Grief Street

of a snoring husband during such orations. But today, Father Declan was filled with the sorrow of knowing Friday’s crimes; filled, too, with an eloquent rage created through his long night.
    I wondered. Did he weaken during the raging night? Did he drink?
    “Sometimes when men are killed, the murder is done by no single hand,” Father Declan began, his voice more somber than I had ever known it. “Sometimes man is killed by the impotence and silence of many. And do we not see this in our criminal age, this time of scoundrels and cynics and intoxicating moral mediocrity and willful ignorance?
    “Yes, my friends, ours is an age of great crime. I am suspicious of rosy romanticism, but still I must tell you that I remember a day when we knew hunger, yet hope as well; when we were uncertain, yet trusted in the unknown future; when there was in these teeming immigrant streets of ours privation, yet spiritual plenitude. It is true, it is true.
    “I knew myself of a young girl called Brigid, whose ancestors preceded my own in the same difficult journey—from County Donegal in Ireland to New York. Brigid was called to join her family already arrived from the other side. In Brigid’s case, an aunt and uncle who had earlier made their way to this very neighborhood of ours, poor and rough at the time as ever. But upon arrival, young Brigid only discovered her family’d been murdered in their sleep, by someone in ferocious want of their meager possessions.
    “Knowing not what to do, except that she had no desire of returning to Donegal, Brigid trudged all over town. In a short time, she found the better streets of the strange city of New York, where she looked for work as a scullery maid in some great home. For days, she knew an unsuccessful time of it, sleeping shamefully where she could, in doorways and such hidden places.
    “Tired from roaming, and hungry and near delirium, she stopped one afternoon at a church. And there spent her last coins offering up a prayer of hope for her own lost cause to St. Jude, and another for the soul of purgatory closest to heaven. Afterward, in the street outside, a handsome young man came up to her and said, ‘I understand you need a job.’ The young man handed her a calling card, with a fancy address embossed on it. ‘Go to this place at once,’ he said, ‘and the lady of the house will take care of you.’ Well, and that’s just what Brigid did.
    “She rang the bell of a great house in Madison Avenue, and a sad-faced woman came downstairs to admit her. Though Brigid had presented the calling card, the woman expressed surprise that anyone had directed her to the house—for she lived alone in but two rooms of the place, without family or friend, and hardly needed help. Disappointed again, Brigid was turning to leave when she noticed a huge oil painting over the fireplace. ‘But, that is the very man who gave me the card,’ she said, pointing.
    “Quite startled, the woman murmured, ‘That is my son who died some years ago.’ She took Brigid to her heart then, and raised her as her own daughter.
    “Now Brigid, you see, had in her an acute hope. She had—despite grief and desperation, despite the murders of all she had in this world of family—a way of seeing herself through fear and hunger and cold. She had her faith and its teachings, her Catholic religion—which is, above all, a method of seeing.
    “If we—now, in this criminal age of scoundrels and mediocrities—lose our faith, then how may we see?
    “My friends, we know that murderous grief will surely have its say. As indeed it has, on this day we celebrate the triumph of regeneration over death. But will we listen to what this grief tells us...?
    “Will we listen to our Catholic hearts? And practice what has been put there by the Holy Church? Will we accept that all humanity makes one family, one generation to the next, and that each of us is an equal child of God? Will we live each day in strivance toward such civilization?
    “I offer two thoughts. The first from St. Patrick, who warns that civilization may pass in a moment, like a cloud, or like smoke scattered by the wind. The second thought from myself: if we are to be saved from this criminal age, it will not be the work of policemen, but of saints that dwell within policemen’s hearts.”

    Declan Byrne stood in a patch of shade at the top of the outside stairs, greeting parishioners as they poured out from the church dressed in their holiday