Saint Josephine Bakhita, Virgin

Dear friends, 
You could help the sick poor that come here to the hermitage for help by donating any/some/all of the items in the below list ...it would be a great help if you could please pass on this request to your friends and family. 
(Maybe a doctors office closing down or a nurse retiring...maybe a hospital has just purchased new equipment and will discard the old 'stuff')

Nazareth hermitage needs the following items in order to continue providing health care to the sick poor. The items in the below list are really important to our continued service. All of the items listed are replacements for the ones that have finally broke down,worn out or just missing. I hope you might be able to help. These items cannot be purchased here or are too costly locally.

1. blood pressure cuffs X 3
2. stethoscopes X 3
3. Thermometers X 10 
4. Gauze pads---4" X 4" or 2"X2"'s
5. Tape for securing bandages
6.  Butterfly closures
7. Self adhering roller gauze or Kling type rolls. 4" X 4" or 2"X2"'s
8. Long lasting AA and AAA batteries
9. Coin Style lithium batteries ( 3V  CR2032) for the thermometers, weighing scale, etc.
10. Hemostats
11. Forceps
12. Containers to hold liquids used to hold forceps in solution.
13. Washcloths (for washing wounds)

Thank you very much.

Love and prayers,

Br. dismas Mary








Vatican II, 'Gaudium et Spes'

Human activity

Saint Josephine Bakhita

Just as it proceeds from man, so human activity is ordered toward man. For when a man works, he not only alters things and society, he develops himself as well. He learns much, he cultivates his resources, he goes outside himself and beyond himself. Rightly understood, this kind of growth is of greater value than any external riches which can be obtained. A man is more precious for what he is than for what he has.

  Similarly, all that men do to obtain greater justice, wider brotherhood, a more humane disposition of social relationships has greater worth than technical advances. For these advances can supply the material for human progress, but of themselves alone they can never actually bring it about.

  Hence, the norm of human activity is this: that in accord with the divine plan and will, it harmonize with the genuine good of the human race, and that it allow men as individuals and as members of society to pursue their total vocation and fulfill it.

  However, many of our contemporaries seem to fear that a closer bond between human activity and religion will work against the independence of men, of societies, or of the sciences. If by the autonomy of earthly affairs we mean that created things and societies themselves enjoy their own laws and values which must be gradually deciphered, put to use, and regulated by men, then it is entirely right to demand that autonomy. It is not merely required by modern man, it also harmonizes also with the will of the Creator. For by the very circumstance of their having been created, all things are endowed with their own stability, truth, goodness, proper laws and order. Man must respect these as he isolates them by the appropriate methods of the individual sciences or arts.

  Consequently, we can only deplore certain habits of mind, which are sometimes found too among Christians, which do not sufficiently attend to the rightful independence of science and which, from the arguments and controversies they spark, lead many minds to conclude that faith and science are mutually opposed.

  But if the expression “the independence of temporal affairs” is taken to mean that created things do not depend on God, and that man can use them without any reference to their Creator, anyone who acknowledges God will see how false such a meaning is. For without the Creator the creature would disappear.