AUZENNE: Choosing the harder way

During World War II, my grandfather Hillary Espree was drafted from his family’s farm in Louisiana and assigned to a colored regiment bound for the war in the Pacific. At the end of his training, he was given a few days’ leave to visit his family before shipping out.  

It was the middle of the night when his bus stopped in a small southern town. The groggy passengers were directed to leave their seats and wait inside the bus station. Like all public accommodations at the time, the waiting rooms were segregated. My grandfather was young and proud of his Army uniform. He bristled at the sight of the White soldiers going into a warm, well-appointed waiting room assigned to “Whites Only” while he was expected to wait overnight on a cold wooden bench assigned to “Coloreds.” 

My tall, fair-skinned grandfather decided to sneak into the Whites-only waiting room. He knew that the White folks in the room would assume that he was also White; he knew that in his uniform, he would blend in with the other soldiers. He also knew that if he was discovered, his uniform would not protect him from being beaten or worse. 

The next morning, he slipped onto the back of the bus and looked nervously at the White passengers up front. He was terrified one of them would look back and recognize him. But no one ever turned around, not even when one of the passengers in the back became ill. Eventually, my grandfather realized that he had nothing to fear. Once he took his seat in the back, he became invisible to everyone in the front.

It is very easy to become comfortable in places where others are excluded, and very tempting to use our advantages to gain access to those places. Eventually, we may even convince ourselves that this exclusion is necessary to protect us from people who are “not like us.”

As I write this, our country is in the midst of another bitter partisan election. Candidates from both major parties assure us that they will make me richer, safer and more powerful. Their campaign ads and rallies are carefully designed to keep us looking straight ahead to their party’s vision of peace, power and prosperity. It is tempting to choose a side, pick up a banner, and never stop to ask the question — who is not welcome here?

Like the people sitting on that bus with my grandfather all those years ago, we have a choice to make. Will we cut ties with the poor, the needy and the vulnerable in hopes that this will make our own lives better? Will we choose to ignore the folks who are suffering around us, focusing only on ourselves? Or will we take to heart the words of Jesus, who tells us that whatever we do for the poor, we have done for Him?   

Choosing to stand up for the poor means rejecting any vision of greatness that denies human dignity; it means refusing any concept of justice that ignores the rights of the unborn. It means discerning our vote through the light of the Gospel and making decisions based on principle, not party. Ultimately, it means choosing the harder, better way — the way of Christ and of His Kingdom. 

Amy Auzenne is the director of the Office of Evangelization and Catechesis.