Should I have let him in?
Craughwell, Thomas J.
SHOULD I HAVE LET HIM IN? THOMAS J. CRAUGHWELL A LEAP OF FAITH Late one night last spring, when the rain was falling heavily, one of my neighbors buzzed a vagrant into our building. It was 10:30...
...He was a drunken vagrant and the idea of bringing him into my house scared me...
...I know that admission does not put me on the side of the saints...
...It makes me feel good...
...The possibility that the saints were afraid of the poor, of the stranger, of the sick, of the dying is not addressed in the stories...
...I certainly don't have a solution for homelessness and poverty," I think to myself, "but at least I can do this much...
...I know what I was supposed to do last spring...
...They refused to let him into their apartment and refused to let him camp out in the hallway...
...And finally, they "escorted" him out of the building, back into the night and into the rain...
...His eyelids were heavy and his mouth hung open...
...They would not let him wander upstairs to the other floors of the building...
...Of course not...
...His dark hair and his ill-fitting clothes were soaked...
...Then he knocked...
...He called something back to me, but I couldn't understand anything that he said...
...I heard the whole exchange through my door, but I didn't come out until I heard the sound of something falling down the stairs...
...Do you need a hand...
...He was very thin, a bit on the tall side...
...Everything's under control...
...Besides, the exchange between the Roman officer and the beggar ended so well, with Christ appearing wrapped in half of Martin's cloak and praising Martin to the angels...
...Perhaps that is why there is so much misery in the world: even people who want to be of good will have trouble overcoming their fears of the men and women who need our help...
...Her husband, Bill, was at the turning of the stairs trying to lift the stranger...
...They tried to rouse the Polish family downstairs to come and act as interpreters...
...They THOMAS J. CRAUGHWELL is a copywriter for the Book of the Month Club and a free-lance author...
...Martin of Tours dividing his cloak and giving half of it to a naked beggar...
...In fact, just that he managed to get into my building, that he got through the intercom system and the electronically controlled door locks, that he stood at my door and asked to come in, unnerved me...
...What was there to be afraid of...
...They tried to find out who the man wanted to see, where he wanted to go...
...Later, when I could read, I was moved by the story of St...
...he repeated...
...It is a terrible thing to know that you have done something unkind and to realize that you would do the same unkindness all over again...
...It seems to me now that true charity heroic, saintly charity is not so much an expression of compassion as it is a very personal, very risky leap of faith...
...At Mass, I give money to the special collections for the poor parishes and for kitchens and shelters for the homeless...
...The beggar looks pitiful, helpless, harmless...
...It was 10:30 p.m...
...I could hear the stranger panting and muttering in Polish as he stood before my apartment door...
...Since that spring night, it has occurred to me that what is missing in the stories of heroic sanctity is fear...
...In fact, it puts me solidly in the camp of the character from Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities who says that the only way to live in New York is to "insulate, insulate, insulate...
...The man himself was sprawled half on the landing, half on the steps to the foyer...
...Today, I say that I admire the charity of Father Bruce Ritter taking homeless kids into his Bowery apartment, and Mother Teresa picking up the dying from the streets of Calcutta and carrying them home...
...For the first time since I had moved into this apartment, I was uneasy about my neighborhood...
...About that time, Carol and Bill, my neighbors across the hall opened their door and came out to see what was going on...
...But there is no way of knowing the outcome of an act of charity...
...Then we went back into our apartments and locked the doors...
...And if that man came back tonight I still would not open my door...
...Here was someone at my door who needed my help and I would not open to him...
...he called back, surprised...
...I felt vulnerable and at risk...
...He may have been entirely harmless, a nice quiet drunk who just wanted to pass out on my couch...
...I stopped what I was doing and listened...
...On the streets and in the subways of New York, I hand out loose change to those who ask me until it is all gone...
...My reasons for keeping my door shut and locked were purely selfish I had no way of telling if this stranger was disoriented or violent...
...I'm sorry," I said...
...When I was a little boy, it made me sad to think of Mary and Joseph wandering through the cold dark streets of Bethlehem looking for a place to spend the night...
...and "Good job...
...I don't know you...
...It is a leap that I still cannot force myself to make...
...If I had let him in, I would have been taking a risk...
...I used to indulge in a sentimental fantasy that I was the only person in Bethlehem who would give the Holy Family shelter and so the Christ Child was born in my room, in my bed...
...It makes me feel that I am doing something constructive...
...Bill closed the doors firmly and bounded back up the stairs where we three stood in the hall saying things like "Some night...
...I have not resolved to give shelter to the next vagrant who makes his way into my building, but I have learned something about myself and about charity...
...sometimes he is even a bit attractive...
...No...
...Look at the depiction of St...
...What could that man have answered that would have made me unlock the door and let him in...
...Nope," my neighbor said...
...Then, in the morning, we could have found out where he belonged...
...Bill made sure the man was not hurt, helped him to his feet, and half walked, half wrestled him out of our building...
...and I was putting my clothes together for work the next day when I heard someone making slow and stumbling progress up the stairs, dragging something heavy behind him...
...If I knew that it would all end well a vision of Christ would not have been necessary I might have unlocked my door...
...I'm sorry...
...After that night last spring, I felt that I might as well have done nothing at all...
...Carol was standing near my door...
...Did you ever read that plague victims scared St...
...Yes...
...acted as if they had handled situations like this a dozen times before...
...There was no question in my mind that I would not have allowed that man into my home and let him spend the night there...
...I called out...
...Martin and the beggar, from El Greco's masterpiece to the banal illustration in a children's Lives of the Saints...
...But I did not do that because I was afraid of being hurt, or robbed, or even of suddenly becoming personally responsible for one of New York's thousands of homeless, if that is what he turned out to be...
...Roch half out of his mind...
...Everything that I have ever learned as a Catholic, or professed to believe as a Catholic, told me that I should have let him in, but when the faith came up against New York survival instincts, the faith lost...
...I was supposed to let that man in, get him into the shower, give him some dry clothes, some aspirin and coffee, and put him to bed...
...And if you study the paintings and statues of the saints performing their acts of charity, you see that they were not afraid because there was nothing frightening in the people who were receiving their assistance...
...But I could not tell that from the way he looked or acted and I could not understand much of what he said...
...I asked...
...and other dumb and inappropriate things...
...It was a stupid question...
...I had felt safe in my home and if I had never before thought of my apartment building as a fortress, now I felt as if my defenses had been breached...
...Worse yet, I felt like a heartless son of a bitch...
...Back inside, I felt relieved and safe, but still a little edgy and also a little ashamed...
...Who is it...
...and "Well, have a good evening...
...When the man's plastic trash bag filled with odds and ends ripped open, they fetched him a new one...
Vol. 116 • December 1989 • No. 22
