Reconciliation

One of my favorite movies is “The Mission” with Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro.

It is the story of a group of missionaries who establish the titular “Mission” in the Jungles of Paraguay, among the Guarani people.

A notorious Portuguese mercenary and slave-trader, Rodrigo Mendoza, is much feared by the Guarani due to his ruthless hunting of them to enslave them. Rodrigo kills his own brother early in the film due to a romantic triangle, and is consumed with near-suicidal remorse,  starving himself in an asylum. He is met there by a Spanish Jesuit priest, Father Gabriel.

Fr. Gabriel offers a dubious Mendoza a chance to redeem himself: he must travel with the missionaries up the river to their nascent mission in the jungle, and must drag a heavy bundle containing the armor and weapons he used in his life as a mercenary. There is a scene where one of the missionaries, out of pity, cuts the rope by which Mendoza is dragging his burden, but Mendoza retrieves his bundle, re-ties the rope to it.

Some time later, they finally meet the Guarani, in a scene of remarkable tension. The missionaries exchange joyous greetings with the Guarani, who then see, and recognize, the feared man who has killed and enslaved many of them. Mendoza lies exhausted among them, overwhelmed with weariness, emptied of all pride, prostrate on the ground.

The Guarani go to him, fear mixed with confusion, and some of them have knives. Mendoza looks up at the Guarani leader pitifully, harmless and exhausted. The Guarani leader pauses a moment, looks at the rope attached to Medoza’s burden of armor and weapons, and then cuts the rope and pitches the bundle down a high cliff and into the river.

Mendoza feels the burden of the armor lifted, something changes in his expression…and suddenly he’s overwhelmed with emotion, crying and laughing at the same time. Father Gabriel goes to him and hugs him, and the Guarani crowd around, and are holding his hands as he weeps, and Mendoza is flooded with humble gratitude and love.

It’s a powerful scene.

But this post is not about the Guarani of 300 years ago; it is about America, today.

There are people in our ghettos and ‘hoods who have not had a chance to comfort many of their brothers and sisters in the suburbs in their loneliness and desolation, nor to share their own pain at the violence the plagues their communities. They have not had the chance to share their incredible stories, stories of terrible loss, but also of resilience and hope.

Sometimes the greatest gift you can give someone is to allow them to give to you.

There are people in the poorer parts of our cities, who have much, so much, to share with their more affluent brothers and sisters.

I grew up (until I was 14) in a place that most Americans would think of as “the Ghetto.”

Like most such places in America, the neighborhood could be, at times, almost saturated with an atmosphere of latent violence – but there was also deep, agape love, a love so profound and simple that it gave me a taste of what heaven might be like.

There was elderly Mrs. Pender next door, who had had a stroke and walked with a walker. Her husband, Mr Pender, had the most awe-inspiring lawn on the block – he probably weeded the thing with tweezers – but his wife was the real gift to the neighborhood. She would take me in sometimes when the ‘hood got extra crazy, and tell me that she knew, just knew, that one day I would grow up to be someone really special.

There’s the elderly black lady I met one day when I was selling door-to-door. The whole enterprise, while technically not fraudulent, was making me pretty uncomfortable. Lots of the salesmen loved selling to ghetto addresses – they would just wave a couple free months of service in the naïve resident’s faces, kinda forget to mention the charges that would hit after that two month grace period, and rack up sales. I worked the ghetto when I had to, but for some strange reason I never seemed to get very many sales there.

One day, I knocked on some humble little basement-apartment door, and prepared my usual “pitch” in my mind. The door opened to reveal a frail woman who had the kindest eyes I had ever seen – it was as if she were staring right through the glib salesman veneer, past all the BS, and directly into my soul, and genuinely appreciating, unconditionally loving, the qualities she saw there. It was as if I were staring dumbstruck into the very Face of Christ. To paraphrase St Thomas Aquinas, I could sell no more.

—

I would like to see the day when people from the richer parts of this country and of the world and the people from the poorer parts can know and live their brother- and sister-hood; I imagine warm embraces, with abundant tears – of sorrow for our long separation, and of joy that the gulf has been bridged. Like Rodrigo, we will know that we are brothers and sisters, and that that is all that really, truly matters.

The Way to realize this world is here among us, right now, this very moment. Many of us received Him last Sunday.