We Little Sisters of the Poor deal with life-and-death situations all the time, but the novel coronavirus pandemic has rendered our calling, to serve the elderly poor, more urgent and acute than it has felt it in a long time.

We aren’t novices when it comes to emergencies, of course. In June 2013, French citizens packed their swimsuits and jetted off for their annual vacances à la plage, leaving behind elderly family members, neighbors and friends. No one predicted what was to come: one of the worst heat waves of the century, which killed more than 14,000 people in France alone — the vast majority senior citizens.

Our Little Sisters in France were on the front lines of that tragedy in 2013. While they were able to protect the elderly in our homes from harm, their powerlessness in the face of so many dying seniors in major French cities broke their, and our, hearts.

I am a Little Sister of the Poor, a registered nurse and the administrator of our house in Lincoln Park, Chicago. For more than 175 years, we have offered the neediest elderly a home where they will be welcomed as Christ himself, cared for as family and accompanied with dignity until the Father calls them to his house.

Today, that tragedy in France haunts our memories amid the enforced isolation necessitated by COVID-19. Seniors worldwide are at risk of being forgotten and abandoned again, as they were during that fateful European summer.

Across the country, nursing homes and senior communities are taking extra measures to protect the elderly, and ordinary citizens are doing their part by staying home to prevent the spread of the virus. Although we provide the best care possible in compliance with the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services guidelines, listening to daily briefings and conscientiously maintaining protocols to keep everyone safe, we know that medical care isn’t enough.

We are also doing our best to minister to the spiritual needs of seniors, who are coping with the anxiety of being isolated from friends, loved ones and the sacraments, and for whom the fear of suffering and death looms nearer now than ever.

Even as we do our best to care for the elderly residents of our homes, we can’t help thinking about all the seniors living alone in the community whose basic needs often go unmet at a time like this. So, our communities launched a campaign to help young people understand how they can protect and support their elderly neighbors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The campaign, Thanks for Protecting Us, informs friends and neighbors of what they can do to help but was started in thanksgiving to the millions of Americans who have stayed home to protect their communities.

Here are some suggestions of how you can reach out to seniors. By taking some of these steps, you can join the Little Sisters in our calling, whatever your own vocation in life:

So often fear and uncertainty cause us to turn inward. We develop an every-man-for-himself mentality, focusing solely on the well-being of our own families and close friends. Those who are out of sight so quickly fall out of mind. In the summer of 2013 families returned from vacation to realize that, tragically, they had forgotten their elderly relative, neighbor or congregation member. Let us not allow this time of extreme self-preservation to blind us to those who need our care and compassion the most.

Let’s not forget the elderly poor.

Sister Carolyn Martin is a member of the Little Sisters of the Poor, an international congregation of Roman Catholic women, and serves as the administrator of their in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.