By
Heather King
Recently
I was walking to morning Mass in Los Angeles, with the trees and sky above, and
the traffic and noise and violence of rush hour below. I kept looking up: to
the birds; to a place where I could imagine it was quiet. If you get very
quiet, you hear, at the very center of the universe, a pulse, a beat. You hear
the birds and the honking horns, the suffering and the joy. You hear the Sacred
Heart of Christ.
So in the middle of a city of millions, I
decided to pray the rosary.
And
praying the rosary after a couple of minutes what I "heard" was the
people waiting for biopsy results, the husband to show up, the electricity to
be turned back on, and I saw that these are the people who are sweating tears
of blood with Christ in the Garden at Gethsemane. I heard the tears of the
teenage girl who is cutting herself, the child whose psychotic mother is
forcing him to hold his hand over a gas stove, the women who are being raped,
and these are the people who are being scourged at the pillar with Christ.
I
heard the overworked heart of the CEO who opens his inbox to find two hundred
messages, the day laborers wielding eardrum-shattering leaf blowers for ten
hours at a stretch, the twelve-year-old who must translate for her parents when
immigration services come to the door, and these are the people who are
staggering under the weight of the cross with Christ.
All
over the world, all day, every day, people are suffering, and here comes Barry,
the homeless schizophrenic and hopeless alcoholic who wanders Sunset Boulevard,
one grimy hand clutching a plastic bag holding his worldly belongings, the
other held out in a perpetual plea for booze money. What to do in the face of
such suffering? What to do with your brokenness, your weakness, your own
suffering and loneliness and fear?
You
give Barry a couple of bucks. You make sure to shake his hand and thank him,
because this is Christ, and his heart is your heart. And you keep walking, to
Mass.
Heather King; is a Catholic convert who lives in Los Angeles, CA. She is the
author of three memoirs and a blog, www.ShirtofFlame.Blogspot.com.
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