laudato day-um
this then is perfect joy
What we give to the poor
for Christ’s sake
is what we carry with us
when we die.
We are afraid
to pauperize the poor
because we are afraid
to be poor.
Pagan Greeks used to say
that the poor
“are the ambassadors
of the gods.”
To become poor
is to become
an Ambassador of God.
—Peter Maurin
God’s embassy has been whatever church door step God’s ambassador to Uptown, Johnny B., has laid his head this winter.
Johnny B. is perhaps the one righteous man left in Chicago, for whose sake God spares the city, although we are not worthy.
It is St. Francis’ feast day. So I would like to write about the most Francis-like man I know.
Johnny has been homeless on and off for—as far as I’ve been able to tell—at least a decade. And I know Johnny B. is going to heaven, because he lives like Scripture. We hear about giving away your cloak or trusting that God will provide for you as God provides for the lilies of the field and all that.
Johnny is generous to a fault. He scours the trash bins of Chicago for anything of value. And, to Johnny, most things have value. We once heard an alarming clatter coming from the front stoop, only to discover Johnny was poking a broom through James’ mail slot: “You need this,” he’d say. There’s a great rug sitting under the hutch in James’ dining room that Johnny once dropped off. He once tried to bring James an Urban Outfitters-style canvas of Marilyn Monroe’s face blowing bubble gum. (Johnny, you cannot give that to my boyfriend, I insisted as he chuckled his mischievous, hoarse chuckle.)
He brings cardboard (his bedding of choice, he currently refuses a couch or mattress) for the woman no one else wants to be near. He has brought me jewelry and (with another hoarse chuckle) a “Louis Vuitton bag” aka a paper shopping bag from Louis Vuitton store. (Although, tbh, nicer than any of my purses.) He gave us a book about Ireland as James and I departed for Dingle last Christmas. He has given me food poisoning after I ate some chicken cordon bleu he brought. He was banned from bringing more food into the house—until he showed up with a melange of craft IPA cans and bottles. He knows the chinks in the armor.
Mother Teresa says that God loves a cheerful giver who gives with joy, and that is Johnny, to a T.
Growing up, people always told me that living like Scripture was “hyperbolic” language or a linguistic turn of phrase for the sake of some deeper spiritual lesson. You’re taught to think of the stories of Francis of Assisi as cuckoo-clock wives tales rather than models of perfect joy.
But then, one day, you meet people who actually live like they do not worry about how they will eat or live, because they are quite busy taking care of their neighbor. They have nothing, and still they will be the ones saying: “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?”
St. Francis is so universally beloved because he is perhaps the saint most known for his literal imitation of Christ. And Johnny is, like the men I most admire, a modern day St. Francis.
We seem to think
that Lady Poverty
is an ugly girl
and not the beautiful girl
that St. Francis of Assisi
says she is.
James has hounded Johnny to get housed. Johnny should not be on the street, he should be enthroned in the grandest house on the planet, he should be living in my own apartment building, he should be the guest of honors at all our tables. Perhaps Johnny’s continued life on the street is my fault, and I stand before him “guilty of all before all.” It’s worth sitting with that, as I sit comfortably in the climate-controlled room in which I write this.
But, my own failings to love my neighbor as they are, I am so grateful for Johnny for living—I am not sure how much of it is his choice right now or not, he is a complicated figure—as though Lady Poverty was the beautiful girl that St. Francis of Assisi says she is. His love and his generosity in trying circumstances that would make most of us miserable beyond comprehension is a great witness of love.
We are always wondering—just like the Apostles—who then can be saved? We can be sure that the 600,000 homeless men and women in our country—a population of citizens roughly the size of Vermont, one of them being Johnny—are going to heaven. Because they have nothing.
And when you have nothing, you live at the mercy of others—and of God. And the final judgment, we know from our Scriptures, is about being thrown onto the mercy of God. The way that Jesus—not deeming equality of God something to be grasped, but rather coming to us in the form of our neighbors—was thrown on our mercy in this lifetime.
This, then, is perfect joy.
Personalist Primer
See James’ recent talk on Maurin’s Three C’s, Mondragon and Reconstructing the Social Order. If you read Mounier, you, too, may be able to reconstruct the social order like Maurin and Arizmendi.
Happy Synod
to all who celebrate! It’s the opening day of the Synod on Synodality’s first global discussion stage in Roma! The 363 delegates are meeting from October 4- October 29 to discuss the Instrumentum Laboris. If you are in Chicago and interested in joining us for an evening of discussion on the Instrumentum Laboris, please write to me or respond to this email.
Below is the Adsumus Prayer which opened each session of the Second Vatican Council and people of good will throughout the world have been asked to pray for the Synod:
We stand before You, Holy Spirit, as we gather together in Your name.
With You alone to guide us, make Yourself at home in our hearts;
Teach us the way we must go and how we are to pursue it.
We are weak and sinful; do not let us promote disorder.
Do not let ignorance lead us down the wrong path nor partiality influence our actions.
Let us find in You our unity so that we may journey together to eternal life and not stray from the way of truth and what is right.
All this we ask of You, who are at work in every place and time, in the communion of the Father and the Son, forever and ever.
Amen.