How confinement is lived out in the Little Sisters of the Assumption

Testimonies

Confined! A difficult and unexpected experience. Our whole community and inter-congregational life is marked by it.

We learned vigilance: a learning to establish a circuit, to limit the number of people in the kitchen, to implement barrier measures.

We are confined within the residence, but not in our rooms, and we appreciate the small garden that allows us to get some fresh air and walk a few steps. We are lucky enough to have the big room on the ground floor that allows us to meet (those who wish to) for prayer or gymnastics, respecting the distances, and the staircase becomes a real sports field to maintain muscles and morale! In the afternoon, card games or movies, help us, according to our tastes, to maintain relaxation and patience.

Every day, in collaboration with the service personnel, 2 sisters, at a time, participate in cleaning the door handles, windows and railings of the stairs twice a day.

 Solidarity is experienced in discretion, when we are attentive to the workload of the service personnel or their schedules. Their life is very complicated because of the confinement, the rarity of transport and their anguish of being contaminated by their work among the older people that we are!

At the call of the Director of “Chemins d’Espérance”, we sew cloth masks that have become our health reserve in case there is contamination among us, and every night at 8pm, we join in the cheers of the neighbours to thank the carers who risk their lives for us.

Many of us spend a lot of time on the phone to hear from HA families and communities, and to support people on their own. Through the Internet, one or the other participates in a social network of communication, of the parish or of an association.

In community we have decided to take advantage of this free time that we have been given, because there are no more outings, meetings or commitments, by regularly reading “Laudato Si”. And we are enjoying doing it together! We have chosen to do an hour of adoration each week, for the Church and our suffering world.

The times of prayer are still our reference point on the days that are being built, and we try to prepare the celebrations of the holy days and the Easter celebrations in the communities of the other congregations in the residence and with the support of KTO (on TV).

It is a new time that is given to us. With the help of the Spirit, let us make it a time of trust and giving of our lives.
And that together we may receive the grace of New Life!
Happy Easter to all of you.

The Little Sisters of the Assumption in France -Lyon La Guillotière

The book of Exodus and in our current exodus

In this time of confinement, all of us in battle in rows against the enemy Covid 19, as a community we gathered to reread the book of Exodus 14 together. And we walked, sometimes in the Exodus, sometimes in our current exodus, in the sandstone of the sequence of our ideas… This reading energizes us: our God comes to our rescue, with a strong hand, he destroys the enemies! Pharaoh Trump did not want to believe that the plagues of Egypt could reach him… At each plague, in spite of the pain of his people, he rediscovers the choice of his interests: not to lose the money he earns from the work of the workers condemned to forced labour. He needed one last plague, even more violent than all the others, to consent for a moment to let the Hebrews go. It was a fatal moment for him, and despite his reversals, he could not catch up with the fugitives. Even today, he says: we can still win, if less than 200,000 find death!!! But it is too late… the country, the first world power, is drowning under the number of dead, sick, without sufficient equipment, without indispensable social distance measures, and for many, alas, without the slightest social health cover…

Moses has a lot to do with the people entrusted to him, like the present rulers, those who try to do their work honestly, and to take the necessary measures. Of course, restrictive measures, which do not please everyone… Why bring us out of Egypt to find ourselves on the edge of the tomb in the aridity of the desert???? Why a confinement that limits my freedom????  Why didn’t you react before? Before what? Who could fight an epidemic before it got here? Yes, we should have kept stocks of masks, respirators, medicine… But the current leaders are not the ones who made the decisions to let the stocks run out… Everyone acts according to their conscience, more or less enlightened… All the precautions in the world will never be able to prevent us from being limited, vulnerable, deadly…

The Hebrews who lived this passage of the Red Sea, with the help of the powerful arm of a victorious God, this people who had thus had a bright sign of God’s protective presence, is the one who soon afterwards, tired of the frustrating and painful crossing of the desert, will make a golden calf, will miss the onions of Egypt, will show themselves with a stiff and short-sighted neck… Will we be able to do better after the crisis? Will we know how to change our lives? our economic behaviour? our environmental choices?

We hope so. We deeply desire it. We pray that it will happen.

But for now, we are living from day to day in the present moment, stunned by the numbers, frightened by the cries of the caregivers: no more equipment, no more medicine, no more everything… We are challenged in the depths of our faith, anxious about our countries and our families: will they be able to cope? will they have the means to care for themselves? Our prayers become ardent and constant… Community prayer becomes a moment of supplication, expressed or silent, where each one and together we entrust our families, far and near, and where we place ourselves in the hands of the Father.

For the Almighty God of the Exodus revealed himself as God the Father of mercy in Jesus. God who suffers with us, God who accompanies us while respecting our freedom, God who goes so far as to die on the Cross, so that we may be strong in the trial at the moments of decisive choices and of abandonment at last. He gives the carers the courage to continue to live and serve, generously, taking the risk. It inspires gestures of solidarity from neighbours, and from all those who work humbly so that the country can continue to live. Humble and strong God, Good God, increase our faith, and give us your Life.

Little Sisters of the Assumption –Vaulx en Velin-France