MC sisters preparing the altar for the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I am spending the Feast of the Sacred Heart this year in Trinidad with the Missionaries of Charity. It takes me a few days to adjust to the different noises, temperatures, foods, and sleep schedules of their mission house. By now I am toughened up and enjoying my brief annual experience of missionary life.
The missionaries live with the poorest of the poor. This district is too dangerous for a white man to step beyond the barred and razor-wired compound; it makes me think of a military zone in Afghanistan or Iraq. Not bombs but rock and rap assault our convent and homeless shelter. The locals typically replace the back seats of their little cars with massive speaker systems. They ride through our neighborhoods with windows down, or they park on our streets with doors open, assaulting us with obscenely loud “music.” A truck depot backs up against our southern perimeter, and at times the music from employees’ cars thuds through our walls, shaking the windows in chapel and bedroom. Every so often I look up from my book: it is quiet! A momentary cease fire! I can hear the birds and the breeze. Then someone will drive by and unload another barrage at us.
The missionaries live with the poorest of the poor. This district is too dangerous for a white man to step beyond the barred and razor-wired compound; it makes me think of a military zone in Afghanistan or Iraq. Not bombs but rock and rap assault our convent and homeless shelter. The locals typically replace the back seats of their little cars with massive speaker systems. They ride through our neighborhoods with windows down, or they park on our streets with doors open, assaulting us with obscenely loud “music.” A truck depot backs up against our southern perimeter, and at times the music from employees’ cars thuds through our walls, shaking the windows in chapel and bedroom. Every so often I look up from my book: it is quiet! A momentary cease fire! I can hear the birds and the breeze. Then someone will drive by and unload another barrage at us.
Why this violence? We also hear occasional gunfire (the day before I arrived a man was killed on the next block), but the thudding music is so over the top and so pervasive that I have to wonder why they are doing this to us. And I think it must simply be small demonstrations of power by powerless people. Young people in the third world have been suppressed by a global economy that builds super wealth by enslaving most of the “colored” world. The sustainable culture of their parents has collapsed (“when I was a girl in Trinidad,” one of the older volunteers remarked, “men dressed like men and got jobs….”). Traditional family life, so disparaged by trend setters in first world countries, has almost entirely broken down. These young people have been beaten down and robbed of their identity. Their only way to exercise power, to get back at the world, is to blast it with reggae (and an occasional semi-automatic weapon). Some among our cultural elites occasionally express amusement at the notion of a culture war. I invite them to the slums of any third world country, to hear the sounds of war. This is where the effects of our culture wars play out on the street, and it’s not so amusing.
Loud noise panics me, especially subwoofer vibrations. My reaction is anger and sadness. Why are you persecuting me? But I see the Missionaries of Charity patiently accepting this random imposition on their prayer time, for love of their tormentors. They choose to live among these people because they love them. They see Christ in them. And so, it is the Missionaries who have the answer to violence and despair; their answer is the Sacred Heart. I saw with what joy they were adorning the chapel last night for today’s feast even as odious sounds pounded our house.
Consider the Scriptures today. From Hosea, Yahweh is deeply hurt at the rejection of his child Israel, but doesn’t react angrily: “My heart is overwhelmed [but] I will not give vent to my blazing anger…I am God, not man.” St. Paul preaches the “inscrutable riches of Christ,” that Jesus may dwell in your hearts, that you may “know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge.” And the Gospel. The Gospel! It is the crucifixion, the most irrational act of violence ever committed, and the soldier cuts open Christ’s heart. Out of this open heart pours, not venomous anger, but blood and water—the very substance of human life. His heart pours life into those who destroyed his life.
Consider the Scriptures today. From Hosea, Yahweh is deeply hurt at the rejection of his child Israel, but doesn’t react angrily: “My heart is overwhelmed [but] I will not give vent to my blazing anger…I am God, not man.” St. Paul preaches the “inscrutable riches of Christ,” that Jesus may dwell in your hearts, that you may “know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge.” And the Gospel. The Gospel! It is the crucifixion, the most irrational act of violence ever committed, and the soldier cuts open Christ’s heart. Out of this open heart pours, not venomous anger, but blood and water—the very substance of human life. His heart pours life into those who destroyed his life.
The sisters have it right. Only the Sacred Heart can answer the spiral of violent despair whipping up in our collapsing world culture. Only the patient, understanding love from the Heart of Jesus can bring peace and joy to the war-zone here in the slums of Trinidad.
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