A postulancy carried out in the Charism of Hospitality is a school of merciful love.  My name is Brother Bartosz Kniefel, I am 26 and when I first started working in the Department of Palliative Care, I heard a patient speaking to the staff and I have never forgotten his words. The patient said: You do not understand us patients, because you cannot really put yourselves in our place.” I was struck by that and immediately started asking myself what I could do to understand the patient’s pain and to be able to comfort  him, because you can’t help someone if you do not understand what he or she is going through.

Saint John of God came to my assistance because of the way he likens the ministry of mercy to the death of Saint Bartholomew. All of a sudden, I realized that to be able to minister to the sick, and to dedicate myself entirely to this, I would have to strip away the old me, full as I was of ties and materialisms. If your intentions are pure you must forget yourself and strip away the desires of this world. It is necessary to be naked and rid ourselves of all that enslaves us. Naked like Jesus Christ, stripped of his garments. Stripped of everything, exactly as a human being who is suffering in the final instances of his life is stripped of everything. In other words, one must rid oneself of all that is human and worldly, and approach the patient with the burning spirit of love in one’s heart. To come close to those who have been stripped of everything by illness, one must come with nothing more than God in one’s  heart.

Now it is clear to me that to be close to someone who has nothing, one must  renounce everything. Because if your heart is elsewhere, if your mind is concentrated on the satisfaction of your own desires, it is impossible to fully serve one’s fellow human being.

In order to speak to those who are ill, we hospital Brothers must become like the sick appear to the rest of the world. In this way, we will be able, like Saint Peter, to say to those whom we encounter: “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do possess I will give to you in the name of Jesus Christ”. I give you my life, my time, my hands, my feet. I will become ill just as you are, for only in this way can I be an expression of love, a servant in the merciful hands of God.