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Last Supper in the Shadows

July 20, 2007

This mural of the last supper, just outside the chapel of our children’s hospital in Haiti, is intriguing. Most notably, the apostles are represented as children. More subtly, the long shadows cast by sunset are depriving half the children of light.
Even though there were no children at the last supper, truth is well represented here. Children are no strangers to the paschal mystery of suffering. Mother Nature, who often speaks for God, is making her own point. Far too many children live in the shadows of hunger, sickness, poverty, prostitution, slavery, homelessness and war. They are deprived of light.
I have commented before that, when the political situation is quieter in Haiti, we see the suffering around us with more focus. After nearly seven years of unbearable violence, Haiti has been relatively peaceful so far this year. Strong initiatives by the UN and police have seen the arrest of many gangs. The leaders we were used to rubbing shoulders with are dead or in the penitentiary. By the same token, swarms of unsettled and unemployed young men will probably not stay leaderless for long. But for now there is peace on the street.

The story is often very different in our hospital, where peace is often undone by suffering.
Recently, we got to know a heroic mother, who sat at the bedside of her baby boy for 38 straight days. Late at night, you would see her slumped over the crib, on a hard wooden chair, her eyes fixed on her beloved child. It was a sight as sad as it was inspiring- sunrise and sunset at the same time. This mom believed that if she left the bedside, her child would die. She believed if she took her eyes off of him for a minute, he would die. So she would do anything, and bear any suffering, to keep him alive- by keeping him in her sight and in her heart.
His death was a mortal blow to her. We would do well to pause now, and keep her in our sight through prayer, and in our heart through compassion. She highly deserves our efforts to be spiritually close to her. She is a great woman brought low by terrible loss.   

In the Bible, prayer is often seen as a begging for God to keep us in mind, to keep us in sight. It can’t go well for us, when God’s gaze is somewhere else. The fear is that out of sight really does means out of mind. We would fall out of existence altogether if we were no longer in God’s thought. Even though it took too literal a form in her understanding, that mom was onto something very true, and she fought death with all her might. She fought it with her eyes, the pristine windows of the soul. Death cannot negate the steadfastness and faithfulness of love. Love is stronger than death. It is the greatest of the only three things that will last.

This little boy has known his share of suffering. He has the disease of our age, and his mother died of it years ago. He is an orphan from our home. If he looks well in this picture, it is no little thanks to the lady sitting with him. Her heart is filled with love for him, and she pours it out in good measure, overflowing. His head is bandaged because of terribly infected wounds. His disease is taking him slowly. This picture is amazing deceptive because of the colors, and newness of the hospital, and the joy of the moment. Heaven is breaking through right in this picture, like a sunrise.” This is my beloved son, on whom my favor rests.”

Just yesterday it was necessary for Catarina to take him to the chapel. He was in great pain, and very forlorn. Catarina showed him the wounds in the hands of St Francis, and then the wounds in the sacred head of Christ (wounds very similar to his own.) It is strange, but somehow this boy gained a profound understanding when he saw those images.

And this understanding helped him. This understanding can find no expression in words, but has to do with solid friendship with God, which can mysteriously flourish with suffering. This is because of God’s longing to be with those suffering the most. The worse the suffering the stronger God’s longing. A child absolutely can have mystical awareness.

Sometimes he joins us after mass, when we bathe and anoint the children who have died, and wrap them for burial. He is curious and yet frightened, and is trying to cure himself of the fear that when he dies he will be taken away by zombies. I caught him looking at me wide eyed as we finished our ritual, and so I said to him, “Aren’t we lucky? Imagine! Just a sign of the cross sends the zombies away running.” Then his eyes strayed to our paper mache child coffins. I broke his trance by showing him a big one. “This is my favorite. Be sure to put me in this one is I die before you do!” His simple chuckle put death at bay.
To put it simply, this little boy (pictured left) is turning into plastic, inside and out. He is enjoying his dad while he can. You can’t see his bandaged left arm behind him. His circulation is failing, and he is getting deep infections. His skin and nerves are tightening like drums. (Look at his little legs).He doesn’t say much, but when he does, it is with a very soft voice. He cannot know what is happening to him, or where life is leading him. While we cringe at his suffering, he is going to his destiny patiently, like an innocent paschal lamb.

“Look, Oh Lord, and see my suffering! Come quickly to my aid.” This is the cry of tenebrae ( shadows), from the Christian Liturgy of the Hours, remembering the Passion of Christ. The chant of the monks is beautiful, but there is also something holy about this card game. This boy has such bad cancer, it takes huge amounts of morphine to control his pain. He can’t eat anymore because of the cancer, but luckily he likes ice cream, and milkshakes, and his mom, and me, and Conan, and Kyra, and life. He loves to talk, and carries on as if he has a hundred years to go.

 

I know what you are thinking. It’s not fair. That’s what I think too. But what can we do?

Not much, apart from being faithful to these little apostles, and steadfastly being their friends.

 

“In the tender compassion of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us-
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
And to guide out feet into the way of peace.”



Fr Rick Frechette CP Port au Prince






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