The Power of Love

I heard the most heart wrenching true story today.  Someone I know slightly is a Palestinian Christian.  The city where she was born was at that time in Jordan but is now part of Israel.  She went on a trip to the Holy Land and while there she met some nuns.  These nuns do something amazing.  They take in the illegitimate children born of rape.  The rape victims are young unmarried Muslim women.  Usually they have been raped by some family member and find themselves pregnant.  If this is found out, they will be killed.  There is no recourse against the man who raped them.  They are trapped.  But somehow these four Catholic nuns have gotten out the word that they will help.  The girls go to them and the nuns connect them to doctors and nurses who'll take of them.  Because of the Muslim garb, the pregnancy is kept hidden until the 7th month and then a doctor performs a c-section on them.  The girls have to go home the same day, they can not stay overnight in the hospital.  All this is done in secret.  The babies are then cared for by these nuns.  For some reason, and I didn't get the detail, the nuns are allowed to raise them until they are six or seven.  These children have no official birth certificates.  They have no family name.  Their last name is always Creche.  When they reach the age of six or seven they are taken from the nuns and put into an official orphanage.  The nuns are forbidden from teaching the Christian Faith and, of course,  they can not teach the Muslim faith.  So the nuns try to be Christ for these children through their actions.  They love, cuddle, bath, rock, feed, play with, comfort, guide, and care for these children by silently witnessing their own relationship to Christ and by trying to love these children unconditionally, like Jesus would.

When the first child they took in turned 18 years old, he had to go out and find a job to support himself.  It was very hard to find a job because of his lack of family name or connection, but he finally found employment.  He took his very first paycheck back to the nuns who raised him from birth to age six and give it all to them.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is error, the truth;
Where there is doubt, the faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.