About eighty nuns make up more than a third of the residents at Wartburg in Mount Vernon, New York. Their final years are giving the Church one more lesson in gratitude, care, and Christian witness.
The elderly nuns gave their lives to teaching and nursing. Unlike priests they took vows of poverty, and were not rewarded with any pension program from their hospitals or diocese.
I most vividly remember my younger son's second grade teacher, who wore the traditional habit when teaching but often went out in public in her civvies. On one occasion my little boy was left astounded and tongue-tied when we ran into Sister at the supermarket in a stern tweed suit, with her crimped gray hair showing.
You could always recognize her by her radiant smile, though, no matter where you encountered her or what she was wearing.
She left teaching a few years later--this was back in the late 1980s--and along with others in her order helped to organize a hospice for AIDS patients, one of the nation's first. At that time these desperately sick, terrified men were dying alone in isolation rooms. Often their friends had abandoned them, and their families would not come to visit them, partly out of shame, partly out of fear of contagion. Their nurses and doctors were masked and gloved and sometimes wore HazMat suits.
Not the sisters, though. They would sit by the bedsides of these dying men holding their hands, listening to their stories, kissing their cheeks, praying with them and for them. Such courage! Such goodness!
I was lucky to be educated by sisters who taught me in grammar school, high school and college. All before they got out of the habits. They were all wonderful and kind
I can thank an order of Augustinian sisters for my initial nursing education (a hospital diploma program) and Mercy sisters for my BSN. This little Lutheran girl was so afraid every time one of them showed up on the clinical floor in their long white habits. Even then, they were all elderly; at the hospital there was a separate area where the ones who were so elderly they could no longer work were cared for. The university had a mother house where all the sisters lived and helping care for those sisters was one of the work/study possibilities. I'm happy that now my church can care for some of these dedicated ladies.
I went to Catholic schools from K-12. The elementary nuns were kind of mean but the high school ones were wonderful. A monastery of Carmelites here closed a few years ago. The cloistered nuns were sent out to live on their own. They are all elderly. A convent for nuns only has about 12 left. Nuns have played a big role in the Catholic Church.
The elderly nuns gave their lives to teaching and nursing. Unlike priests they took vows of poverty, and were not rewarded with any pension program from their hospitals or diocese.
Thank you, sisters, and Christopher, for bring this to us. I will upgrade when I can.
I most vividly remember my younger son's second grade teacher, who wore the traditional habit when teaching but often went out in public in her civvies. On one occasion my little boy was left astounded and tongue-tied when we ran into Sister at the supermarket in a stern tweed suit, with her crimped gray hair showing.
You could always recognize her by her radiant smile, though, no matter where you encountered her or what she was wearing.
She left teaching a few years later--this was back in the late 1980s--and along with others in her order helped to organize a hospice for AIDS patients, one of the nation's first. At that time these desperately sick, terrified men were dying alone in isolation rooms. Often their friends had abandoned them, and their families would not come to visit them, partly out of shame, partly out of fear of contagion. Their nurses and doctors were masked and gloved and sometimes wore HazMat suits.
Not the sisters, though. They would sit by the bedsides of these dying men holding their hands, listening to their stories, kissing their cheeks, praying with them and for them. Such courage! Such goodness!
I was lucky to be educated by sisters who taught me in grammar school, high school and college. All before they got out of the habits. They were all wonderful and kind
Bless you, sisters, for your service to all people and the love of God you embody daily.
I can thank an order of Augustinian sisters for my initial nursing education (a hospital diploma program) and Mercy sisters for my BSN. This little Lutheran girl was so afraid every time one of them showed up on the clinical floor in their long white habits. Even then, they were all elderly; at the hospital there was a separate area where the ones who were so elderly they could no longer work were cared for. The university had a mother house where all the sisters lived and helping care for those sisters was one of the work/study possibilities. I'm happy that now my church can care for some of these dedicated ladies.
I went to Catholic schools from K-12. The elementary nuns were kind of mean but the high school ones were wonderful. A monastery of Carmelites here closed a few years ago. The cloistered nuns were sent out to live on their own. They are all elderly. A convent for nuns only has about 12 left. Nuns have played a big role in the Catholic Church.
I will always serve God to my dying breath.
Thanks for bringing us this story of ecumenism, Christian faithfulness, and love that knows no bounds.