or English, not forgetting the sacred language of our dear Founder, the language of “All to All,” for all belongs to God: Caritas.
I would say that “being approachable” is our noble vocation, the sons and daughters of Cardinal Lavigerie, our dear Father.
