"Do you know where you will go after you die?", the young man shouted from a street corner.
The old man heard the question, though the street preacher was not yet in sight. He sighed and muttered something about the need for imprecatory Psalms to become great again and continued walking.
His name was Joseph, and he was frail in his old age. In the summer, his hair was white like a mountain’s peak. His face contained a multitude of wrinkles that reminded you of dry riverbeds in the forest. Each wrinkle told a story, some joyful, but many were formed during times of deep tragedy.
His back was hunched from the years of kneeling, not out of piety but desperation. The burdens the world had placed on his shoulders and the crosses God had seen fit for him to carry were now visible in the arch of his back. Yet, he was not a hopeless man.
His life was hopeful, but not the kind of hope found in movies or cheap novels where we all know the hero will win in the end. His hope was a deep hope, the kind of hope that only thrives in uncertainty. It was a hope that lived in his bones, a hope he had only acquired after many broken spirits and trials in which his soul was mended and reset. This kind hope is often noticed in the limp of the elderly who valiantly shuffle their way to the communion rail and kneel like soldiers weary from a war that never ends. Joseph was such a man. Weak in his body, but strong in his spirit.
On his hand was a golden wedding ring. It was the only piece of gold he owned. He didn't like gold, said it only brought a man trouble. But his wife, as wives are capable of doing, was able to convince him otherwise. She melted his will and encouraged him to make an exception for their wedding. Ironically, it was marriage, which also brings a man trouble, that ultimately led him to compromise and buy a gold ring for their wedding.
This was Joseph, a representative of men who are often forgotten by both the world and the church but without which no church or world can stand or spin. Joseph lived the life of an unknown saint. All who knew him respected him, but they did not know him. Now in his old age, any memories of his valiant actions or unexpected sins had gone to the grave with the passing of his family and friends. He was nothing more than a memory in a body. He was alone.
Joseph was getting closer to the young preacher. The corner of his parish came into view as he approached the young preacher. All one had to do was lean to the left a bit and peek around the young preacher, and he could see the steps leading up to a pair of dark red doors which opened into the sanctuary. Hoping to not be disturbed by the preacher, Joseph lowered his head, put his hand in his pocket, touched a bead of his rosary, said a silent prayer as he passed the young man, and breathed a sigh of relief. When suddenly, the preacher looked at him.
"You, old man! What about you? You're near the end of your life. Do you know where you will go when you die?"
The old man was startled. He did not expect his prayer to draw the attention of the zealous street preacher, whose posture, demeanor, and tone were a cumulative case for the justice of purgatory. If there ever was an argument against "quick prayers" to heaven, this was it. Joseph couldn't help but wonder if his prayer caused this undesired encounter, but there was no time for contemplating the role of prayer and the problem of street preachers.
"No, but I know where I'm going today," replied the old man.
Perplexed but not deterred, the young man, continued his inquisition, "What about eternity? Can you spare five minutes? Your soul may be in jeopardy, and it may be today that God has seen fit for your soul to be saved!" Like a stranger at the bar who wants you to take a shot of some filthy and regretful concoction, so this street preacher was relentless in his hope that old man Joseph would drink in the words the he was proclaiming.
The old man took a deep breath, and reluctantly stopped to engage in what well-intentioned people see as a “Socratic dialog”, but in actuality is more like a Socratic street fight. Joseph began to remove his hand from his pocket to clean his glasses, when his rosary got caught on his wedding ring, escaped from his pocket, and onto the sidewalk…
photo credit: Photo by Myriam Zilles on Unsplash