Servants of Mary Care for Body and Soul

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They work the nightshift six nights a week doing one of the most stressful jobs imaginable. But there is a peace about these extraordinary women that appears to transcend even the most difficult circumstances.

“There’s a calm. The house is just peaceful. The dog doesn’t stop barking all day long. He barks at the wind. But when the Sisters come here it’s a whole different scenario,” explained John Distefano, a retired New York City deputy sheriff who lives alone with his ill father in a small, two-story house in the Pelham Bay area of the Bronx.

“It’s a calmness. I can’t explain it.”

Distefano is the sole caregiver to his ailing father, James, 87, who suffers from dementia. He is home pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But six nights a week he is visited by the Sisters, Servants of Mary, a team of registered, licensed practical nurses and certified nursing assistants who care for the chronically sick and terminally ill. Dressed in their iconic white habits the Sisters arrive like clockwork every evening and stay through the night, sitting with and caring for James, allowing John to get some much-needed rest.

“In a nutshell, it’s a blessing. Dad doesn’t do anything for himself any more so he needs help. When the sisters are here I sleep. It’s a simple as that,” Distefano told CNY.

“I can close my eyes and get a restful sleep without having to wake up every couple of hours to check on my dad and make sure he’s not wet, soiled, make sure he’s comfortable, make sure he’s not scared because he gets nervous at night.”

Sister Purificacion, Ferrero, S. de M, has heard other patients and harried caregivers talk about the “peace” the sisters bring into their homes when they arrive. And she has an explanation.

“You go into a house and they say there is a difference there,” she said. “Because Jesus is with you. You bring Jesus. That’s the difference.”

For 100 years the Sisters, Servants of Mary have been bringing Christ’s peace into sickrooms in the United States. First established in Madrid, Spain on the Feast of the Assumption in 1851 by St. Maria Soledad Torres Acosta, the congregation came to the United States in 1914 settling initially in New Orleans. They established the Bronx community the following decade. Today the Bronx congregation consists of 16 Sisters who offer their nursing services free to the chronically and terminally ill regardless of faith, race or the nature of their disease. The Bronx community serves the Bronx, upper Manhattan, Brooklyn and parts of Queens, Yonkers and lower Westchester County. On Nov. 16 the Sisters celebrated their 100th anniversary with a gala luncheon at Marina del Rey presided over by Cardinal Dolan.

Anyone who has ever had to hire a home health nurse knows their services don’t come cheaply. So how do the Sisters do it?

“On Divine Providence and private donations,” said Sister Germana Contreras, S. de M., mother superior of the Bronx community. “This is God’s work so he provides for us, has always provided for us. We are all over the world, 128 places, and we do the same thing with the same mission. That was our mother foundress St. Maria Soledad’s legacy to all of us and we try to keep it. And then people are also very generous. So God is still providing for the Sisters here.”

The Sisters’ prime objectives are: to restore patient health, relieve suffering, assist the dying through prayer and bedside vigils, secure a bond between the patient and the Creator, provide material, spiritual and emotional support to the family, and to render this amazing array of services all without charge. Often, Sister Germana explained, a patient will have reached the limits of their benefits or benefits simply would not have been available. This is particularly true where there is an elderly spouse to whom a seriously ill patient is released. The Sisters step into that gap.

Nursing is an arduous vocation, physically and mentally. Sudden life-threatening medical emergencies can develop anytime. It can often be a downright dirty job. Heavy lifting is often involved and seriously ill patients can be cranky and stressed families difficult to deal with at times. Through it all Sister Germana has maintained her serenity.

“If you are happy in your vocation, the joy is just going to be on your face,” she explained. “You don’t have to make any effort for it to be there, it will just be there. And if you carry it in your heart, that’s even better.”

Sister Purificacion first began to discern her vocation when she became seriously ill with rheumatic fever as a child in Spain. She was 12 and she remembers lying in bed with her family gathered around her crying. Soon after she recovered, she met two Sisters, Servants of Mary and decided that was what she wanted to be. She entered the convent at 16. Over the course of her long career she has served all over the world, including in Africa.

“Yes, I think I’m here today because of that illness,” she said. “The Lord used that pain for me to be compassionate to others.” And that is what sets the Sisters of Mary apart. More than nurses, they are ministers of Christ and they take that part of their job very seriously.

“Being a Sister when you go there you want to bring healing and you want to be Jesus for them,” Sister Purificacion explained. “You want to take care of the body and you want to take care of the soul. You realize this person is Jesus in a way. Or at least if I can not see Jesus in that person I try see that person through the eyes of Jesus.”

Sister Germana said, “We help them to meet our Lord when they are in their last days and that is always rewarding. That’s my purpose. Keep them close to God and help them to meet him at the end.”