Thomas Fouvry
I packed my bags and left. Gone to another continent, gone to the other side of the world, to Burundi. Why? How come? What pushed me to leave? I do not know. Perhaps my desire to discover, to see the world through my eyes, to escape from my default life in an unsurprising, perpetually repetitive Paris.
So I packed my bags and left for Burundi, to Bujumbura where the congregation of the Christian Doctrine Fathers did not simply welcome me, but integrated me completely into their community life.
Every morning, after mass and breakfast shared in community with the seminarians and doctrinaries, I went to a dispensary in the center of the city, run by six nuns of Charity of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in order to provide assistance to abandoned children, malnourished, gangrenous, amputees, sick men and suffering women.
Despite my 4 years of medical studies in France, I found myself faced with a number of pathologies that only marginally exist in Europe or no longer exist at all.
But despite the lack of everything… materials, money, manpower… Everything was just joy. I don’t know if you have ever shared the daily life of a person of faith, but by dedicating themselves entirely to Christ, making this “sacrifice” of their lives, as many might think, priests, brothers and sisters radiate a love that aspires only to be shared, a love of such simplicity that reaches the heart without obstacles.
In the catechism we are taught to see Jesus in every man. Know that the task is much easier when you are surrounded by churchmen. I saw this love in the Sisters of Charity and the Doctrinaries with whom I shared my stay. I shared their laughter, their pain, their joys, their prayers and their songs. I have seen this love radiate in the eyes of abandoned and malnourished children, of young mothers overwhelmed by the weight of life, of fathers destroyed by hard work barely enough to feed their children, of elderly people on the margins of life…
Where the body is more difficult to care for due to lack of means, the soul is accompanied in the most beautiful way by men and women of faith.
