Experience in PastoralSocial – Sr. Maria Jose Benavides, HCR
Considering visiting the sick and people who live alone as social work, we have asked Sister Mª José Benavides about her experience in this task that she has been carrying out for years. She shares with all of us this brief account of her experience:
Christ reigns
"My arrival at different destinations and in them to different homes, has always been a joyful greeting, indicating that I am a Religious, Daughter of Christ the King, that the priest sends me to them, for his hard work, to help him in this service that the Parish has with its sick. Immediately the relationship and the reception are opened.
I have had this activity, in almost all the houses where I have passed, sick people have not lacked, I see it is an extraordinary work; You learn a lot from the elderly and the sick, sometimes if you can, you communicate the joy they so desire, the company...; and the Word of the day is also explained to them a little. You have to have a lot of understanding since some tell you the same thing, I don't know the times, but with what patience they suffer. There are moments that bring tears to hearing them due to loneliness or other reasons... The truth is that they rely a lot on the Lord, but also on Bollullos, of course, on the Virgen de las Mercedes who love her so much.
I think, how can I complain when I am always so accompanied by other sisters in my ailments? Most say they are ready when the Lord calls them. This really is abandonment in the arms of God.
At other times, if I see fit, I drop a little joke; and also his vocabulary has some salt shaker that makes for good times. I tell an old lady we are going to pray the "I, sinner" and it begins with what she knows, but with the "z" over here. “I, a sinner, confess myself to Almighty God…” and at the end instead of saying that you intercede for me, he says: “that you straighten for me"... Now, at 90 years old, am I going to correct what she learned since she was little? and another says "I am not worthy of you entering my house, but one word from you will suffice for the week" And the faith with which they pray?
One Holy Thursday I took out a ratillo to take the Blessed Sacrament to a very fervent old man, when he saw me come in he stood up and crying told me: "Sister, I have told the Lord today that I would like to receive it, but that surely it could not be... and look...!!
So many things in which one sees the grace of God acting in them, some with little training, but with a lot of faith. For me a life lesson every day that I spend on this mission.”
