Friday evening I decided to go to another (not the CSC) church for Mass at 5:15.
I got in the habit of occasionally going to weekday Mass this summer, shortly after becoming Catholic. Maybe it was because of the St. Louis summer heat, but I liked how they served their communion wine chilled. It was refreshing in every possible sense.
I met Sandy (not her real name) during one of those first summer visits to SLU, and ours
has become an unlikely relationship. Sandy must be in her late 50s, although
she looks older. She has seven kids, all of whom have children of their own,
and she is jobless. She lives on $687 a month, and is hard pressed to pay the
bills, and buy food for her poorly educated family. She’s either incompetent
to work, or unwilling to, so each day she takes 2 buses from the crowded
home she shares with her children, down to the SLU area to beg for money and food.
I’m 23 years old, I’ve never been hungry for more than a few hours, and my
parents purchased the car that I drive and the degree I got from Wash U.
I don’t want to paint a romantic image of Sandy or make her out to look like a
saint. She’s not one. She knows how to get what she wants. Often she needs
a ride somewhere. She always manages to get herself down to SLU and
then complains about how much trouble it is for her to get back home on
the buses. “I’m broke down, I’m strugglin’ too much” is her refrain. After
seeing some of the places she’s asked me to take her in the past (the Section
8 housing office, her home, KFC), I’m becoming convinced that though she
has very real needs, more than anything, she just wants to go for a ride in a
car and to have someone to listen to her for a brief while.
Friday was the feast of St. Francis Xavier, a co-founder and patron of the
Jesuits. From the homily I learned that Francis was a smart student and a
good athlete, a man after my own heart. But he was frustrated by how many
good Catholics were content to sit around at Universities studying about
God, but were unwilling to go out and take the Good News to the people
of God through humble service. On top of this, I remembered John the
Baptist’s words from this Sunday, “Bear fruit as a sign of your repentance.”
With all these pious thoughts filling my mind, I left the chapel on a spiritual
high…and then I ran into Sandy. “Crap. I’m going to have to drive her
somewhere.”, I thought. “Maybe she won’t see me.” I started walking away
and only got a few steps before I heard her calling my name. I tried to be
firm and came up with something like “Sandy, you know I can’t give you a ride
anywhere”…but the truth was that I could, and she knew it. She reminded
me of how hard her life is, how cold she was, how she didn’t have any
money for a Christmas tree, let alone gifts for her children or grandchildren,
etc.…she wanted a ride home. How could I say no?
I drove her home…and found out that she only wanted to go there to check
her mail. Where she really needed to go, she then said, was to this other
place where her son was staying, so we arrived there…only so that she could
tell her son where she was actually wanting to go was this place in South
City, where there was heat and furniture... another detour.
I was angry, and Sandy knew it. She had lied to me, and I felt used. “This is not
cool Sandy, you knew where you needed to go before you asked me for a ride,
but you weren’t honest with me about it.”
“I know”, she said “but you wouldn’t have taken me otherwise.”
As we rode in silence to her friend’s place in South City, I could tell that Sandy
was feeling bad about the whole thing. She turned to me and said she was
sorry. She asked if I could forgive her so that we could start over fresh. I
thought about Christ on the Crucifix, and how despite having been used, His
love overflowed in Mercy and Forgiveness even on the Cross. It was also
clear to me after seeing how she lived, that Sandy was the one who was truly
being crucified in this life, not me. I swallowed hard and said “Yes Sandy, I
forgive you. And I’m sorry for trying to avoid you at Church.”
My “yes” did not lead me where I expected it to. It was actually very messy.
In fact, I think all of our “yeses” are pretty messy in some way, but I do
know that we will always meet God through them.
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