THE DESPISED
Today we come to you, Lord, we, the despised. We are not a sorry procession, but a repugnant one. We do not even arouse compassion or hatred, tenderness or sympathy. We are simply despised; we disgust people. The leper arouses compassion. The fiercest criminal stirs up hatred or terror. The mentally ill or retarded inspire pity or protectiveness. But there is no place reserved for us in the Catalogue of the works of mercy.
I, Lord, am a drug addict; for all practical purposes, I have resigned from the human race. I have lost all hope of gaining my self-control, of becoming myself again. There are other people who have not drugged, not their bodies, but their consciences and hearts. But nobody despises them. At worst they are feared.
I, Lord, am a homosexual. I don’t like women. Now and then, I go with another man. I commit fewer sins than my brother who certainly does like women and who even takes up with other men’s wives. But no one at home or outside turns their noses up at him; they don’t find him repugnant; on the contrary they even seem to admire him. But everyone, both men and women, shy away from me. And I am acceptable only to someone, like me, also feels that he is cast out of normal society.
I, Lord, am a drunkard, but a poor one. I’ve been on the bottle for many years. They don’t want me at home because they are ashamed of me, so I am left to stagger around the streets like a sick dog. When people see me coming, they hastily cross to the other side of the street. Even a beggar occasionally has the consolation of having someone approach him and, although hurriedly, put a small coin in his hand, which, as you yourself have told us, is also in your hand. But nobody comes near me; except perhaps a policeman to hustle me off to jail. Yet, Lord, there are others who also get drunk but they do it at exclusive parties in the suburbs and, because they are influential, people only laugh good-naturedly at their drunken antics. They are readily forgiven and, if necessary, excuses are found for them by their hangers-on, who cover up for them. No policeman ever lays a finger o them. I wonder- am I more repugnant when drunk than they are, just because I get loaded on cheap wine, while they do it on expensive whiskey, vodka and gin?
I, Lord, am a prostitute. I can’t claim to be one of the girls, not any more. Because now I’m old and fat and tired. I have no one now to pay the rent of an apartment for me and buy me nice things. I am the one of those who have to be satisfied with what the “customers” feel like giving them. I no longer have a nice apartment to entertain my clients in, and I don’t have money to advertise in the newspaper as a “masseuse”. I have to be satisfied with hanging around cheap bars in the slims or on the street corners in the cold and the rain, hoping that some poor wretch will be willing to pay me a few coins for the remnants of my favours. People passing in their cars look down their noses at me and quickly turn away so as not to meet my eyes. I am despised even by the high-class girls who, glittering with jewels and wrapped in furs, glide by in cars driven by their so-very-respectable “patrons”.
We and so many others whom society does not even pity; we the despised of the earth, who arouse neither hatred not even pity; we are the despised of the earth, who arouse neither hatred nor pity nor fear, but only disgust, today we come to you, who are sinless, because we believe that, if you exist, you will not despise but will even forgive us.
We aren’t trying to hide or make excuses for the sins that have caused us to be cast off by society. We only hope that perhaps you, who not only forgive but also excuse, will be able to avoid humiliating us further and to tell us, as you once told the man possessed by the devil, that saving us will let others see your glory and mercy in us. Remember, you said you came to save what was lost. And who is more lost than we who do not even arouse pity? Sometimes a ray of hope lets us dream for a moment that perhaps you may bring yourself to love even us.
“The Fount Book of Prayer” edited by Robert van de Weyer. HarperCollins Publisher.(Harper Collins Religious) Great Britain. 1993
