The divine must

 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? (1 Corinthians 3:16)

There’s a straight line between the most beloved Christian saint and 14 mothers sitting in the middle of Beach Street in Broadview, IL. That line runs straight through our hearts, and if we have the courage to listen it can save us from ourselves.

Just over 800 years ago, Francis Bernardone sat in the dilapidated church of San Damiano near Assisi wondering what to do with his heretofore dissolute life. Staring into the image of the crucified Christ, he heard or felt or intuited the voice of Christ speaking ‘in a tender and kind voice’ within him.

He didn’t immediately become St. Francics. That took more time, but he left a different person than when he entered, drawn forward by a ‘divine must’ that he knew he must obey and follow where it led.

I don’t know any of the 14 mothers who protested outside the Broadview detention center where ICE warehouses the immigrants it brutalizes on their raids around Chicago and suburbs—throwing people to the ground, piling on and cuffing them, asking questions later, if at all.

From one point of view, their protest appears futile. I doubt it will penetrate the cauterized hearts of the ICE officers whose brutalities occupy the evening news most nights.

Nor do I expect it will curb the cruelty of Trump administration officials whose deceitful tongues drip with a smug, arrogant, venomous malice, taking pleasure in the fear and suffering of human souls, as they peer down from the lofty perch from which they view the world.

I have no idea whether those moms are atheists or agnostics or Christians or Muslims or all or none of the above. But I do know this: Somehow in some way, the Voice who spoke to St. Francis at San Damiano spoke in them, and they did not dismiss the movements in their hearts.

They obeyed the internal and likely insistent ‘must’ that appeared within them, nudging their hearts from the immobility of helplessness in the face of official injustice and cruelty.

They are not alone. The Voice of San Damiano speaks everywhere, seeking a hearing in every heart. And now, as in every age, those with a heart of flesh hear the call; they feel the ‘must’ and do what love requires. Look around and listen.

A priest on the south side of Chicago drives immigrants to the rectory of his parish so they can do their laundry without risking the laundromat where ICE agents prowl.

Whistles and car horns echo along city streets as neighbors follow marauding agents, warning people to stay away. Parents and teachers keep watch and wait, protecting immigrant children and parents, providing transportation and safe harbor.

Courageous souls go into the streets to pray, protest and hold their cell phones aloft to document the truth of what is really happening, undermining the constant lies of those who seek to justify the great indecency playing out on our streets.

I feel it, too, as my wife, Dixie, and I, shopped and loaded the trunk of our car on two consecutive days with food for the pantry which is serving an overload of families as SNAP is shut down.

Like so many others, we heard something like what St. Francis heard, and we knew what we had to do, obeying the ‘must’ we felt within.

We live in difficult times when the better angels of our hearts and the soul of our nation are under assault by nihilistic forces that value power above all else.

Listening and responding, hearing and obeying the divine must—the inner voice of love, the blessed rage for justice and kindness—saves us from descending into helpless despair and the bitterness of anger and cynicism.

The inscrutable urging within is the Spirit of the One who brings good news to the poor and release to the captives. And when we heed and obey this gracious Voice, we, too, find true freedom.