On the Feast Day of St. Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes

On the Feast Day of St. Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes

“I don’t like it when people look at me with sarcasm.”  Out of sentences that tumbled into each other without making sense, this one had emerged.  A regular guest at Manna House who struggles mightily with mental illness was becoming increasingly agitated.  His inner pain was in his eyes and that one sentence that stood out with its truth.

Kathleen had tried to sit next to him and talk gently with him.  So many times before, this has worked; but not this morning.  As he sat at a table in the house, his voice grew louder and his words more threatening.  We decided it would be best to ask him to leave before he became even more agitated.

“This is the coffee house” he said over and over again when he eventually stood up after several minutes of Kathleen and I asking him to leave.  Then we formed a kind of moving wall and guided him to the door.  He walked backwards, facing us, as we directed him out of the house toward the front gate.  As he walked, he angrily denounced us, demanded from another volunteer that he be paid the money that he was owed, and then yelled indecipherable phrases into our faces.  Finally he seemed to give in and went across the street.  There for the next thirty minutes or so he stood, staring back at Manna House, before he went off to who knows where.

            When we open on Thursday, this guest will likely be back.  We will welcome him in for coffee once again.  He’s already on the shower list.  He may have a good morning (which is most of the time), which means he is able to make it through the hours that we are open.  But where does he go when Manna House is not open?

            Today is the Feast of St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.  This guest with mental illness is not a lost cause.  But I’m wondering if our nation that so neglects and brutalizes people who have mental illness is a lost cause.  It is estimated that about one third of people experiencing homelessness struggle with mental illness.  Nationally that means at least 250,000 people who are on the streets have a mental illness.  St. Jude, pray for us!

            Women’s showers had ended about thirty minutes before.  The shower room had already been cleaned.  The morning was winding down.  Ben asked Kathleen if she would talk with a woman who had just arrived and needed a shower.  Kathleen went out and spoke with the woman who was being served some coffee. 

A few minutes later, Kathleen came back into the house with the woman.  Kathleen and Ann proceeded to get the woman ready for a shower.  On Sunday she had been beat up and then raped.  The police had taken her to the Med where she spent time in the emergency room.  Then she was released back to the streets.  No shower, no clean clothes.  Both of her eyes were blackened and she had a gash across her face from where she had been hit. 

            This woman is not a lost cause.  But our nation might be.  A study, “No Safe Place: Sexual Assault in the Lives of Homeless Women” found that “92% of a racially diverse sample of homeless mothers had experienced severe physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lives, with 43% reporting sexual abuse in childhood and 63% reporting intimate partner violence in adulthood.”  The same study notes, “For homeless women with mental illnesses, rape appears to be a shockingly normative experience.”  St. Jude, pray for us!

            Today, Jesus in his parable of the judgment of the nations would say, “I was mentally ill, and you did not offer welcome and healing.  I was a woman and you raped me and then threw me back to the streets.  I was homeless and you did not offer me a home, not even a free shelter.”  And our nation will say back to him, “When did we see you mentally ill?  When did we see you as a raped woman?  When did we see you homeless?”  And Jesus will say, “as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment” (see Matthew 25:31-46).  In other words, our nation will be a lost cause.  St. Jude, pray for us!