Medical Director
Anthony Lazzara, M.D.,
SFO

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The Children

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It was 5 o'clock and we were serving the children supper. The doorbell rang and waiting at the front door was a man with a long list of medications. His 11 day old daughter was in the children's hospital with a potentially fatal heart defect that required surgery if she was to survive. He had been given the list of medicines and had been told that as soon as he could buy them and bring them to the hospital, the child would undergo the surgery. He worked as an assistant in construction, earned the equivalent of $6 per day and was obviously unable to buy the medications. His wife was ill due to the childbirth and was confined to bed. Since he himself had to care for the child in the hospital, he had not worked since the child's birth. Two weeks before, we were approached about a newborn who was suffering from neonatal tetanus, a potentially fatal disease due to an infection of the umbilical cord which results in convulsive-like movements of the extremities and trunk. The child was delivered by his father in a plywood and cardboard house with a dirt floor. The umbilical cord had been contaminated during the birthing process and the child developed tetanus. The family consisted of 7 children, and the father, an assistant welder, who earned the equivalent of $7 a day. The child urgently needed medications and the family had no means to buy them. Anyone who has had a sick child knows the despair and hopelessness one feels when the child does not seem to improve despite medications. But what of parents who cannot buy medications which are prescribed for their child, especially those that are necessary to save the child’s life? It seems incredible that such situations exist in a world of plenty.

Mother Theresa of Calcutta used to recite a prayer whenever she cared for an ill person that the person not see her but God who was acting through her. She reveled in the fact that she was His instrument, a pencil in His hands as she would say. How easy and convenient it is to close one’s eyes, shake one’s head and wonder how does God permit suffering, the key word being permit. It is permitted and persists only because of our inaction our unwillingness to confront it and to the best of our ability alleviate it in another. What is it about suffering that makes us want to impute it to Providence and thus to shirk our responsibility to the sufferer, rather than to see it as an opportunity to enter into a loving relationship with the one suffering, serving as a channel of God’s love to that person? St. Frances of Assisi, who alleviated the suffering of lepers in the early part of his religious conversion and who suffered painful and debilitating illnesses towards the end of his life, understood this when he exhorted, "Let us become Christ to one another." The theology of suffering escapes us; we cannot understand it since we look upon it as something totally negative, possibly as a punishment for wrongdoing, rather than something positive that mutually enriches the sufferer and the one who responds to the suffering.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with others, and along these fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes and they come back to us as effects.

Herman Melville

This home is a haven for those who suffer. Through it, God's love is channeled to children who have no where else to go. We thank you for your continued support. We love you and wish you God’s peace.