Sr. Maria at the hospital
I am Sr. Maria Villar Sesma Gómez, and I am currently living in Egypt. I arrived for the first time in this land in September 1980. At that time, I worked in many different places: in our clinics, in the Public Hospitals of Edfu and Aswan and in the Leprosy Centre of Abuzaabel. After years of service, I left Egypt for 15 years to work in Peru as missionary animator and vocation promoter. Then, I came back to continue ministering in health. For the last 3 years, I have been working in Aswan at the clinic in which Sr. Giuseppa Scandola used to work. I always ask her protection and help.
Every day, circa a hundred people from the periphery and the villages around Aswan come to our clinic. In general, our patients are very poor and 90% are Muslim.
The Mission in the Muslim world consists of a daily dialogue of life. Although we cannot talk about Jesus, we can create fraternity by respecting others’ beliefs and ideology, by loving them as brothers and sisters, sons, and daughters of the same Father (God). When one embraces this attitude, life becomes easier and more beautiful and chances of working together for the poor and needy multiply.
In one of the villages where I worked, a group of Christian and Muslim women used to teach together other women how to take care of their babies (Mother and childcare formation). Another group of women, bearing in mind the need of preventing incidents which might provoke burns, used to come around with me to the different villages to raise awareness. The people of the villages marvelled at seeing them working together for the common good.
I am glad and I thank God for granting me daily chances of serving him and taking care of him through the brothers and sisters I come across. Even if at times we might meet fanatic people, in most of the cases, people are humble and trust us greatly. We love and respect each other. Visiting the families of Muslim or Christian patients creates strong bonds of fraternity. I remember a Muslim chief I used to pay daily visits for a long period of time to cure his wounds. Once the Lord restored him to health, he started calling me ‘my sister’.
I have always tried to love everyone. I have been living my service with all my physical and spiritual capacities, convinced that I am serving God in all these people. I feel that I am proclaiming the Gospel with my life, even if I do not always manage. Pope Francis emphasises the significance of respect towards the other. I believe that respect is the only way to meet each other and evangelise. God, Father of all, has many ways to draw his children to himself. and dialogue. My greatest desire is to contribute with my small seed to make possible We will create a more fraternal and welcoming world where everybody could live in peace only through respect God’s dream that “all may be one”.
Sr. Maria Villar, Egypt Province, (In Dialogue n.13)
