Loving in silence

I was one of two doctors assigned to do night duty at a local hospital. My co-worker was a Christian, but not a practicing one. Since he saw me go to Mass almost everyday, he would often tease me.

We were supposed to be available the whole night, but in the late afternoon he would usually disappear and leave me all alone. This meant that I did most of the work. It didn’t seem right, but the words “Blessed are the poor in spirit …” kept coming to my mind. I tried to keep an open, non-judgmental attitude towards him. This went on for a month, then two months …

One day he said he wanted to go to Mass with me. “It’s because I’ve learned a lot from the way you silently put love of neighbour into practice all these months,” he added. From that day on, not only did he stop leaving the hospital when we were on duty, but he also tried to be sure I did not get overly tired.

At one point I began to share my room with a Muslim doctor. Our conversation sometimes focused on our religious practices: Lent and Ramadan, for example. One day I learned that his mother had died the year before, and he had no one to help him fix his clothing or personal belongings. Actually, I noticed that his surgeon’s uniform often needed to be washed and mended.

One evening I thought of washing his uniform along with mine and sewing on a few buttons. Naturally, the next day he noticed and asked who had done it. When he found out it was me, he embraced me, saying, “Now I understand. The way you silently loved the other gives much more meaning to the practice of self-denial than I had imagined.”