Moving with the Signs of the Times….
A wind of radical change swept through the Church, with Vatican II, shifting the ground beneath our feet and changing the basis for so much of our thinking and subsequent practices as religious and in our ministry (work). Also the art and science of Health and Healing expanded world over, and so did Medical Mission Sisters’ vision. We began to move out of our hospitals to be inserted among people; to see the need for preventive care, village education, community development, participative management and localization of hospitals; we started holistic health training and began a Holistic Health Education and Training Center and a Holistic Health Clinic. Our ministry became less defined as medical care to the sick and more defined in terms of a holistic response to health and healing for all.
Today, we are less visible, less powerful, more aware of our responsibilities and accountability, not only to God, the Church, our Society, but to people, who if we listen to them, shape our lives and demand that we witness to Gospel values.
The emphasis in health and healing is empowering people to bring them to an awareness of their basic right to life and health. Programs and projects became community-based and people began to identify needs and make decisions for justice in health care and towards bringing health in peoples’ hands.
Today we know that wholeness is only possible on a healthy planet. Care of the earth is vital for the human community and all those other than human who share our earth home in order to have an abundance of life. This envisions the completion of the mission of Jesus that “we may have life, life in all its fullness”.
