È ormai da qualche anno che sono diventata amica di san Paolo. La lettura delle sue epistoIt has been some years now that I have become a friend of St. Paul. The reading of his letters accompanies my silence and daily prayer. Certain passages are clear, others more obscure, still others are a renewed invitation to the beauty of life in Christ and to the profundity that fraternal communion and charity can reach when lived radically. Certainly, I would never have expected to deepen my reading of the Apostle to the Gentiles, as the saint is called, thanks to my encounter with the mothers of the group of Ujiachilie, in a periphery of Nairobi.
Every Tuesday morning, under the portico of the old church of sheet metal of Kahawa Sukari, we gather -three Missionary Sisters, some volunteers and around 25 mothers with disabled children- to spend time together. After the rosary, songs and porridge, the children go inside with Sr. Federica and Sr. Erika, to play together. I stay with the mothers to speak about different topics.
Despite the cultural differences and the linguistic barriers, our dialogues have become more intense every week. For months, we discussed the Ten Commandments, now we are speaking about the Beatitudes. But certain themes recur in a transversal way: one of these is submission to men and the value of the woman. Many times, the mothers have quoted Ephesians 5:22: wives be subordinate to your husbands. They ask how they can follow Scripture to the letter if they do not trust men.
I am always fascinated by their questions: delving into the reasons why they ask them, one always reaches some deep wound. Many have been abandoned by the men they were with once they discover their child’s disability; others have been beaten; still others periodically betrayed by alcoholic partners; generally, few take it upon themselves to legitimately marry the mothers of their children.
I have seen many of these women shed rigidity and desperation
Thus, the question about submission seems understandable. That is why it is good to pick up the Bible with them and read the sweetness of Paul’s description, a man won by Christ: be submissive to one another in the fear of Christ…and you husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her, to make her holy. It moves me to see the sincere look, rapt in listening to Paul’s words, of these women who long to find a man who can love them deeply and faithfully, with their children. Together, we stand again before the figure of Jesus and his love unto death, thanks also to Paul’s words; we commit ourselves to praying for our own holiness and for the holiness of the men they have beside them.
I have seen many of these women shed rigidity and desperation. Some of them come to the weekly appointment with the Bible and a scrap of paper filled with notes of the questions they have had while reading Sacred Scripture. Others have asked to be baptized or to enter into the Catholic Church. One of them confessed to me: “Sister, I had stopped reading the Bible a while ago, but now I want to know how to respond to the questions that you ask us. I read it every day and I like it.” I too, when I return home, immerse myself more and more often in the reading of the Bible and of the Fathers of the Church to be able to respond to the questions that they ask me. I experience in this way a bit of that enjoyment that St. Paul must have felt in front of the people of Antioch, of Athens, of Corinth, of Thessalonica…and I feel him to be even closer to me: I am grateful to be able to draw from his words, so true for me and my friends of Ujiachilie.
