People on the front lines of caring make the biggest difference.
I hope I never get Cynthia’s face out of my mind.
“Excuse me,” she said, from the pew behind me in a midtown Manhattan church one recent weekday. “I need help. Please call an ambulance. I was raped.”
After talking with her in the 50 minutes or so between the initial 911 call and the arrival of an ambulance, it was apparent that the violence she told me had been done to her earlier that day was probably the least of the pain inflicted on her in her 50 years.
She didn’t want to go back to where she was living. A man there wouldn’t leave her alone and had been doing unspeakable things to her — and yet she described some of them during our time together. She felt alone and wanted someone to believe her. She was worried that the paramedics wouldn’t take her and the doctors wouldn’t treat her because of what had happened to her.
And yet, somehow, she retained some dignity and hope. She told me she was going to go outside for a few minutes to smoke — “I know I shouldn’t do that. I know it’s not good for me.” But evil hadn’t crushed her yet. How resilient the human heart can be! It seems a miracle.
Cynthia has seen too much of the horror people can inflict on others. I saw it in her face — the look of distrust when she caught me with my hand in my pocket. “What are you trying to get? What is in your pocket?” she asked, as if a dream were being dashed. She had thought someone was believing her and paying attention to her, and yet. . . . She was relieved and grateful when I confessed to her that what I was doing was fingering rosary beads as we talked. I was reaching out for supernatural help, is what I was doing, even as we waited for the medical personnel to arrive. When I gave her a pink rosary a friend had recently given me, she told me, “I’ve been wanting one of these for a long time.” The soft pink touch clearly didn’t hurt. I gave her a small booklet of prayers asking Mary’s help in undoing the knots in life, a favorite devotion of Pope Francis. Eucharistic adoration (a most calming presence, whatever you believe) was going on in that church as we waited. There was unmistakably a grace and peace working in her.
Cynthia left with the paramedics, and I spent a little more time praying for her and praying that she might use the phone number for Catholic Charities in Manhattan she now had in her pocket, figuring they would be able to connect her with resources that could get her a new start.
That was days ago, and much has happened since. But I can’t stop thinking of Cynthia and regretting that I didn’t do more for her. And that I don’t do more for others. We all have our burdens and problems. But in many of our cases they don’t begin to compare to what Cynthia has faced.
Most — if not all? — of us could afford to do more. It’s what Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount – and it’s to everyone’s benefit. It’s why Pope Francis goes out of his way to make those who feel removed from God feel more welcome in the Church. (He does so in a tradition of popes who address all people of good will, and in fact, all people — every man, woman, and child on earth.)
But leaving to God’s mercy and Providence whether I should have skipped going to the office and gone with her in the ambulance, and praying that she is getting what she needs, I was grateful for a reminder from Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia. He was speaking to the Religion Newswriters Association, as reporters prepped for the pope’s visit later this month. He explained that the Church in Philadelphia spends more than $4.2 million a year — “privately donated” — “on social services for the poor, the homeless, the disabled, troubled youths, battered women, immigration counseling, food pantries, and nutritional programs. And we manage another $100 million in public funding for the same or similar efforts.” He added: “We have 1,600 full-time employees spread across these Catholic social ministries doing the works of mercy — and fewer than 200 of them are involved in parenting, family, and pregnancy-support services.”
He emphasized that this story can be told about the Church throughout the United States, not just in Philadelphia.
His account served a number of purposes: to correct the idea that the bishops in the U.S. are out of step with Pope Francis when it comes to caring for the poor; to counter the libel that the Catholic Church in America is concerned with nothing but abortion and gay marriage; to highlight the reason the Church has credibility when it comes to all those issues he mentioned and others: because the Church is there, on the ground, as a field hospital, tending to the wounded on the front lines.
As I pray for Cynthia, I am grateful there was a resource to connect her with. Mother Teresa, who died at just about this time of the year, early September, in 1997, cared for people she described as “the poorest of the poor,” people who had been discarded and displaced, lost and forgotten. And yet, she was remarkably humble about what she did; a psychologist who does just the kind of work the archbishop was talking about reminds me that Mother Teresa said: “In this world, we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.” Wherever we are, whatever we do, we can surely do this? And we can support great institutions that help those whom individuals may not be equipped to help.
Unleash hope. That is what these times surely need. And that is what we all need — neighbor and stranger alike.
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute and editor-at-large of National Review Online. She is co-author of the new revised and updated edition of How to Defend the Faith without Raising Your Voice. This column is based on one available exclusively through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.