The Urgency of Love

What upset me, at the start, was a cry: that of mil­lions of chil­dren. A cry some­times si­lent, but which tears the heart, for it comes from suf­fer­ing touch­ing the deep­est re­cess­es of a be­ing.

The suf­fer­ing is nev­er raw, name­less, de­tached. It wounds a heart, dis­fig­ures a face. It in­jures a per­son.

It is the in­cred­i­ble suf­fer­ing of this Vietnamese sem­i­nar­i­an shut up for sev­er­al years in a black dun­geon, bat­tling day after day again­st go­ing in­sane. It is the suf­fer­ing of this young Argentinian, vi­o­lat­ed from in­fan­cy, ex­pelled from his home, vi­o­lat­ed again, and sur­ren­dered to drugs and al­co­hol, un­able to con­trol the ter­ri­ble vi­o­lence he lives in. It is al­so the suf­fer­ing of this lit­tle 14-year-old Colombian girl, preg­nant and wait­ing un­der the eyes of her pimp for her next client.

No one escapes the great law of suf­fer­ing. Even one whose life seems hap­py ex­pe­ri­ences his share of in­ner­most suf­fer­ing.

Nevertheless, I have ob­served how the sim­ple pres­ence of some­one can re­lieve a wound­ed heart. Since the be­gin­ning of Heart’s Home, I have had the strong con­vic­tion that man’s great­est thirst is to have a friend that is a com­pas­sion­ate pres­ence.

Humanitarian works, in­deed, are very con­cerned about an out­come, an ef­fi­ca­cy, a pro­duc­tion. A hu­man en­deav­or like Heart’s Home can­not have this am­bi­tion. Its fruit­ful­ness can­not be mea­sured in num­bers.

The on­ly mea­sure of suc­cess that God gives man is love. Thus, for us, serv­ing the lit­tle one and the poor is to love them as God loves them, with all their suf­fer­ings, ha­tred, crit­i­cisms; it is to go be­yond in­dif­fer­ence and ac­cept be­ing blessed; it is to be a pres­ence tru­ly re­spect­ful of the other per­son’s free­dom. In each en­coun­ter, one ex­pe­ri­ences a mys­te­ri­ous ex­change. In the course of lis­ten­ing, one re­veals to the poor one his dig­ni­ty. And we, in re­turn, dis­cov­er the truth of who we are: the poor among the poor.

The work of Heart’s Home is a sign of God’s pow­er in man’s fragili­ty. God finds his joy in the mid­st of the chil­dren of men. He has the last word on sin. He is tru­ly the One who wash­es the feet of the lit­tle ones and pu­ri­fies their hearts. He has a pref­er­ence for those whom men them­selves re­ject. He bears the name of each one en­graved on the palm of His hand.