Editors’ note: Sister Magdalena Smet, P.S.N., is among three Little Sisters of Nazareth who have dedicated the past 37 years to living alongside the people in the Palestinian refugee camp at Dbayeh, about 8 miles north of Beirut. Their work, supported by Pontifical Mission, is featured in the December edition of ONE magazine.
The article, “At an Impasse,” is the last in a special series underlining the work of Pontifical Mission in the Middle East in this its 75th anniversary year.
To conclude the anniversary year, Laura Ieraci of ONE magazine invited Sister Magda for an in-depth conversation about how their mission at the refugee camp began and how life at the camp in all its aspects — material and spiritual — is supported by Pontifical Mission.
Listen to Sister Magda in this episode of ONE: In Conversation and read excerpts from her interview below.
ONE magazine: How did your community decide or discern to dedicate yourselves to the Dbayeh camp in Lebanon?
Sister Magda: We have been here in this camp in Dbayeh since September 1987, thanks to Pontifical Mission. But, it’s quite a story — and the Lord directs the story of his people.
Before living in this camp, our community lived in another Palestinian camp. We arrived in Lebanon in 1970 and lived for three years in Bourj Hammoud, a very popular neighborhood. Then, I met, through my work at the factory — I worked as a Little Sister in a factory for a year — and there I met the large Palestinian community.
The factory was very close to a Palestinian camp — a fully Muslim camp, Tel Zatar [which no longer exists]. I didn’t know Arabic, but the women who worked in the factory were very kind. They took me to their homes. I didn’t understand much, but friendship and kindness don’t require words, so I would go.
After a year, I began studying Arabic. At that point, we said to ourselves: If we really want to live the spirituality of Charles de Foucauld, we must go toward these people who have been denied their rights for years.
We officially asked permission — at that time, it was the P.L.O. — to live in a camp. It was incomprehensible for politicians, but we were young then. Therefore, in 1970-1972, I completed my study of Arabic. We had difficulty obtaining permission. With the help of our bishop here in Lebanon, we obtained permission to live in a small Palestinian camp— smaller than Dbayeh — where Palestinian Christians and Muslims lived together.
We lived there for three years, and then war broke out. We were in the camp. We stayed a year there during the war. The camp was destroyed, as was our small community house. It was very small, very humble. We lived through an intense experience there — and the experience of losing everything.
While waiting to return — we no longer had anything — we lived in Jordan for a while, also among the Palestinian population, but not in a camp.
In 1987, during a visit to Lebanon, Pontifical Mission in Jordan in Amman asked us to deliver letters to Pontifical Mission here, and it was Sister Maureen, an American nun, who was here.
And she said, “I have been searching for a long time for religious sisters for Dbayeh camp.”
It was also our desire. It was also the desire of the bishop of Beirut, a Greek Catholic, to have religious women there. For us, this was the voice of the Holy Spirit telling us, “Come back.”
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ONE magazine: How can we understand what happens at the camp — where there seems to be no solution — in the light of the Good News of Jesus Christ?
Sister Magda: It’s not easy. It’s not easy. I think, for us, it means living each day with a contemplative heart, trying to encounter the Lord in every situation: the joyful moments for families, joy in what surrounds us, aspects of creation, light, nature, but also in things that are difficult, and to accept, now and then, the absence of God in this life — a seeming absence — because we believe firmly that he is there, he is walking with us. Otherwise, after so many years, we wouldn’t still be here. It would not be possible.
Therefore, we need keep our attention, a strong focus, on: What is the Lord telling us through all this, as well as through people’s situations and problems? Each time, trying to discern how we can — drawing from him, from Jesus of Nazareth, from his Word — continue to speak, live and sometimes propose solutions, so families, people can continue to live.
We are three Little Sisters here. One Little Sister is like the mother of the family, who welcomes people, supports, prepares, cares for the home and offers hospitality. She also helps if people need clothing which we receive and distributes it.
Another sister is a trained nurse. She provides care for people here and offers home visits because there is no doctor living in the camp.
A large part of my time is spent listening with my ears and my heart — listening. We want people to have a place where they are welcomed as they are, and where they have the possibility and the time to share the interior life, to confide in someone and to trust that these things are kept, and I would say, kept in God’s heart because all this — we have a small chapel in our house here — all these worries that these people bring, we place them in the heart, in the hands of our Lord. And I think this allows the people, the families around us to keep their hope alive, because it is not easy. It is not easy.