Everyday, I am here in the ward, fighting to protect my cancer patients from Covid. Every day, some of us get sick and I never know how I will manage the next day. This week’s good news: a young colleague of mine is pregnant (finally, it is not about the virus, I told myself, life does not stop!). However, she will not be coming in for months: one less person…

Every day, I know that I could get sick, and if I said that I was not afraid, I would be lying. And yet, this fear does not determine me. It is not everything. And then there is the rest: my sick people, whom I adore and would never leave, and my colleagues, who make enormous sacrifices for me. Everyone, from the first to the last, is giving up something of themselves for the love of others.

A phrase by St. Gregory Nazianzus came to mind: "If I were not Yours, O my Christ, I would feel like a finished creature. I was born and I feel like I am dissolving. I eat, sleep, rest and walk, I get sick and heal. Endless yearnings and torments assail me, I enjoy the sun and the fruits of the earth. Then, I die and the flesh becomes dust like that of animals, who have no sins. But what more do I have than them? Nothing, except God. If I were not Yours, O my Christ, I would feel like a finished creature".

What more do I have than them? Nothing but God. But a concrete God who does not abandon me, through the face, words and gestures of so many who are close to me and remind me that He is present.

When I go into hospital in the morning, and I see relatives (only one person each) waiting for their loved ones outside the radiotherapy ward, sitting wearing masks and the dull eyes of the cancer patients who are suffering a new and more violent threat, a ringing voice comes out, almost without realizing it, while I say good morning to everyone and smile. I do not smile "out of politeness", but because I feel that they are there, they are people that I want to love. I want to say to them: "Thank you for being here, because you brought your father, your son or your mother here. Thank you for not giving up." To accept, every day, the way God reaches us, to say our yes, this saves the world, it fulfils our life and that of others.

Read also - "How can Christ prevail in my life?”

This gives me courage: others say their yes with me. Saying yes to my vocation, to life and to the way God is calling me today makes me free and begins to let me breathe. I am very grateful to Carrón for his letters, in the Corriere and to the Fraternity, and for his questions. "How can we accompany each other in all this? What kind of companionship do we really need? What saves us from nothingness?" Looking at them forces me not to give up and to go through with it.

Marta, Milan, Italy#Coronavirus