Message from the Vice - Chair

Below is a message from Sr. Teresa Maya, CCVI, The Anna Trust Vice‑Chair

As lawyers are fond of saying, facts are recalcitrant. The fact is we are all aging. Aging is not a disease to be cured, it is a process on whose path we all must accompany one another. We do not need a medical model for aging, we need a model for collective accompaniment, a model based on core values of dignity, respect, and joy in the wisdom that the pathway itself creates.

For The Anna Trust Foundation this means developing and funding programs that bring sisters together to walk that pathway arm-in-arm, collaboratively. We will do so in ways that do, it is true, protect and improve the health of our elderly sisters, but also cultivate spirituality and creates for them and with them a sense of purpose and contribution. Practically, what does that mean for work of The Anna Trust?

It means that we will build capacity of congregations to accompany our sisters in wholistic ways. It means that we will support collaboration among congregations to develop better, more effective health and social services for our elderly sisters but in ways that also value the wisdom of their years and continue to engage them in ministry. It means that we will develop new approaches to financial sustainability not because of money but because only with that sustainability of wholistic service can each succeeding generation of sisters be confident of her future within community.

We will witness to aging but do so within community. And that witness, those innovations in services and sustainability, will flow out from sisters to the larger world as an example of how all elderly should and must be treated.

And finally, we ourselves will learn a final lesson. We as sisters have a culture of caring, of giving care to others. In many ways, this is who we are as the hands and feet of Christ. And now we – each one of us – will need to be humble enough to be care for. And how much we will learn from that! We are part of community not just as givers but as receivers as well.