Church Sends Christ Into Cold
Jimmy Breslin
January 15, 2004
In the late afternoon, the freezing wind nearly cut off Christ's bare ankles and feet. When he was killed in Jerusalem, the temperature was in the 60s and sandals were common.
One of the people he loves the most was just carried out on a gurney from a shelter on West 23rd Street. The man on the gurney looked up with a face the color of gray paste. Orange straps kept him on the gurney.
"He's all right," a homeless man from the shelter said. "He just had a seizure." He stood alongside the gurney and smoked a cigarette. The air clawed his face.
The worst of winter fell onto the city and hunted through the streets for the helpless, for the defenseless, for anybody too poor to have a roof. For every other act, a blackout, the fire and explosion in the sky, the great city goes on. People come and go, they talk. They go to work. The homeless can go through the most miserable of nights on the streets or under the archways or riding subways. But cold arrives in silence to torture. Last night was the start of what might be the worst run of cold weather the homeless have had in this city. It was Christ's moment to be among them.
At 6:30 last night, he came out of the first darkness and swirling snow and into St. Patrick's Cathedral. There were homeless people asleep with their foreheads against the pew in front. They had hoods from rough, old winter jackets pulled over their heads. It was difficult to see how many homeless were in the church because there are 14 great pillars that obstruct the view of the rows along the side aisles, where most like to sleep.
Sleeping in the pews on the main aisle is too conspicuous and thus is an uneasy resting place.
Christ slipped into a pew on the side aisle on the left-hand side. He looked like all the others who had nothing. In fact, he had less. At least the other homeless people had plastic garbage bags filled with whatever they owned. Christ sat with nothing.
When he gave up his life for this religion, it was a belief that honored the blind, the destitute, the lame. Now he sat in a church and looked ahead, far ahead, over the many rows, to an altar that sat under a steeple and was dedicated to gold.
He looked up at a ceiling hundreds of feet high.
At the last pew, two ushers in red jackets stood facing the main front doors. For a while, a city cop was with them. When he left, another came in. Their hand radios kept saying something.
Christ looked and reflected. A man's forehead slipped off the bench in front of him and he woke with a start. He put his head down again and soon was back to sleep. A woman with a blue wool hat on talked to herself. Far ahead, in the front of the church, a woman walked around, pulling a suitcase on squeaky wheels.
They were in a palace away from the cold, the most famous church of the Catholics in America. It is supposed to represent the Lord's religion.
On this cold night, one of the ushers said that the church closes at 8:35 p.m. Exactly.
And at a little before 8:30, a man on the right side stood up, yawned, stretched and then gathered his plastic bags and walked down the aisle.
From far up in front, a woman pulled her suitcase on loud wheels.
At 8:35, a cop and an usher walked around the church telling homeless people that the church was closing and they had to go out into the cold.
"Nobody can stay?" an usher was asked.
"Church closes," he said.
In the last row on the left side, a man stirred, then sat bolt upright. He put on a blue wool hat and lifted a backpack that he carefully put on. He had two heavy shirts to fight the cold. He started out. People were coming from the darkness on the side aisles. Soon, the church was empty.
Christ slipped out of a pew and followed the other homeless people out of the church. The ushers and cops didn't have the slightest idea who he is, and nobody running the huge church he was leaving knows anything about him, either. They claim they do. They say they pray to him and try to act in his behalf. Last night, he was asked to leave and go out into the cold, just like any of the other homeless.
"Watch yourself out there, it's getting very slippery," a cop said to all of them who looked like Christ, and one of them was.
