December 26, 1999
The R Train rattled and hummed northward at 11:36 p.m. on Christmas Eve. How exciting to be on my way to Midnight Mass at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Next to Bethlehem or the Vatican, this seemed to me the holiest place on this holiest of nights.
As my decision to go was very last-minute, I was a bit underdressed for the affair. Jeans. Leather jacket. Knit wool cap. But no matter, no one is turned away from God’s house, especially on his son’s birthday. I did make sure I had some cash in my wallet so as not to feel like a heel when the collection plate came around.
I always carry something to read on the subway. This night, it was the latest copy of The New Yorker. In its "Talk of the Town" section, there was an interview with a gentleman named Steve Banks who works as an advocate for the City’s homeless. "The highest calling is to do justice," he said. "To trouble the comfortable and comfort the troubled."
Such a beautiful, humbling sentiment. Brief. Uttered by a stranger. But so completely moving. I was only flipping through the pages of a magazine to pass time, but when I walked into that one phrase—"To trouble the comfortable and comfort the troubled"—it was like I’d blindly rounded the corner and smacked into wisdom. Immediately I began thinking about the direction my life was headed, and I began to question the real value of the things towards which I was spending all of my energy.
"Wow!" I thought. If a magazine article could awaken me like that, I couldn’t wait to see what would develop at Saint Patrick’s.
Emerging from the subway at 60th and 5th Avenue, I was greeted with a blast of frigid air and the site of the magnificent Plaza Hotel. Bathed in white light, it looked like a perfect giant gingerbread house. It was absolutely beautiful—my favorite building in New York. But who would pay a thousand dollars or more a night to stay there? I mean, I know people do, but why? From every sympathetic angle, it still seemed pretty wacky to me.
Strolling south towards the cathedral, I passed FAO Schwarz. Its lights were dim, but I could still picture all the incredible toys that had been carried out of its doors during the few weeks preceding this night. Tomorrow morning, thousands of children in nice warm homes would tear away pretty paper to find awesome dolls and robots and video games. Then I remembered something I’d read in The Village Voice a couple days earlier. One in three children in New York City lived below the poverty level. You don’t hear about that too often down in Silicon Alley, where the only level talked about is the first-day closing price after an IPO.
I kept walking. The icy wind blasted my face and made my nose and eyes run.
In front of Bergdorf-Goodman sat a dejected homeless guy covered in blankets of many colors. The poor wretch was wearing a Santa hat. Further down the avenue, in front of a display window at Tiffany’s, another homeless guy lay buried beneath another mound of discarded wool. He was asleep—at least I hope he was just asleep—and on top of him lay an uneaten large soft pretzel, undoubtedly the gift of some benevolent passer-by. When the man awoke on Christmas Day—(again, assuming he wasn’t dead)—he would be able to truly enjoy a breakfast at Tiffany’s. In spite of myself, I laughed at that thought.
Because of the cold and because it was almost midnight, I picked up the pace. And in a moment, there it was. Perhaps the grandest house of worship in the country. The moon was three-quarters full and perfectly suspended between St. Patrick’s twin spires; it looked like a yellow football sailing between two holy goalposts. A crowd of the faithful was pouring in, and I took my place in line.
How exciting! I was really doing this. I’ve never gone to church on my own. As a kid, I was an altar boy every Saturday night, but only because my dad made me do it. Once I got to college and away from him, I stopped going. But that night, having been on my own for over a decade, something clicked in my head. The spirit had moved me and, while I couldn’t say specifically why, I just knew that this was the exact spot I needed to be at that moment.
"Alright, have your invitations ready folks!" one of the police officers directing the flow of human traffic shouted.
"What did he just say?" I asked the woman in front of me.
"He said to get out our invitations."
"But I don’t have an invitation."
"Then you can’t get in."
I gave up my place in line to go talk to the cop.
"The mass is by invite only" the officer said with a professional countenance. "I’m sorry, but if you don’t have an invitation, I can’t let you go through."
"So what you’re saying is that there’s no room at the inn?" I replied.
The cop chuckled. "Yeah, I guess so."
How sad. It was late. It was cold. Because of the holiday train schedule, it was going to take me an hour to get back to Jersey City. So much for having to be at that exact spot at that exact moment.
"Since when do you need an invitation to go to church?!" I thought as I quick-timed it back to the subway station. It was now 12:15—officially Christmas Day—and I was getting angry. (Not as angry as the insane homeless woman at the platform who warned another homeless person "You’d better not fuck with me honey ‘cause I got a black belt in karate", but angry nonetheless.) I wasn’t just mad at Cardinal O’Connor for shutting me out of his church. I wasn’t just mad at the folks who squandered huge wads of cash on jewelry at Tiffany’s or on stays at the Plaza or on stupid toys that their kids would be bored of within a week, while other human beings literally froze and starved to death in the streets. I was mad at the whole setup. The whole way that Christmas isn’t the least bit about Christ and how nobody gives a damn for anybody else whatever day it is. And I was mad at myself for not knowing what I could do about any of it. I mean, I like my warm apartment and my fridge full of food and some money in my pocket just like everybody else. Should I give those things up? And besides, I don’t have all that much to begin with. What good could I really do? It isn’t like I’m some Rockefeller who could pay for some new shelter or hospital.
"To trouble the comfortable and to comfort the troubled." The words from the magazine came back to me. That guy wasn’t just talking about the super rich. Most of us are comfortable in our own way. Just because I’m not part of the jet-set doesn’t mean I haven’t been comfortable. It’s easy to look at the joker who spends a thousand bucks on a room at the Plaza and condemn him for not giving that money to some good cause. But how many times have I given even twenty dollars to a charity? Or volunteered my free time to help a stranger? Or done anything besides worry about how much I’ll earn with my next promotion or about when I’ll get time to workout or to write, or which type of cereal—hot or cold—I should eat for breakfast. I’m all about me all the time. How have I comforted the troubled?
How have I comforted the troubled? The more I thought about it, the more ashamed I felt. But with that shame came an equal measure of inspiration. Fame and fortune are elusive goals, far-off at best. But the rewards that come from living outside of myself—or perhaps I should say "beyond myself"—can be had now. An overwhelming feeling of caring bubbled up inside of me and stayed there. There was a reason I journeyed to Saint Patrick’s that night. Only the wisdom I found wasn’t inside an old stony cathedral. Rather, it was always there, waiting to be discovered, inside my young stony heart.
Broadway Jim Sosnicky