Standing in solidarity

By Fr. David Kelly, from the C.PP.S. archives, originally published in The Wine Cellar, 2001, edited for length 

In the Cook County Jail in Chicago, I was talking to a young man, and he told me how he felt like a nobody, a low-life. He had been told that he would never amount to anything. He had been beaten down — literally and figuratively. He told stories of how his father would come home at night after work and just be filled with rage. He would wake him up and beat him.  

This broken spirit had been in and out of jail for the last few years. He had lost most of his family. He had no friends; even his mother had pretty much given up on him. He felt his life was worthless — of no value to anyone. After our talk, after we spent some time together, he looked directly at me and said, “Thanks. You make me feel better inside.”  

Reconciliation is a willingness to stand in solidarity. It is a willingness to listen to the stories. It is not about something that we do; we leave that to God. Reconciliation doesn’t depend on us. It isn’t our work, but rather the work of God. But we must be willing to cooperate. We must be willing to walk in places that cry out for healing. Those who feel alone in the world need to know that somebody hears them and that somebody cares what is happening to them.  

But reconciliation is also what happens to me when I dare to put myself in the thick of things. It is then, in the midst of the pain and the uncertainty, when there seems nothing but destruction, that we understand that the human spirit has not been destroyed.  

Years ago, a young man I knew well was shot twice. He was only 15, and he nearly died. He suffered a gunshot wound to the stomach and back. He had just left the church after talking with me, and no more than five minutes, later he was shot.  

The other part of this story is that I also knew the shooter. He was not just a name to me; he had a story. I knew his friends and his family. After leaving the hospital, I went to see the one who was locked up for the shooting. He looked at me tentatively. We talked a long time. We talked about his future and what was in store for him in the countless court proceedings. But we also talked about the young man he shot and his family.  

So we stand in the midst of the pain: the pain of the victim, the wrongdoer, and the community. We stand in the middle, in the very thickness of life, listening to the story. Often we are not able to do anything to change things. But when we stand in solidarity with those who know suffering, we witness to the love of God, and we allow God to bring forth healing. 

Stained by the blood 

A 15-year-old in juvenile detention told me that he hasn’t seen his mother since he was 8 years old. One night she didn’t come home, and he hasn’t seen her since. He doesn’t know where she is. He thought that she was out with her friends — that had happened before, and usually she came home after a day or two. “She was into drugs,” he said. But this time, she just never came home. A spirituality of the Precious Blood is not about having answers; it is not about making sense out of abandonment or explaining away the pain. It is not even saying we know how to live in the midst of the pain. The spirituality of the Precious Blood is the willingness to be present, to stick around, and not run away.  

Some years ago, someone came into the old convent building where I lived — it served as a kind of foster home for those who could not live at home. This young man came in and stabbed one of the kids who lived there seven times. I remember desperately trying to hold my hands over the knife wounds. I tried to keep him from bleeding to death, knowing that you are supposed to put pressure on the wound. As I held him and put my hands against the knife wounds, I, too, was covered with blood.  

Am I willing to be stained by the blood? Am I willing to put myself in the midst of the suffering, the pain, and the hurt?  

Capital punishment is one of those issues that evokes a strong response and cuts to the core of what we believe about blood, about issues of life and death. It is messy. It is an emotional issue filled with the pain and anger at the violence of the crime. There is also the frustration over what to do: What do we do when someone has been deeply hurt by another? How do we make it right again? Can we? How do we stand with a mother who has lost her child to terrible violence?  What do we say to the mother of the one who committed the crime? What do we say to the one who did the violence — the wrongdoer? 

Reconciliation: Hearing the Cry of the Blood 

The hardest thing about forgiveness is that it seems to betray the past. There is a sense that if we forgive the one who perpetrated the violence, we are saying what the person did wasn’t so important. Family victims of violent crime need to tell the world of their pain and the violence done to their family.  

Capital punishment from a distance seems to do that — to vindicate, to have the final word. But it never does. The death penalty can never be an answer to the pain. Violence can never heal — it only begets more violence. The image of the blood keeps us from spiritualizing away the harsh realities of the pain and the hurt. Suffering is no less real or painful just because it will someday be avenged. Blood does not allow us to forget that. We dare not step over the pain. It dare not be ignored. So often as I listen to the story of someone who is in jail, knowing that there is really nothing I can do, the time ends with a sense of being heard. When one feels heard, the dignity that continues to be assaulted is, for the moment, restored. How important it is to feel as though we have been heard. 

Reconciliation is the work of God with our cooperation. It begins with truth telling — the story being heard. The dignity of being listened to. The dignity of knowing that my pain is not ignored or set aside.  

Reconciliation starts with the victim. It is the overwhelming love of God that causes the victim to reach out to the wrongdoer and begin the process of reconciliation. 

We have a spirituality, a language, to share with one another. Perhaps it is the way we minister — willing to be uncomfortable, to live among the tension with no real answers — that sets us aside and makes us a people dedicated to the blood of Christ. 

Fr. David Kelly, C.PP.S., is executive director of Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation in Chicago.