Easter miracle at Marcsri

The Marcsri homes for the lame, the blind, the deaf, the orphans and others who are abandoned by society, are truly places where people come alive through the power of love. Last Sunday we visited the main Marcsri home at Katukurunda and if proof was needed that Christ is alive, the Marcsri homes provided it in full and overflowing measure. 

If the Marcsri homes are a miracle of love, so is the life story of a frail former nun and teacher who started this mission for the poorest of the poor. Marcsri now runs eighteen homes for about hundred and fifty orphaned children and six hundred other people. All the children had been found abandoned on beaches or bus stands, roadsides or railway stations and hospitals. Since there were no earthly fathers or mothers, the children are seen by Marcsri as direct gifts from God. They are given basic physical needs, psychological needs of love and care and spiritual needs.

As we sat with the humble, graceful and soft-spoken Rita Perera on a quiet Palm Sunday afternoon, she told us the story that was more powerful and inspiring than most sermons we hear from pulpits. Born on April 11, 1934, Rita hailed from a highly respected family in Galle with her parents belonging to the noble profession of dedicated teachers. Of the seven children, five boys and two girls- two became doctors, one a Jesuit priest, one a chartered accountant and another a High Court judge. Like Rita, the other children though they rose to high posts, were committed to a simple and humble life style. 

At 18, Rita joined the order of the Sisters of Charity and served as a nun for fifteen years. She continued her studies in Dublin for her B.Sc. But since she had to undergo more than fifteen surgical operations for stomach and eye disorders, she left the cloistered order due to ill health. She taught at St. Aloysius' College, Galle, for a few years and then married Marcus Perera on December 1, 1971 and came to live in Katukurunda, Kalutara. 

Rita and her husband were a devoted couple though childless. She taught at Holy Family Convent, Kalutara for about three years. But then tragedy struck again. Though it was Rita who was very ill, her husband Marcus died suddenly on March 5,1982 leaving her shattered. For the first year of her bereavement she mourned like any other Sri Lankan widow. Life seemed to hold nothing more for her. 

If Rita Perera's first calling was her ordination as a nun in 1953, then the second and higher calling was still to come. Physically still ailing and emotionally heart broken over the sudden death of her husband in her arms, it was in this weakness of Rita that the strength of God was to manifest most powerfully to make her the Mother Theresa of Sri Lanka. 

It began in a small way, with little drops of water coming to form the ocean of love that is seen in the eighteen Marcsri homes today. Rita Perera first visited the Nagoda hospital patients who were lonely and abandoned because they had no visitors. She took home-cooked meals with tea and betel for them but more importantly she gave them compassionate affection, perhaps for the first time in their lives. 

She then collected money and presented wheel chairs to three such abandoned patients. But, Rita herself was further shattered by ill health and looked more frail than ever before. Indeed when she asked her parish priest for an assistant to begin a ministry for the healing of the lonely and abandoned, he had justifiable reservations as to who would last longer than whom. 

One day in 1983, a man who was discharged from hospital and had nowhere to go, sought this ministering angel. So with a mat and gunny under a porch at her Katukurunda house she began the first Marcsri home. One patient led to another and another and more destitute people came in. No one was turned away. Making a cadjan shed in her small garden, she provided care to these marginalised and rejected people. 

She sold her bangles, earrings and other valuables to buy food, medicine and clothing for the patients. With each new arrival the cadjan shed was extended. Rita herself washed, fed, cleaned and gave compassionate care to the patients and continues to do so even today not only in the main Marcsri home but in all the homes which she visits regularly. 

Rita Perera started without any project or plans but her mission has grown into a massive miracle ministry. 

Yet she has no big plans for the future. She prefers to live from moment to moment, from day to day, trusting and depending on the Lord to provide shelter, food, clothing, medicine and tender care to hundreds of people daily. 

Not one cent is charged from any patient, though voluntary donations in cash or kind are accepted. 

"Seek first the kingdom of God and its justice and everything you need will be provided to you". The promise of Jesus has come powerfully true in the life of Rita. 

She gives all the glory to the Lord and is ready still as she was at the beginning to do whatever the Lord tells her to do. 

"Even if the Lord tells me today to leave the Marcsri homes and go elsewhere for a mission, I am ready to let go of everything and follow the Lord," Rita told us.

Lighting a candle

A letter from MW

Dear captain

First of all I do want to thank you for the help you gave me in applying for the scholarship, and also the materials that you gave me were of immeasurable imporatance to me.I cannot say in words the thank you in a way that I would or could say because it would just not be sufficient to assess your contribution.

God Bless You

That Sunday - maybe I didn't go to church to keep the Sabbath holy, but I may have helped answer someone's desperate prayers. I like to think that such little gestures of humanity matter too, in the greater plan of things, which we at times hardly understand. 

AFLAC is an approved charity in Sri Lanka. Website -www.aflacinternational.com 

By Elmo Jayawardena 

Lend me a few minutes and I'll give you a glimpse. 

I do not know for what reason, but I glanced through MW's file at AFLAC ( an organization I founded to help the needy) a few days before and wanted to meet him. That's why he came. Sometimes things just happen like that. Call it fate, destiny, there are different names. 

When I spoke to MW he mumbled monosyllabic answers. I steered the conversation to this and that, just to get him to talk. He kept his head down, nodded and kept at his 'yes' and 'no's'. It was difficult for me, maybe more difficult for him. That's when I began to notice things. 

MW's hair was overgrown. His shirt and slacks were threadbare. Whilst seated in front of me he was fiddling with his sandals and taking the straps off. I also noticed that he couldn't see properly as when he had to read something he held the paper very close to his eyes. MW had a peculiar sadness about him, something that bordered on desperation. He had that look which I have seen in a hundred faces in a hundred places. It is what I call the "nobody knows the troubles I've seen" look.

I kept the conversation rolling and from his monosyllables he went a step further to unfold to me his lot in life.

MW had no money to cut his hair, his eyes were bad but he had no money to buy spectacles. His shoe had broken and he had borrowed a pair of sandals from a friend to come to meet me. His total wardrobe was two shirts and two slacks. That's all he had for clothing to attend University. Three days he wore one set and washed. Three days he wore the other set and washed. The rains played havoc with his game plan. I didn't even bother to ask what he ate, must be something close to caviar and Chateaubriand. 

MW was as poor as they come, corralled tight in poverty. 

MW's "A" level results were something else - He had sat for Physics, Chemistry, Math and Applied Math, all straight "A"s. Brilliant results, walked straight into the university. MW hails from a village near Ruwanwella, in central Sri Lanka. His father does a small job in the cooperative store; his mother makes attempts to keep the home fires burning. They are saddled with the multiple burdens of the poor. They can barely make ends meet.

That was it, some things you can ignore, and some things you just can't. 

We got into my car and drove out. It took me an hour and a little more to change MW's world. I wasn't going to give him no 'hand me downs'. He certainly deserved better. I went with him to the tailor, the barber, Bata shoe shop and to arrange the optician to get his eyes tested for glasses. 

Not me, but AFLAC funds through the generosity of people covered everything. Shirts, slacks, shoes, slippers, haircut and eyes tested and prescriptions given and paid to get new glasses. Driving back home, MW smiled. That was the first time I saw him smile. I knew it came from his heart. He looked me in the eye and said " It's like a dream." I am no dream merchant - I'm just a candle maker. Isn't it better by far to light one solitary candle than curse the darkness?