Sins of Omission

Our curate’s lovely first Mass had an unfortunate postscript: a young homeless gentleman (not the one I’ve mentioned before) who arrived at the end of the service and with whom I had a lengthy conversation, about his problems, what might improve his situation, places where he might find a ‘community’ to be part of – I thought of Pilsdon in Dorset – and his suicidal thoughts. ‘I know how I would do it’, he said. We agreed that we’d meet again forty-five minutes later when I’d had time to go home and fetch a sleeping bag, some food and the details of Pilsdon. I didn’t see him at the appointed time, nor for an hour afterwards, nor any other time since.

It was only when he failed to appear that it occurred to me that his thinking of suicide might have been more immediate than I realised, and had I not been as tired after the service I might have been more alert as to the best thing to do. There hasn’t been a report of a suicide that might have been him in the newspaper, so I hope nothing happened, but that isn’t conclusive, and it could be that I was his last port of call on the journey and the last to let him down.

What I have resolved as a result is that, in similar circumstances, I won’t have this sort of conversation on my own. I tend to think it’s my job to do, which it is, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have another view brought to bear on a situation, which would do the lay leadership of the church good, and mitigate my mistakes.