EDGES MAGAZINE

OCTOBER 1997

THE PRIEST...

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...AND THE ADDICT

It had been an ordinary Sunday morning of the extended Easter celebration with the warmer, brighter weather cheering the crowded church. A missionary priest had spoken at all the Masses of the distant horizons for the Church’s worldwide mission in cultures strange to us, meeting with violence and unspeakable poverty. I listened with admiration as someone who’d only known the security of suburban Britain and never suspecting that I too was about to journey into a strange land within my own parish. As I cleared things away after the last Mass, a lady came rushing to the sacristy to tell me that a ‘suspicious looking character’ had just come into the church and wouldn't leave without seeing me. The papers had been awash with stories of attacks being made upon priests and she urged me to be careful. I was slightly amused that the lady positioned herself at a discreet distance to see what would happen, but when I entered the church, it was a familiar enough sight of a young person, head down in the back benches with baseball cap still in place. I inevitably knew that only one request was coming.. for money. I'd always tried to treat the young people who drifted in from the flats, or beyond the parish boundaries with understanding and respect, but the person sat in the back bench wasn't just an ‘unknown addict’ but someone I already knew.

The tramp-like appearance, the smell of human neglect and a wheezing cough prevented the spark of recognition until he told me his name and which school he’d left some years before. The last I'd heard of this young man was that he was in secure employment but in the meantime he’d met heroin and the result now stared me in the face. I was immediately struck by the genuineness, as well as the desperation of what he was saying, which was quite different to the contrived stories which are told at the presbytery door almost every day. I remember thinking that if I didn’t see him again, at least I gave him the benefit of the doubt. However, a sixth sense told me the conversation wasn't simply a cover for getting money, but the beginning of a change in his life. The one thing I didn’t suspect, is that my life and perspectives were about to be changed too.

In the past, I'd been approached by several desperate families looking for help with an addicted son or daughter and I'd confidently sent them on to the public authorities, and assured them that the family doctor would get everything sorted out. This naive belief in the concern of society for the fate of the addict was about to explode. For within 24 hours, it was not a family, but myself that was being asked to find a way out of that strange world. I made the phone calls and turned to the places where I was so sure that help was waiting and found every door was closed. I talked with a caring, family doctor, confident that he could unlock those doors, as surely society had a vested interest. He shared with me his helplessness, nowhere to refer his patients and no resources at his disposal. As the young woman at the Community Drugs Team told me more, all I could do was wait.

We waited; my friend returning almost every day with pressures mounting. Unpaid bills, eviction looming, gangs threatening and descent into the worst criminality looking more inevitable. The addiction itself worsened as his girlfriend gave him up and communication with the family almost ceased. It was then that my cautious, professional approach began to break down as I found myself as much excluded from support as the addict and occupying the dark hopelessness of that strange land. Of course, no-one would have criticised me if, at that point, I'd have given up and quietly exited the scene. I knew that this course of action would be exonerated in the eyes of men, but that I would be lost in the judgement of God, as I now stood as a missionary in a strange land. I was being asked as a Christian, and as a priest, not only to hand over the Gospel hope but, as St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, my life as well. I had to lose the comfortable assurance and distance of professionalism and stand in the darkness and desolation of that world from which there seemed to be no way out.

From seminary days, I was familiar with the writings of St. John of the Cross, the great guide to the life of prayer who spoke of guiding us through the dark night. This imagery of the night where God is found and where our steps are no longer guided by natural light, but by the light of faith within our hearts, took on unexpected meaning. My friend at this time, had no faith and no hope (natural or supernatural), only a trust which he had placed in me as a man and a priest. I had no answers and often could see no way forward, but was able to carry on because of that light within my heart, the conviction that God could be found in this addict’s world, that there is a Father who cares for us, and that within the repulsive human reality of chronic addiction, I was accompanying a child of God. This conviction never left me, even when, at times, human hopes were extinguished. We were guided through the night by a different light, the light of which John of the Cross had written,

“In this night…
I could see nothing
without light or guide
save that which burned within my heart…
This guided more surely than the light of noon.”

Over the years of my priestly ministry, I have accompanied people through the most agonising moments of facing the deaths of children, facing death as a young parent, and I'd shared their agony as a Christian and as a priest. I have known serious illness myself with its insecurity and solitude when the words of the Psalmist ring true, “ I have sunk in the mud of the deep and there is no foothold for me.” In this suffering, it is natural to be surrounded by understanding, sympathy and support but for the addict the opposite is true. As the situation worsens all sympathy, understanding and human support is gone. The world of gangs and traders is one where no human pity or compassion prevails, and the driven addict must be prepared to do anything, risk anything to supply his craving and the demands of the supplier.

Yet this wasn't a creature from a different planet, but a parishioner from down the road, a brother within the family of the church who called me ‘Father’. This family title was applied to priests because they gave life to the Christian people through the Sacraments and spoke to them of the Eternal Father from whom, “all fatherhood in heaven and earth takes its name.” I knew from 7 weeks of waiting, that if I ever stopped believing this addicted person was more than an addict, if I had refused to trust and to remain in that helplessness beside him, death would almost certainly have followed.

The ultimate risk came for myself and for the other people in the house, when in the early hours of another Sunday morning, he’d escaped from the gangs who’d put his life in danger and sought sanctuary at the church. By this time I'd realised that public provision couldn't be relied on to meet such urgent need and, with the help of Father Jim McCartney, a place in rehabilitation was eventually found. In the intervening days, I witnessed not so much the end of addiction, as the GP prescribed methadone for the interim, but the beginnings of the resurrection of the real person who’d been lost for a time in a strange world and was coming back to a new life again. This life is only possible where there is faith, hope and love which the Church was celebrating that first Easter morning when a ‘suspicious stranger’ came into the church.

Please remember and pray for this young man who continues on the path to a new life.


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. Material Copyright © 1997 THOMAS (Those on the Margins of a Society)
THOMAS is an integral part of Catholic Welfare Societies, Registered Charity number 503102