Little Sister Sara z”l

More than a year has passed since Little Sister Sara left us and entered the Kingdom, on her birthday, on March 28, 2016. She was very advanced in age and for a long time had been preparing herself for this passage from the earthly community to the heavenly one. In fact, regularly she would ask: “Until when?” For how long still would she have to wait on earth, her body growing ever-more feeble, until she could run towards the One she had followed all her life.

I loved Little Sister Sara and tried to see her regularly in the last years of her life, It was a sense of enormous gratitude that filled me whenever I thought of her – her constant, quiet and yet determined commitment to life as a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth. Little Sister Sara was not a woman of many words and in the end her deafness made conversation a real effort. However, beyond the words, it was her sparkling eyes that bore authentic testimony to the relationship with Christ that nourished her life. Those sparkling eyes kept her young until the day she died. Even in moments of suffering, times of profound questioning, those sparkling eyes bore witness to the life force of the dynamic relationship that sustained her through the years.

Little Sister Sara was a column of the Hebrew speaking Catholic community in Israel. This is not because she was an activist or a vocal leader but because she incarnated a lot of what we are called to be. As a Jewish believer in Christ who was always clear on her Jewish identity and her Christian faith, as a mostly silent yet loving witness to Christ within the Jewish milieu in Israel, as a committed and concerned member of society, always following what was going on in Israel and in the Church, as a faithful and constant woman of prayer for justice and peace in this torn and bleeding land, Little Sister Sara is missed. We celebrate her memory and ask God to raise others who will follow in her way.