NINTH CHARACTERISTIC
Care of the sick and infirm
CHARITY lavishes care on the sick and infirm, on the old, on guests and new-comers. It requires that we visit those who are ill, to cheer and console them, to foresee their wants, and thereby to spare them the pain or humiliation of asking for anything.
Bossuet says: "Esteem the sick, love them, respect and honour them, as being consecrated by the unction of the Cross and marked with the character of a suffering Jesus."
Charity pays honour to the aged in every respect, coincides with their sentiments, consults them, forestalls their desires, and attempts not to reform in them what cannot be reformed. Charity receives fraternally all guests and new-comers, and makes us treat them as we would wish to be treated under similar circumstances. It also causes us to lavish testimonies of affection on those who are setting out, and warns us to be very careful of saying or doing anything that may in the least degree offend even the most susceptible.
Religious must ever feel that they can bless, love, and thank religion as a good mother. But religion is not an abstract matter; it is made up of individuals reciprocally bound together in and for each other.
Alas! how many times are the sick and the old made to consider themselves as an inconvenient burden, or like a useless piece of furniture! In reality what are they doing? They pray and do penance for the community, turn away the scourge of God, draw down His graces and blessings, merit, perhaps, the grace of perseverance for several whose vocation is shaking, hand down to the younger members the traditions and spirit of the institute, and finally practise, and cause to be practised, a thousand acts of virtue.
Did our Divine Lord work less efficaciously for the Church when He hung on the Cross than when He preached? We must, then, do for the sick and the old who are now bearing their cross what we would have wished to do for Jesus in His suffering.