Afraid of the Apartment

There are a couple of benefits one enjoys when they work with the homeless. Most commonly, the outlandish stories just keep coming. While those stories are occasionally entertaining, I think the best benefit that I’ve seen is that I get to see how someone very different from myself experiences the world. For example, I was counseling someone who was coming to the end of a year-long program to work their way out of homelessness. To best understand what I’m about to say, you need to understand that it’s an intense program. Participants get up at 5 a.m. daily to start their classes, do chores, or get to their work location. They’re in a homeless shelter, but they’re doing something very different from most of the other people who spend time in that shelter.

After all of that year-long work, this person tells me that they’re scared to be in an apartment by themselves. They’re over forty years old, and they’ve been living in shelter environments since before they were a teenager. Now, because of their hard work and the tremendous support that others had poured into them, they were able to see that it could really happen. They might get a place of their own. They’d no longer be homeless. However, they were not so sure that was going to be okay for them.

I was perplexed when I heard this person come up with ways to deal with the stress and discomfort of having a home. For example, they thought that maybe they could put a cardboard box in their bedroom and no furniture. Or maybe they could spend their days in the apartment and stay in the shelter at night. And the thing is, their fears aren’t because of loneliness or anything like that. It was because it was not normal for them. It was going to be wildly unfamiliar.

For me, the concept of sleeping under a bridge does not bring warm feelings at all. I’m guessing some of you would be okay with it, and others of you would find it completely horrifying to really have no place to sleep at night. While some of that rejection of the homeless life may be due to it being unfamiliar, I argue that it’s objectively better to enjoy the creature comforts of a home over living on the streets. Many of the problems that a homeless person has are due strictly to their living environment when they’re on the streets.

So here’s the situation for us on the outside looking into this person’s life. We see that they’re in a bad situation, living in homeless shelters. We see there’s a much better alternative for them, and it’s within their reach. When this person makes the leap to exit homelessness, their life will improve. For almost every comparable circumstance, it’s objectively true.

The reason I bring all of this up is because there’s a very strong parallel going on in today’s Gospel. This reading is from chapter 5 of the Gospel of Matthew. Chapter 5 starts with Jesus teaching the Beatitudes, then he says to be salt and light, then he says that he has come to fulfill the law, then he talks about anger, lustful thoughts, divorce, oaths, turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, and finally he says to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Can you imagine actually doing all of that? I would love to be able to stand up and tell you that I have no problem doing any of it. But it’s not true. Just the part in this Gospel reading is enormously hard. For example, a man cut in line in front of me and a whole bunch of other people at Home Depot. I was really tempted to do something that would make the papers, but I just sat there and let it happen after arguing with him for a moment. I was so mad, and I remember going to confession the next day because I was not even close to turning the other cheek in that situation. I’m still a little bothered about it when I think about it, and that happened years ago.

Now, think about the benefit that I’d have if I did what Jesus said in this Gospel reading. What if I turned the other cheek? Maybe I could’ve helped him carry his stuff to his truck. Would my life have been better or worse? I’d have less seething anger if I would let it go.

I have to be a little bit careful, because I don’t want people to conclude that I’m advocating that victims of domestic violence stay in it and take the abuse. I’m not talking about things like that, and neither is Jesus. It’s not loving to enable others and participate in their bad activity.

Going back to this Gospel reading and all the difficult teachings that Jesus gives us: how does that relate to the person who was afraid of the apartment? Jesus is telling us about a better way to live. That way is wildly unfamiliar for most of us, and many hesitate before embracing his teachings. Even if God tells us that there’s a better way to live, we might wish to adhere to what we know — to what seems normal.

But what if we decide to change? Is there a way to get some help in making those changes? Yes. Something that helps us let go of what we want to cling to is a chosen season of practice. When you choose to avoid something you like, or to take on a difficult task you would not have picked, you train yourself to take on the harder teachings about how to live.

This teaching of Jesus, to be perfect as the Father is perfect, is there for our benefit. It is not something we do to earn God’s good opinion of us. It’s a better way to live.

If you are standing at the edge of a better life that does not feel like home, start by telling the truth about the fear. The apartment is better. It also does not feel normal. Both of those can be true. Write that down. You do not have to pretend you are grateful yet.

The next step is smaller than moving all the furniture in. Do not put the cardboard box in the bedroom as a way to keep the old life going inside the new one. Spend one night in the actual place. If that is too much, spend one evening without going back to what used to be familiar. Unfamiliar is not the same as worse. The old map will call the good thing a threat. That is the map talking, not the apartment.

If what you are being asked to leave is actually dangerous — a violent house, a person who harms you — leave. This article is not telling you to stay and turn the other cheek toward someone who is hurting you. Jesus is not asking you to enable that. Get help. Call 988 or local emergency services if you are in danger now.

If what you are leaving is only familiar misery, ask one person who can see the apartment from the outside to walk the first week with you. The person I was counseling had already done a year of work. The last fear was not laziness. It was a nervous system that had never lived in a quiet room. You do not talk that out of existence in one conversation. You still take the key.

This is a pastoral reflection, not clinical care and not a substitute for it. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 988 or local emergency services.

Drawn from a homily first preached in 2023.