Archive: Opinions

It was Christmas Eve, midnight Mass, and I think it might have been 1964, though I'm unclear on the year. I was one of the altar boys privileged to serve the midnight Mass at St. Matthews, and I do mean privileged. I really took the altar boy thing seriously, to the point of considering becoming a priest. At thirteen years old, that looked like a reasonable decision prior to all hell breaking loose in the latter part of that decade.

The celebrant of that Mass was Father John Essef, who really deserves a bit of an introduction. He was truly one of the few heroes (in an era of emerging anti-heroes) I ever had and he was a real character. Lebanese by birth, with a Middle East complexion, black horned rim glasses, black curly hair balding on the top and a real Nixonian five o'clock shadow. All this in a black cassock, short in stature but with seemingly inexhaustible energy and a million dollar sense of humor, a ready and a raucously loud and sincere laugh. Instantly likable, in my book.

I had told Father Essef in confidence that I wanted to be a priest, and his response was to hand me a booklet entitled "So You Want to be a Banker!". In his inscrutable way, I think in retrospect he was trying to steer me, naive and totally oblivious, away from what must have been happening in Catholic seminaries that took decades to 'out', with all of its priestly pain and abuse. I was pretty lucky, I guess, in having a guy (read: protector, perhaps) in my life.

Anyway, it's Christmas Eve, midnight Mass, and Father John ascends the lectern to preach the Christmas sermon. As background, it is important to tell you that this was East Stroudsburg, in the Pocono Mountains, a real resort town in summer and winter, yet a lot of poverty in and around the environs that were considered coal country in decades past. It was also on the edge of a reality that was just beginning to make itself known to middle America: it was called Appalachia and America had only begun to see and realize that there was a swath of our country that had never left the hunger, the poverty and decrepit living conditions that most of the United States had left behind in the Great Depression. The living conditions of many many families in Northeast and central Pennsylvania, and literally down the backbone of the Appalachian mountains was coming to light in Life magazine, and Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Our backyard there in East Stroudsburg.

The truth was, in that little town that I lived in, with pockets of poor families, one of the last stops of the Phoebe Snow on the Black Diamond route, on the edge of coal country, we had Appalachia on our doorstep, if we cared to notice.

Here's Father Essef, now, decked out in the white and gold vestments, the altar in all its Yuletide finery, addressing a full house of neatly dressed Catholics, and he begins, slowly, to describe a teenage mother, hungry, giving birth to a son, in a shack. But Father John wasn't describing Jesus and Mary on the outskirts of Jerusalem ("...where the ragged people go, finding places only they would know..."); he was literally placing the event as 'tonight', in a shack perhaps just a couple of miles away from our brightly lit church.

All of the joy on the faces of the congregation that night slowly faded as they recognized that Father Essef was describing to them the abject poverty, hunger, despair and hopelessness (albeit with boundless love, as well) that the modern-day Mary, and her baby boy were possibly experiencing that very night, so close to our church, so close to our affluence, so close to our material joy. And I remember him saying "The reality of a homeless Jesus, a hungry teen-aged mother and an uncaring world is happening right now, in our town."

As you can imagine, this sermon's imagery went over like the proverbial lead balloon (for lack of a better analogy) and I watched from beyond the altar rail as several people actually got up from their seats, their faces practically black with anger, walking in a huff out of the church. This liberal-minded priest wasn't going to ruin their holiday with such dark sentiments and bleeding heart sermonizing, no sir.

And, more than fifty years later, that night in St. Matthew's came back to me in detail, blazing as a bank of altar candles, when I saw the following story that perhaps you have seen as well.

Some of you may be aware of an artist by the name of Banksy. You may have heard of a stunt he pulled last year after a work of his went for some incredible sum at auction, and the work suddenly shred itself, with a mini-shredder in the bottom of the frame, fired by remote control. A "Banksy statement", no doubt.

Well, Banksy just went viral again with an incredible work of art that perhaps only Banksy could invent. In Birmingham, England, they are experiencing a plague (if you wish to call it that) of homelessness evidently approaching or surpassing the Los Angeles or San Francisco level of human tragedy. Banksy found an old-style park bench next to a stone wall that was occupied by a sleeping homeless man, head resting on a 'pillow' of his scant belongings. Banksy painted two reindeer on the wall, looking as if they were harnessed to the bench like Santa's sleigh. The image making and the result went viral on YouTube, I guess, with over three million views in a matter of days.

It was an incredible work of urban art with the homeless vagabond sleeping on what looked like Santa's sleigh. But, with the art, comes the reality, as the photo/video reaps worldwide realization.

Here's the reality, my friend, as I read it: I have read that there are 1.1 billion people 'living' in inadequate housing globally (that might be more than the world's total population the night the Prince of Peace was born). Over 100 million worldwide have no housing at all. In America, the home of the brave, there will be a half million people in shelters on any given night, and another possible quarter million who are without any shelter as the sun goes down.

One half of America's homeless are in California, that golden state of opportunity for the Okies and the Techies. New York, according to what I've read, has somewhere close to 100,000 homeless. Naturally, a pretty good number of these homeless are children.

And, in one more note on this ongoing tragedy, which Father Essef alluded to more than fifty years ago this week, the Supreme Court is currently working on "Boise Idaho vs. Martin", where the city's ordinance regulating "public camping and sleeping" is being challenged because it is being used against homeless sleeping on Boise streets. Interestingly, the Court is hearing this case because one side or the other is utilizing the 8th Amendment clause of "cruel and unusual punishment".

Father Essef seems way ahead of his "time", by seeing a problem that most of America (and my thirteen year old eyes) didn't sense in the 60's, or didn't care. Now, fifty-some years later, we are still faced with what can be described in some parts of our country as the teeming hordes of our fellow citizens who, like the baby whose birth we celebrate next week, also had no place to go, "...no room at the inn...".

And, just this morning (as I write this) I walked down the Commons at 7:30 AM, on my way to my job, and there is a rough-looking gentleman sleeping on the ground, his back to a store-front (appropriately decorated behind plate glass with snow flakes and Santa), a ragged blanket around his legs. John Prine's words "...if you see a set of ancient, vacant eyes, say Hello in there..." rang out in my brain. I said hello, and he looked at me and asked if I could help him buy a cup of coffee.

I can't fix the world, nor cure its ills. But I remember Father Essef with his ability to see and experience the spirits of Christmas past, present and to come. I remember my own past Christmas eves both pleasant and comfortable, and several not nearly so, thousands of miles from 'home'. I remember sleeping, homeless, on a park bench one night in West Reading at the age of seventeen. I could remember all of this as I reached for my wallet, quietly saying "Hello in there", and also, thinking of Tiny Tim: "God bless us, each and every one of us."