Seeing Into the Heart

On Tuesday, as usual, Thea and I began the day with Mass. The reading (from Samuel) dealt with the selection of David as the future king of Israel. You'll recall that Samuel was told by the Lord to go to the house of Jesse and to annoint the future king from among Jesse's seven sons. When Samuel arrived, the sons were presented one by one. Despite their lofty stature, social graces, and status in the community, the Lord rejected all, cautioning Samuel that he (Samuel) was judging these sons by outward appearance, not by what was in their hearts. Finally, after all of the sons present at the banquet were rejected, Samuel finds out that the youngest, David, is still out in the fields tending sheep. Samuel summons David and, sure enough, God accepts this youngest son because he has a pure heart.

Father Michael began his homily at Tuesday's mass by saying that it is hard for us to get past physical appearances and to judge people's hearts. He used the example of the guests we serve everyday at the St. Francis Inn. Many are not attractive, smell bad, and can even be abusive and ungrateful. Yet, their hearts may be entirely different: every guest has a story. Father recalled a guest named John (street name Dit-Dit) who came to St. Francis Inn for years. Dit-Dit was a mess: he limped on a ruined foot; his jaw was crooked; he was unkempt; and he was a drug addict. If you judged by the outside appearance, Dit-Dit was a total waste of a human being. But over time, Fr. Michael got to know Dit-Dit and ferreted out his story.

Dit-Dit was a relatively happy child from a two parent home in Kensington. Then, at age 13, both of his parents were killed. Despondent, Dit-Dit took to drinking and eventually became homeless. On the street he began hanging with the wrong crowd. One day, he asked some guys for a hit of crack cocaine. When he did not have any money to pay for the drugs, one of the guys said: "If you go put your foot on the Metro train line when the train comes, we'll give you a hit for free." The guys turned away laughing until they heard a scream of pain -- Dit-Dit had actually let the train run over and cut off a portion of his foot.

Another time, Dit-Dit got in a street fight. His jaw was broken and the ER surgeon re-set it using pins. Not long after, Dit-Dit -- high on crack -- looked in the mirror and saw the pins sticking out of his jaw. Not liking how they looked, he pulled them out -- disfiguring his jaw forever. Predictably, DitDit's destructive behavior eventually killed him. He was in his late thirties when he died, although looking at him, you probably would have guessed his age to be nearer 50.

Father Michael's point was that, there for the Grace of God, goes each of us. "How would you have reacted as a 13 year old," Michael asked, "if your parents, whom you loved more than anything else in the world, had died suddenly?" "Would your friends, other family, and your support net be strong enough to support you? Adolescence is tough enough under any circumstances, but would you have been able to stay stable in the face of such a tragedy? Would your faith sustain you?" Tough questions... really tough questions. In looking at my own adolescence (at least what I remember of it!), I have my doubts whether I could have survived such a blow unscathed.

So, the next time you see a grungy, unkempt, smelly homeless person, remember Dit-Dit. And remember that God looks into a person heart, not at his or her exterior. We will all be judged, not on the externals, but on our heart and its ability to love. For me, this is a challenge of a lifetime -- easy to talk about and very difficult in practice.