{"id":307740,"date":"2021-01-30T09:00:54","date_gmt":"2021-01-30T08:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/lithuania-the-spiritual-closeness-of-god-and-others-is-a-healing-balm\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:41:55","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:41:55","slug":"lithuania-the-spiritual-closeness-of-god-and-others-is-a-healing-balm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/lithuania-the-spiritual-closeness-of-god-and-others-is-a-healing-balm\/","title":{"rendered":"Lithuania – The spiritual closeness of God and others is a healing balm"},"content":{"rendered":"

The story of Irena, a doctor in Lithuania who is a member of the Focolare Movement in Eastern Europe who was infected with the Covid-19 virus. She experienced both the fatigue of illness and the strength in God’s love through prayer.<\/em> \u201cI’m inundated with messages and prayers. I don’t even know how my friends, acquaintances, colleagues hear about it. Even friends who I didn’t even know knew how to pray are praying. I had no idea that so many people could join in prayer for my health.\u201d Irena is a hospital doctor, a member of the Focolare Movement who lives in Lithuania, in Eastern Europe. During these months that her country has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, her work became exhausting, and she was infected by the virus and experienced all the fatigue of the disease. But her strength, she says, has come from her trust in God\u2019s love. Her discovery of being united with many people in prayer rewarded her personal efforts and gave energy to her healing journey. Her experience was particularly hard. At first, work on the ward continued at the usual pace, but soon the contagion spread among her colleagues. Irena found herself working alone. \u201cI had to find places for staff to be sent to isolation,\u201d she explains, \u201cto settle patients who had to be discharged because there was no one to care for them and contact relatives so they could take care of them. \u201cThere were no masks for the patients, and I would hand them out my own. Once, with a colleague who stayed after hours, we examined 37 patients. Only the night was calm, and I could pray.\u201d After days in the hospital without rest, Irena was able to return home. Yet it was with the knowledge that she had contracted the disease. She was relieved to feel the spiritual closeness of Focolare founder Chiara Lubich. \u201cOn the shelf next to my bed there was a photo of Chiara smiling, and I saw her as if for the first time. She smiled at me and I smiled at her, everything became easier.\u201d Gradually, the symptoms of the disease became more burdensome, but Irena did not give in to the pain. \u201cI lost my taste receptors and realized that even the sense of taste is a gift from God. I offered my suffering for my colleagues and for my country. The nights were very difficult, but Chaira was with me smiling.\u201d When the disease became more aggressive, hospitalization became inevitable, and this brought new challenges. \u201cI no longer had the strength to speak, and I underwent an experimental treatment. The person in charge took care of me, but the nurses forgot to bring me my medication and didn’t ask if I had the strength to take food from the cart. But I could offer these hardships as well.\u201d Here, too, help came from those close to her. \u201cIn my room there was a lady with cancer, and she brought me food, drinks. We became friends, and when I felt better, we prayed together.\u201d Feeling united in prayer with the many people who prayed for her allowed Irena to feel loved, by God and by her brothers and sisters. \u201cI am grateful to God for the indescribable love that I experienced during my illness,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause I always felt him near me, and for the beautiful experience of common prayer, which has huge power, and God has allowed me to experience it live. I feel reborn.\u201d <\/p>\n

Claudia Di Lorenzi<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story of Irena, a doctor in Lithuania who is a member of the Focolare Movement in Eastern Europe who was infected with the Covid-19 virus. She experienced both the fatigue of illness and the strength in God’s love through prayer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}