Home of the Pure Heart, House of the Dying – by Rafael SW
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House of the Dying
You are the gift that keeps on screaming. Your parents don’t want you, and rarely do you see your father, even less so once he dies. They name you Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu because Albanians don’t struggle to pronounce X, like pirate treasure in the middle of your maps. It’s 1910, though your birthday is eclipsed by August 27, when at last they drown you in God.
God is always with you. In sunsets and two-headed black eagles, in little ashtrays shaped like underground bunkers, and in the words they say over your father’s grave. His wake excavates a hole for your family to fall into, destitute. Your mother knowing no one. The church is nursery school with the oldest of fables. You’re eight, old enough to commit yourself to a religious life. Go on a pilgrimage a decade later; you won’t ever see your family again.
The world is wilder than you first thought. It’s 1943, and the Bengal famine brings death to three million people. A few years later you watch the Great Calcutta Killings. Hindus and Muslims riot in the streets while the British look for somewhere to wipe their hands. Start a mission. Teach suffering to the impoverished, baptise without permission the dying.
A cancer-ridden lady says to you, ‘Please tell Jesus to stop kissing me.’ You give her aspirin.
You befriend Haitian president Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier - round-faced figurehead, famous for selling drugs and the body parts of his subjects. You meet Charles Keating, a fraudster who goes on to cost the American government 3 billion dollars. Both men donate heavily to your cause. Keating is so impressed with your audacity he gives you a jet. You love the poor. Theirs is a noble suffering. The US tells you of the embezzled funds. You refuse to return the jet.
Those who lived like animals under your care, die like animals, suffering and neglected.
Where is my faith? Even deep down ... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness ... If there be God – please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.
You win the Nobel Peace Prize. Finally, a chance to save the wider world from the greatest destroyer of peace today: abortion. After the righteous retribution of AIDS, you can’t think what’s taking God so long to abolish contraception. You stand under bright lights and teach geniuses about murder by the mother. This isn’t even news to some. Some don’t even clap.
You die. Abortion clinics are closed down across America, or bombed. Albania names an airport after you, India names a train. In the distance your five thousand daughters weep.
Home of the Pure Heart
You are the gift that keeps on giving. Your parents don’t expect you, still your mother offers joyous prayers to heaven. Your father – a successful merchant and political activist – kisses you with a scratchy moustache. They name you Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu as you are a rosebud, a little flower. It is the day of your baptism that you consider your true birthday.
God is always with you. In sunrises and golden eagles, in handmade silver crosses and in the words they say over your father’s grave. From his untimely teachings you learn the nobility of poverty, how to speak love with a smile. You’re eighteen, old enough to leave home and join the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. Praying at the shrine of the Black Madonna of Vitina-Letnice will give you the final resolution to make a family of the world.
The world is wider than you first thought. From Ireland to India, you carry fresh faith within you like a new name. Teach at St Teresa’s where you learn Bengali from stern women with stone eyes and where the Himalayan Mountains peer over cups of cloudy tea each morning. Start a mission, then another. Teach charity to the impoverished, faith to the dying.
A blessed cancer patient shares in the passion of Christ. Her suffering is kisses from Jesus.
You meet Pope Paul VI. He flies to India for you. Your hands are cracking; where others see sunspots you see leper-sores. He is a Pope but still you tell him you’re too busy with your work among the poor to meet with him. He is so impressed with your audacity, your god-beneath-the-skin, that he gives you his car. You auction off the Lincoln to raise further funds. More missions. You have thousands of sisters under your tutelage and love them all as one.
Those who lived like animals, under your care, die like angels, loved and wanted.
We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
You win the Nobel Peace Prize. Finally, a chance to save the world from their intimate genocides. A chance to use the $192,000 fund and ceremonial banquet for the poor in India. These same poor will mass at your funeral, at your canonisation. Both will be soon. Nobel laureates ask how to promote world peace. You tell them go home and love your family.
You die. An all-female flight crew lands in Saudi Arabia. Your medallion heals cancer. Your picture heals tumours. Even the Pope, in front of 100,000 pilgrims, calls you his mother. ▼
Image: Paweesit on Flickr
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