Homeland, Illness and Prisoners

If there is something we must thank God for in these years, in which we have lived through hundreds of problems, injustices, hatreds and divisions among Venezuelans, it is that those of us who are here fighting for our country have developed an Immense Love for our Homeland.

Something similar happens with illness. In an earlier article I spoke about this, and I am very grateful to the many people who understood my view of it as a gift from God, because it makes us humble and brings us closer to Him. There I could not tell you about something that happened after I underwent an operation (with an excellent Venezuelan medical team in what I call an “A-Number-One” private hospital), in which they “sawed open” my lower spine to put in an implant, took part of my hip and grafted discs into my neck (it was a three-in-one!). I needed three months to recover (even with morphine the pain was very strong, together with the metal neck brace I had to wear even to “sleep” and a brace with bars that kept me immobile). The only thing that calmed me was “talking with God” and praying the rosary, because I couldn’t even read. My greatest joy, as soon as the sun came up, was watching the flowers open on an orchid a dear friend had given me. One day I felt a dreadful claustrophobia, and that was when I thought of prisoners. And I said: My God, what can I do to ease a little the feeling of confinement a prisoner must feel!

So my husband and I ran a rosary campaign for prisoners (later we did one for the sick in hospitals); and the chaplains of Venezuela’s prisons (who have always devoted themselves body and soul to their prisoners, until suddenly obstacles began to be put in the way of their work) gave each inmate a booklet with the prayers and a rosary. The campaign was accompanied by John Paul II’s Message for the Jubilee in Prisons, whose theme was that prison should be a place of redemption and not of corruption or vice. That booklet was also handed out at the Ministry of Justice to those who worked there. I don’t know whether they read it.

One of those chaplains, who had a bullet (received in prison) lodged in his body, invited my husband to celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Mercy (patroness of prisoners) at La Planta prison. Our former nuncio was there. They were taken inside the prison, with a little nun of about 80, without a single guard to protect them. They began the procession through every part of the jail, the nuncio celebrated Mass, and they got out unharmed, thanks to God and the Virgin. When my husband got home he sat down in a chair and cried like a child. He told me: “Today I was in hell. The prisoners were sharpening their knives and polishing their guns right in front of us. They live in subhuman conditions. And I saw innocent faces. There are innocent people there too, living a true hell!” And that was seven years ago!

When you experience the confinement, limitation and pain of illness (even with the most wonderful care), you become very sensitive to other people’s pain (even someone you don’t like at all). And you think of those prisoners who also get sick and are not even treated; or of those hospitals where patients have died or been left badly off because our exemplary doctors (who stay there out of true vocation) are not given enough resources to care for them. Illness (our own or a loved one’s) teaches us what other people’s pain is, because feeling it in our own flesh enlarges our hearts.

I ask God every day to give great fortitude and hope to ALL our prisoners and sick people, and to greatly enlarge the hearts of those responsible for our prisons and hospitals, so that they solve the problems competently, NOW!, because there is more than enough money. I hope that in these moments of anguish and uncertainty our authorities are living through, they begin to walk along a path that builds a truly humane Venezuela.

“God, Homeland and Life” would be a good slogan for that new path. And to be effective they can ask for advice and help from the Venezuelan Catholic Church, which is an expert in humanity, because its priests, nuns and thousands of lay people are the ones who, throughout the history of our beloved Nation, have most effectively cared for our prisoners and our sick.