Discovering Jesus daily

Week of January 31, 2006

Session 2

Go in Peace: Celebrating Mass in Old Town

to Trust behind Bars

B-1

The next day Jeff approached me as I was moving through the lobby of the chapel and heading outside. Could we talk, Father? He wanted to make a confession. I said okay, but my gut was telling me to be careful. I took him into the poorly lit chapel, thinking it would be a quiet place yet visible through glass doors to the outside lobby. We sat in one of the pews near the door. He was agitated, sweat beading on his upper lip. Then he broke into a paranoid story of people from New Zealand invading our country and driving everyone south, all the time assuring me that he was not mentally ill, as “you, Father Gary, had allowed Shane to insinuate yesterday.” I became nervous when he said that he had something to give me, a gift for a person he admired and loved. I was on high alert. As he reached into a small brown paper bag he had brought with him and had left sitting ominously next to him, I was expecting him to pull out a weapon. It was too late to make a run for it I’d have been plugged in the back. I steeled myself, my right arm resting behind him on the back of the pew. I figured at that point that, should he pull out a weapon, I could either grab his arm or land one good punch. Slowly his hand came out of the bag.

And he pulled out a bouquet of pansies.

“For you, Father, for being so patient with Shane and me yesterday.”

Two men, two human beings, both very sick. It always brings me to my knees. I thought of the words of Abraham Heschel: “When I see a man . . . I see the only entity in nature with which sanctity is associated. The particular individual may not be dear to me—in fact, I may even dislike him. But he is dear to someone else, to his mother, for example, although that, too, is not the rea­son for his eminence. For even if nobody cares for him, he is still a human being.” [109f]

B-2

Tonight, at the Holy Thursday liturgy, many of the poor were pres­ent, having their feet gently washed and dried by others in imita­tion of Jesus. When I saw it all in front of me—the poor, the washing basins, the awkwardness of the washers, the faces of the silent and reverent congregation—I realized once again what the sanctity of service is and that the truth of the heart of Christ is found in the washing of feet. When I have washed feet, I have real­ized that it is only from below that I can really see what is above.

A long time ago I read a reflection by Luigi Santucci in his book Meeting Jesus about the bowl that Christ used in washing the feet of his disciples. I remember thinking, like him, that if I had to choose some relic of the Passion, I wouldn’t pick up a scourge or a spear, but that round bowl of dirty water. And I would want to go around the world with that receptacle under my arm, looking only at people’s feet; and for each one I’d tie a towel around me, bend down, and never raise my eyes higher than their ankles, so as not to distinguish friends from enemies. I’d wash the feet of atheists, drug addicts, arms dealers, murderers, pimps, abusers of all kinds—and all in silence, until they understood. [115f]

2-C

There are times on the streets when I wonder what the hell I am doing. And there are moments, usually humdrum and unspectacu­lar, during which I realize that I am to bloom for just a few days so that I might give glory in my work to another kind of beauty that works in and through me. I rebel against this kind of divine inter­ference in my life, especially when it conflicts with my other great loves. But Jeremiah makes it clear that no one chooses to fall into the hands of the living God.

You have seduced me, Yahweh, and I have let myself be seduced;

you have overpowered me: you were the stronger. .

I used to say, “I will not think about him,

I will not speak in his name any more.”

Then there seemed to be afire burning in my heart,

imprisoned in my bones.

The effort to restrain it wearied me,

I could not bear it.

Jeremiah 20:7, 9

No one in the service of the poor, who is honest, pats himself or herself on the back. If he or she does, it is not for long. I realize that God brought me into this world, blessed with skills and tal­ents. The only thing that makes sense to me is to use them in the service of the poor. It is at their feet that I find myself.  [117]

Poverty Is Not a Crime: Eddie's Letter

Radical Compassion: Part 2  Epiphany to Transfiguration

Radical Compassion: Part 1 Pentecost to Christ the King