Silverless

Born in Arabia, the twin brothers Qozma wa Demyaan practiced the medical arts of the East. They became renown in the northern reaches of the Levant (modern-day Yumurtalik, Turkey) and then in Rome itself. Many praised them for their mastery of medicine but even more so for their intentional poverty. For they laid their services at the feet of humanity accepting no fee. They were known as the Ανάργυροι, (Anárguroi) "the silverless."

When the Hermitage was received into the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, one of the Western Rite parishes, St. Cuthbert's in Pawtucket, Rhode Island presented a beautiful gift to the Sisters: an icon of Ss. Cosmas and Damian. You see, Fr. David Kinghorn had done his homework. As former Franciscans, the Sisters, both Registered Nurses, had offered their medical arts to the people of Haiti free of charge, of course. They are nuns.

I honor the selfless ministry of the Reverend Sister Mary Martha Mescher, but the main subject of my reflection today is Sister Mary Anne Berard, the saint I have had the honor to serve under for the past fifteen years and whom I have known and admired since I was Vicar of the Diocese of Quincy, near Springfield, Illinois — the site of Hospital Sisters of Saint Francis.

I suppose Sister Mary Anne never pictured herself as anything but a nun. As her close friend in these latter years — praying and working and living with her every day — I can say that her every thought and instinct are the things of God. You know, it was in meeting Sr. Mary Anne that I gave up on the theory of original sin. I don't believe she's ever had an evil thought.

She began to formalize those thoughts in the way of vocation when she was seventeen and entered the Franciscan convent when she was eighteen.

I should add that I attended a fund-raiser at a New Hampshire hotel perhaps a dozen years ago whose main event was a slide show of her life, for this was the primary method the Haitian Health Foundation used to open wallets for their charitable purposes. (I suppose it still is.) As I sat in the dark in room full of people, watching slide after slide of the young nun, I heard murmurs: "radiant .... beautiful." And she was. For the Holy Spirit's power shone from her face.

Yet, she never gave a thought to marriage or children or anything for herself. Like the Mother of God, Whom she loves and follow, it was always a handmaiden's work that she asked for.

She studied for her R.N. degree and trained in hospitals in the U.S. and then departed for the Republic of China (Taiwan). After that it was off to India, where her assignment was to administrate a colony of people with leprosy.

When I first heard this story, I thought of St. Francis. For this was his breakthrough moment. the moment when he was able to move his interior life into the external reality of Gospel life — taking no care for himself but only caring the other. You see, he was always repulsed by the lepers from a boy. He recoiled at their sight and always gave them a wide berth. He said that it was embracing a leper in his arms, freely and without reserve, that he had truly moved forward into Gospel life.

I thought of St. Francis, for that was when I realized that Sr. Mary Anne never had a breakthrough moment. She has always been the way she is now.

I remember seeing her in the large waiting room of the Klinic in Haiti during a cholera epidemic. People were exploding out both ends. And there she was, embracing a patient with one knee bent, no mask, no gloves. She never took any measure to protect herself. from leprosy, from cholera, from malaria, from dengue fever though she chronically lived in these zone. It is a fact that she never has been sick a day of her life. As I say, she belongs to Heaven. I don't believe she has ever had an earthly thought and certainly has taken no provision to survive in the world, which reminds me of our other Gospel this morning, Matthew 6:30-33:

She once told me that she had never been happier in her life. In India, you see, she was completely fulfilled. All her dreams had come true, the dreams she had conceived even as a young girl. As you can imagine, therefore, she was disconsolate when she learned that the Indian government was deporting her. But what had she done? She never proselytized! She never distributed Christian literature! She never discussed religion among the lepers .... or anyone else. (She still doesn't.) But she had followed St. Francis' dictum: "Preach the Gospel always and, if you must, use words."

She never used words. But this little slip of a girl had become dangerous in the eyes of the always nervous Hindu authorities. The sight of her giving up her life of privilege for them! the picture of her laying her life — every hour of every day — down at their feet! This was too much! It was inspiring people. And this could not be tolerated. So after every petition had been filed for a stay of execution, so to speak, they packed her off on a plane, with tears in her eyes, helpless..

Sitting in her cell at the mother-house in Springfield, her superior came to visit her. There was an opportunity to serve in Haiti. A Roman Catholic layman had experienced a cancer scare. He promised God he would provide for the poor if he were given back his life. He had gone to Mother Teresa for advice. She asked him what his name was, and he replied, "Jeremiah." "Then you must go to Jeremiah, Haiti," she said. "I have sisters serving there." So this dentist had dutifully begun an outreach ministry in Jeremie in southwest Haiti and had come to the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis to staff it.

Sr. Mary Ann for spend the next twenty-five years in prostrate and dangerous Haiti. I suppose she thought she end her life in Haiti. Certainly, I did. And so did Sr. Marty. I recall her speaking to me about her end-of-life plans, where she might be buried.

As the years passed, I came to understand just how dangerous Haiti was. Roman Catholic priests would seek refuge with us whose lives were threatened for carrying out their duties. Voudou houngans would constantly attempt to steal the consecrated hosts in reserve, and the priest were bound to protect them. We knew priests who had been killed from poisoning.

One day, I asked someone what those candles were set on our front gate at night. I was told that someone had gone to a Voudou houngan or mambo seeking the life of Sr. Mary Anne because she had to fire someone for chronically stealing form the Klinic. Employees who had received raises had to conceal this information, or they would have their houses burned down by their enraged neighbors out of envy.

She lived through several political coups. We had a visitor nun who told me how she and Sr. Mary Anne had been in Port-au-Prince when one was in progress. "Men were in the streets with machetes. They had blood in their eyes," she said. And yet not one word could I extract from Sr. Mary Anne.

Back in the States, the president of the Haitian Health Foundation told me that things had got so bad in Jeremie that the U.N. peacekeepers had to evacuate the clinic .... all, that is, but Sr. Mary Anne. She refused to go anywhere the poor could not go. So she remained in the religious residence, which was attached to the medical facilities. She contacted U.S. headquarters by ham radio (she was a licensed ham radio operator) and told them where she hidden the money and where they could find her body.

Even during peace time, under democracy, Haiti was dangerous. In times of national duress, say when food stuffs were in short supply, the Haitians would practice what they called manifestasyons, or public protests. Things were brought to halt. No one went anywhere. The city was paralyzed. Bystanders might be "necklaced" — a tire would be place around them bounding their arm and then set alight with gasoline. People were simply hacked to death with machetes. On these occasions the Haitian police typically went into hiding.

The second in charge at the Klinic, Dr. Bette Gebrian, told me that there was a building fire during one of these protest in Jeremie, but no one would drive the fire truck out of fear for their lives, so Sr. Mary Anne got behind the wheel and managed to deliver this large piece of equipment.

Someone else told me that Sr. Mary Anne never failed to go the weekday Mass, which was held down the hill at "the Asile" — a place of asylum within a French convent. But a manifestasyon blocked the way. She drove down the hill and resolutely confronted the protesters — whom she had fed and clothed and educated from the time there were boys. And she ordered them to let her through. They ordered her in Kreol, "Get back in the car, Sishah!" Anyone else would have been necklaced. But this little figure of a nun parted the waters of rage and went through. And we through again on her way home.

She had led the development of a modest outreach ministry to become the principal NGO lifeline in southwest Haiti, serving 230,000 people and employing 200 "barefoot doctors" providing the basics in health care and distributing needed medicine. She built a school. She launched a large-scale nutrition program. And she personally oversaw the construction of one thousand homes in the neediest part of the city .... a city that would have been deemed a slum by U.S. standards.

But after twenty-five years this shining achievement just became too much to resist. So the dentist's daughter told her father that she wanted it. She had no previous experience running any kind of small business, let alone a national-scale ministry with 20 million dollars in reserve. So she asked her friend to join her — the founder-director of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. They came to Jeremie and informed us that our icons and crucifixes were to be removed, that our chapel was to become a multi-denomination meditation room (no one knew what that was in Haiti), and that we were not to use the word "Catholic" in any of our dealings.

The two campuses and buildings were owned by the Roman Catholic Church, so I went to the local diocesan bishop. He was aloof, but he wanted clarity on one point: who controlled the money.

Seeing no remedy, I tendered my resignation as one of the ministry's directors. Sr. Mary Anne also resigned. Her plan was to leave quietly — she was able to pack everything she owned into one suitcase — and have someone drive her to our primitive airport. But when she stepped outside, she found that the entire city had turned out for her with a police escort to the airport. People lined the street with tears running down their faces. For their mother and grandmother was lost to them.

When she returned home, she learned that the superior of the Hospital Sisters had decided publicly to affirm the new regime of the institution Sr. Mary Anne and her team had built and asked if she could continue sitting on their board.

Again, Sr. Mary Anne left quietly. I contacted Christopher Ferrara, president of the American Catholic Lawyers Association, to consult him on what to do next. He confirmed my convictions that this cynical outrage must be exposed. "Do you mean they continue to flash a picture of this saint, collecting money 'To help Sr. Mary Anne' while they go forward with their .... plans?" I answered, "That it precisely what they're doing."

But that was not Sr. Mary Anne's way. There would no encounter, no conflict. "As long as the money gets to Haiti," she said.

Today, Sr. Mary Anne quietly says her prayers in a small, nearly anonymous, hermitage in far-off Polynesia. No one knows who she is. Just an old lady working as a farm laborer. I look at her. Her small frame has been crushed by the Fourth World. But her face is still radiant with the power of the Holy Spirit and her loving heart is undimmed .... nay, it grows more loving every day.

She and Sr. Mary Martha have been received by Archbishop Kyrill of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and they have been blessed to receive tonsure under his care. He has consented to be Spiritual Father to their humble monastery.

I don't think I'll ask Sr. Mary Anne. She's not terribly concerned about the things of the world. She has been told by the Master and by His Disciples not to pay the world any mind. And I point to the alternative Gospel reading for today:

Alleluia.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.