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Good Shepherd Sr. Monique Tarabeh’s prayers have an urgency to them.
Tarabeh grew up in Damascus, Syria, and her family still lives there despite the civil war made possible by the rise of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS.
The war has raged for five years, killing hundreds of thousands of people and forcing millions to flee to safety in other nations.
Tarabeh’s sister, Kinda, is also a Good Shepherd sister, serving refugees in a camp near Homs. Tarabeh, meanwhile, will spend the next six years in Rome, serving as the communications coordinator for the Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd congregation.
Previously, she worked in Lebanon and Syria, using her master’s degree in graphic design.
GSR: What has it been like trying to do your work as a sister with the war going on?
Tarabeh: It’s not easy to describe the situation there because there’s not a word for it. It’s a feeling more than words. In 2014 I went to our Good Shepherd community in Damascus, which was near my family’s house, so I got to see them often.
Also while I was there, my niece was injured by a bomb when returning from school. I had a terrible time with her being in the hospital for a month — you cannot imagine all these people coming into the emergency room when there has been a bombing. You cannot imagine the things you see. And it comes without warning — you don’t expect that there is a bomb coming. So people continue their lives, and then something happens. They live with pain, but they say, ‘Whatever God wants to do, we are ready for this.’
I am a religious woman, and I cannot think this way. My family all the time says, ‘We don’t know what God plans for us, but we’ll be ready.’ They don’t want to leave the country. This is our land, this is a sacred land for us. It’s very painful when you see all these beautiful places that I grew up in, they are now dust. They no longer exist. There are no words to describe it. No words. Continue reading
Source and Image:
- Global Sisters Report, the beginning of an article by Dan Stockman, national correspondent for Global Sisters Report.
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