{"id":25940,"date":"2023-11-30T19:37:35","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T00:37:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/?p=25940"},"modified":"2023-12-13T22:30:40","modified_gmt":"2023-12-14T03:30:40","slug":"sister-maria-del-santo-nino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/index.php\/2023\/11\/30\/sister-maria-del-santo-nino\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the Souls of our Religious Family: Sister Mar\u00eda del Santo Ni\u00f1o"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Sister\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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November begins with the celebration of the triumph of the saints, those who victoriously participate in the reign of Christ in heaven. The following day we commemorate all the faithful departed, those who struggled here on earth and whom we hope will also share in Christ\u2019s heavenly Kingdom. The last Sunday of the month is Feast of Christ the King, the Eternal King of Glory who reigns over all creation. It\u2019s the last Sunday of the liturgical year, which reaches its pinnacle at this moment. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for he subjected everything under his feet.<\/em>\u00a0 (1 Cor 15: 25-27)<\/p>

We would like to conclude this year by sharing a chronicle written by one of our sisters reflecting on the recent death of one of our beloved religious who passed away this year: Sister Mar\u00eda del Santo Ni\u00f1o<\/em>.<\/p>

Sister Maria del Santo Ni\u00f1o was born in the Philippines and entered our novitiate in the United States in 1999.\u00a0 She was a missionary here in our province of the Immaculate Conception for many years, serving in the United States and also in Guyana.\u00a0 Later she was sent as a missionary to Hong Kong and then to Philippines.\u00a0 She was diagnosed with cancer in 2020 and went to meet her Eternal Bridegroom on June 2, 2023.<\/p>

Sister Maria Boni Remedii had the privilege of caring for Sister Santo Ni\u00f1o during her last days and wrote the below chronicle, reflecting on the \u201cgleanings\u201d or fruits gathered from this time, especially in relation to the non-negotiables of the charism of our Religious Family<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Gleaning from the Cross of Sister Mar\u00eda del Santo Ni\u00f1o Gaton<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\"\"<\/a>In the instructions to the Israelites on how they are to live, prosper and please him, God commands that any wheat or corn left on the ground or on the plants after the harvest be left for the poor, the widows and the orphans, that is, for those whom the world has forgotten and for the afflicted.<\/p>

The gleanings are the fruits of the harvest that are dropped carelessly, perhaps unknowingly or sometimes deliberately, and are in danger of being lost.\u00a0 But in the story of Ruth we see how the careful gathering, the \u201cgleaning\u201d of these fallen fruits of the harvest leads to great benefits for many.<\/p>

Here I want to share my gleanings from the harvest of Sister Maria del Santo Ni\u00f1o\u2019s cross. I spent eight days with her, her last eight days in this world. But before I share what I saw and learned, I want to commend the sisters of her community and her Province for the love and dedication with which they cared for her. It was truly uplifting to see.<\/p>

Sr. Santo Ni\u00f1o had been suffering from cancer for some years and was slowly losing her physical strength (but not diminishing her willpower!). And her medical needs were becoming too complex for untrained people to care for her. And so, by God\u2019s grace, I was asked to travel to the Philippines to assist Sr. Maria del Santo Ni\u00f1o, to help care for her as she prepared to enter eternal life. Assisting the dying is always a grace. Even more so when the dying is a religious, particularly one of our own Religious Family.<\/p>

So now to glean\u2026 I want to group these gleanings into some basic categories, corresponding to the non-negotiables of our Charism. For it was precisely these non-negotiables that I found myself contemplating while caring for Sr. Maria del Santo Ni\u00f1o.<\/p>

Worthy Participation in Holy Mass<\/strong><\/p>

\"\"<\/a>As her lung function deteriorated, it became increasingly difficult for her to stay awake and speak. However, every day, without fail, Sr. Maria del Santo Ni\u00f1o would say to the priest celebrating Holy Mass, \u201cThank you for giving me Jesus.\u201d It was a short, sweet, simple but profound and heartfelt phrase. The first few days, I had to wake her up at least ten times during Mass. On the last day, at her last Mass, we decided to let her sleep, we were going to wake her up to receive her Bridegroom in Holy Communion. But every day, even at her last Mass, when the bell rang at the elevation of the Holy Species and often before, she would open her eyes and raise her head to look at and adore her Eucharistic Spouse.<\/p>

Apostolic creativity and missionary spirit<\/strong><\/p>

Sr. Maria del Santo Ni\u00f1o used her illness to bring God to others, I saw it in how she treated her family and the sisters who came to visit her. Her goal was to orient them to God, to help them carry their cross, to lead them to a life of grace. Towards her nephews and nieces, present during the Mass in her room, she encouraged them to go to Confession and later they were able to receive Holy Communion. She also encouraged her brothers and sisters to receive the sacrament of marriage, and within a few days of her death, at least one of them was already arranging for sacramental marriage and thus returning to a life of grace. The sisters recounted cases in which, while admitted to the hospital for treatment, she would go to do apostolate with other patients, even though she herself was probably tired and not feeling well.<\/p>

Biting reality<\/strong><\/p>

Santo Ni\u00f1o knew she was dying, prepared for it and tried to prepare others. One day she asked me directly what the dying process was like. And in her last two days she calmly accepted my explanation that her shortness of breath and the \u201cstrange\u201d feeling she had were part of the dying process.<\/p>

She also tried to prepare her family and told them, \u201cI belong to Jesus, I belong to Mama Mary, I belong to St. Joseph,\u201d biting reality meant biting the supernatural.<\/p>

Providential vision of life<\/strong><\/p>

She accepted God\u2019s will in her life. She did all the conventional treatments, prayed to the Filipino Servant of God, Darwin Ramos, to cure her, but on the last day she was with us she joked that Darwin had missed an opportunity, that he did not work fast enough. There was no bitterness, nor was she simply resigned to God\u2019s will: she embraced death as God\u2019s will.<\/p>

Serious Spirituality<\/strong><\/p>

A serious spirituality means that we seek holiness in a practical way and do not seek mere sentimentality. Speaking about religious life and community life, Sr. Santo Ni\u00f1o told me simply: \u201cI have a strong character, I have done my best to overcome it,\u201d meaning that she was seriously working on her shortcomings and seriously striving for holiness.<\/p>

She taught me that a serious spirituality does not have to be complicated, nor does it mean that we have to be constantly quoting the Summa. She understood that she was the Bride of Christ and mother of souls, called to be holy as a Servidora. She told me: \u201cWe must be mothers, not only of those in our apostolates, but also of the sisters in our communities\u201d. And to the postulants she encouraged them to \u201clove the Congregation and the people who compose it\u201d.<\/p>

Spirit of joy<\/strong><\/p>

But in her last week what characterized her most was a truly heroic joy. The sisters of the Province had been praying to the Servant of God Darwin Ramos for her healing. Darwin Ramos was a boy from the streets of Manila, who suffered from Duchene muscular dystrophy and passed into eternal life in 2012. He is known as the Filipino \u201cmaster of joy.\u201d<\/p>

On June 1, Santo Ni\u00f1o joked that Darwin was missing an opportunity to perform a miracle and that he was working too slowly. But was he really? He did not come to help her with a miraculous healing, but rather the \u201cmaster of joy\u201d found in Sr. Santo Ni\u00f1o a competent pupil and it seems to me that in her last days he elevated her from competent to \u201cmaster of joy.\u201d<\/p>

Many of Sr. Santo Ni\u00f1o\u2019s last photos show her smiling, laughing, joking and comforting others. Her joy was real. And it was heroic. In her last agony, when her family and sisters were gathered to accompany her with prayer in her last moments, I whispered to her that everyone was there, that if her Bridegroom called her she could go joyfully to the wedding feast. She had not opened her eyes for more than an hour, her breathing was labored and her head was bowed down. However, she raised her head, opened her eyes and looked around with a big smile of gratitude and joy. This was practically her last act in this world. Only two acts followed, one active and one passive.<\/p>

The active one was when I reminded her that she was the bride of Christ, that she was wearing the ring of Christ and the Cross of Matara, her key to heaven. When I asked her if she wanted to kiss the cross, she nodded. I brought it to her lips and she kissed it. She had told us many times that \u201csuffering is my joy\u201d.<\/p>

The passive act was the reception of Viaticum. She had been in agony for about three hours, she knew a priest was on his way. When he arrived at the house, her breathing changed, became shallower, we knew the end was very near. Father Victor Galvez gave her absolution, indulgence and apostolic blessing. After her last breath, but before her last heartbeat, she received Holy Viaticum. Seconds later, she departed for the eternal nuptial banquet, she headed -with food for the journey- towards her new adventure. She departed joyfully, ready to meet her Beloved.<\/p>

These gleaning ears of wheat are only a small part of Sr. Santo Ni\u00f1o\u2019s harvest of the cross. The other people who accompanied her throughout her religious life and during her illness and final days surely have their own stories. But it seemed to me that these few ears of wheat should not be kept as my own, but shared for the benefit of all.<\/p>

May the first of our Filipinas in heaven, our Servidora \u201cteacher of joy\u201d, continue her work from there, and help us to benefit from the gleanings she left behind.<\/p>

Sr. Maria Boni Remedii
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* This chronicle was originally published here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\"Sister<\/figure><\/a><\/div>
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November begins with the celebration of the triumph of the saints, those who victoriously participate in the reign of Christ in heaven. The following day we commemorate all the faithful departed, those who struggled here on earth and whom we hope will also share in Christ\u2019s heavenly Kingdom. The last Sunday of the month is… <\/p>\n

Read MoreRemembering the Souls of our Religious Family: Sister Mar\u00eda del Santo Ni\u00f1o<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":70,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","neve_meta_reading_time":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3253],"tags":[3795,1543,2292,3796,2270,3794,314,3818],"class_list":["post-25940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-3253","tag-all-souls-day","tag-christ-the-king","tag-death-of-a-religious","tag-deceased","tag-faithful-departed","tag-heaven","tag-holiness","tag-sister-maria-del-santo-nino-gaton"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ssvmusa.org\/1s2s3v5m6\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Santo-Nino-SSVM-In-Memoriam.webp?fit=531%2C559&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25940"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26222,"href":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25940\/revisions\/26222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssvmusa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}