“Sisters, you have to go meet a certain Mrs. Carmela; she’s Italian like you all!”. James is one of our friends, confined to a wheelchair for many years now. We have met with him every week for nine years now. Today, he is the bearer of a message to us of a person he has never seen, with whom he has in common only the nurse who takes care of both of them in their homes. I contacted the nurse to give me some more information and made an appointment to go to meet Mrs. Carmela.
On the appointed day I enter her house and meet this woman who is almost 90 years old, but all of them carried well, her lively gaze inspiring sympathy. She begins to speak to me in Italian, full of joy and gratitude. It only takes a few lines to perceive that I am standing before a woman of uncommon human stature and faith.
Carmela is Sicilian; she emigrated to New York in 1961, when she was 27 years old and had just married Angelo. She was an important seamstress, working for two of Italy’s greatest designers. With them, she had a personal relationship: they esteemed her enough to entrust her with the creation of production samples.
What a joy to be able to see how the certainty of faith can give shape to the life of a person
After that first brief visit, I started visiting her once a week. With each visit, I became more amazed at the stories she would tell me, full of small and big miracles: from her childhood in Sicily to her parents; from her engagement to Angelo to her crossing to the United States; from the community of the Italian parish in Brooklyn, which she misses so much, to her devotion as a daughter to St. Joseph, which we share. Then, there is her relationship with the New York rabbi and other Jewish clients, the sudden illness of her husband of 30 years and the ascent to heaven of the man who left her a widow at just over 50. Finally, her relationship with her daughters to raise, her move to Colorado a few years ago to be close to them, and her encounter with our Nativity of Our Lord parish. All these stories are interwoven with Carmela’s immense trust in God’s love for her and those around her; the trust of one who feels loved by a good Father, of one who knows she is never alone, even in the most difficult situations. A faith that makes her bold and persistent, with God and with men, unafraid to ask for what she needs. It is beautiful to see how even her family members, especially her two sons-in-law, lean on Carmela’s faith, almost asking her, like children, to intercede for them before the Father.
This year, encountering Carmela and hearing her testimony of a faith that is rock-solid and unfaltering, were the motive of profound gratitude to God for me. What a joy to be able to see how the certainty of faith can give shape to the life of a person, making them become a luminous sign of the infinite love of God the Father for each one of us!
