The Charitable Association “St. Iustina” was founded in the Holy Monastery Marcus, in the county of. Covasna, in order to shelter orphan girls or abandoned by their parents in maternity.
The family home began to be built in 2001 by Mother Abbess Serafima, Mother Abbess Serafima being also the president of the “St. Iustina” Charitable Association.
It is the first family home in Romania built next to a monastery of Orthodox nuns, which aims to shelter newborn children, while all other private institutes for the protection of children in need shelter older children.
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In this way, the little orphans are taken in from the early age of holy Christian baptism and optimal conditions of upbringing and education are ensured according to all psycho-pedagogical and spiritual principles, in a healthy moral climate, which will protect them from the harmful consequences of family abandonment and the influences of all the harmful factors of our modern society.
This is the ideal fulfillment of the Gospel parable of the Merciful Samaritan, the one who was of a kind unkindly to the man who fell by the way – a wounded stranger in great distress; the Samaritan gave him first aid, took him to a guest house, paid for the stranger’s care, was his neighbor; and the Lord invites us: “Go and do likewise”.
According to Jesus’ exhortation “Let the children come to me”, no selection criteria were taken into account (for example: nationality or religion of the abandoned children), the only condition being that they must be girls, given the nature of the institution that sponsors this family home, the Marcus Monastery of the Nuns.
Currently, there are nine girls between the ages of 8 and 9 and a 4-year-old boy. The children have been here since they were babies and were taken in a few months after being abandoned in the maternity ward.
Maica Serafima remembers the day she went to pick up the girls at the center where they had been sent from the maternity ward:
“I was walking through the ward with the list in my hand, because I only knew their names and how long each one had. I had never seen them before and it was a big shock! They looked bad, like unkempt babies; they were skinny, with crooked legs, they were dirty, because no one was wiping or washing them; and one of them was holding on to her cot and crying, and no one went to her to comfort her and see what was wrong. My emotions were so great that day that it was like I was floating and it was hard to pull myself together. We were going after little girls with brand new clothes, diapers, everything. And, of course, after we changed them out of those dirty clothes, they looked totally different. They looked better.
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After we brought them home and bathed them, we saw that almost every one of them had a health problem. One of the little girls had pus in her ears, another had a sore on her neck, which we realized was caused by the way they were fed at the center. Because they were understaffed, they would put the bottle on the side like this, without any help, and you can imagine how much milk was flowing around. They were only supervised from the window, so nobody noticed that this little girl had a sore throat.
But, God helped us and we were able to get them back pretty quickly. As they got older and started to walk, I remember them each grabbing one of my fingers and when I turned around, they turned around with me. I was like a hen with chickens” (Mother Serafima smiles).
Mother’s memories are many. And to create an identity for each child, she made a photo album of them, from when they were babies to the present day, with detailed explanations such as “I walked for the first time at the age of 11 months” or “That’s when I got my first tooth” etc.
The future of these children is secure for now. Here they have shelter, love, guidance, guidance, education and the chance to become what they want in life. In the future, the girls will be free to choose whether to stay at the convent or not.
This is the heartfelt social project initiated by Mother Serafima. It is for this reason that she founded the St. Iustina Charitable Association within the Holy Monastery of Marcuș.
Source: magazine-satul
