Glenn Gannon - As a homeless advocate

 

Glenn Gannon - As a homeless advocate

 

As a homeless advocate and homeless ambassador for the Dublin Simon Community for twenty years I have given talks to almost every secondary school and college in Dublin and its environs. I not only talk about homelessness, but also about topics that the teachers often cannot really discuss in any great detail, such as suicide or alcohol and drug dependency. They are tricky subjects, but the teachers always say they are glad I touched on them in as light a way as possible.

 

‘How do you know so much about homelessness?’ a student invariably asks. To which I reply, ‘Because I was homeless for over three years.’ Then the room usually becomes silent. So I tell them I’m not embarrassed by it. It happened for many reasons, but it happened and I had to work very hard to escape from the black hole of depression that homelessness is.

 

‘How do you stay positive?’ a student asked me one time. Well, when you spend your days wandering around the city with long hair and a beard you become invisible and so you bed down in laneways and suffer all that life and the weather can throw at you. But you have to cling to some positivity. So, no matter where I had tried to sleep the night before I always awoke with a prayer of gratitude on my lips. Gratitude for waking at all, as life on the streets is very short. So, I’d pray to God and thank him for another day in which I could try to make my life a bit better and thank him for blessing and protecting my family who were young at the time. The pain of not seeing them was sometimes unbearable, so I’d drink cheap wine to try to forget, and pretty soon I couldn’t remember what it was I was trying to forget.

 

I used to tell people I was going to write a book. Some would laugh and wish me well. I would sit outside the chapel at John’s Lane and Mass-goers all knew me and came to talk to me. I blessed them all and they would put Miraculous Medals around my neck. There was my positivity. There was my God. In all these kind souls, I found loving hearts and caring eyes that looked upon me with real affection. They were my comfort sent to me by God. I truly believe that. My most treasured moments were when the chapel was empty. I would sit quietly at the back of the church because I felt I was not worthy to sit near the blessed statues, and I would quietly pray. I eventually got off the streets and, with the help of Sr Consillio, got sober and set about writing that book, which became Miracle Man: From Homeless to Hollywood (Veritas, 2019). It is my pride and joy, not because it is a learned book, it’s not, but because it proves to the world that with a little faith in God as small as a mustard seed you can move mountains.

 

My dad was a great man for debates when we were young. You could ask him anything and he could speak knowledgably on any subject. ‘Where was God?’ the world asked after the Second World War. Over seven million Jews were slaughtered at the hands of the Nazi war machine, and millions more of many nationalities also lost their lives. The straight answer to that has to be that God was in the camps with the condemned. Great stories of heroism and self-sacrifice emerged with the liberation of the death camps. My father, though an Irish citizen, was one of the British soldiers who actually went into those camps, and for the rest of his life he suffered terrible trauma from what he had seen. As an inquisitive young boy, I would ask him about the camps and he could not bear to discuss it. He would tell me of his exploits as a tank man in North Africa but he would not speak of the horrors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. His eyes would fill with tears and he would bless himself.

 

When I became a young man and had done my own research, I tried in vain again to broach the subject and again his eyes would fill up and he would only nod to say no. I told my dad that I believed that God was in the camps. My more learned and mostly atheistic friends would challenge me when the subject would arise: Why do I believe that God was in the camps? I told them, ‘Because where else would Jesus be but amongst the innocent and the condemned?’ For was not Christ himself innocent and was Christ not condemned and did he not suffer hours of agony and torment upon that cross? Where else would he be then but praying with them as the hour of their death approached, just as he himself had prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

 

Wherever there is suffering and tragedy, there you will find Jesus of Nazareth. It must be so. It cannot be any other way. If you look at the saints throughout history, they almost all suffered. All Christ’s disciples bar one died horrible deaths. ‘Why?’ my friends ask. My answer is simple: look to the life and death of Christ and his apostles. Jesus was condemned. Jesus was tortured. Jesus was tried, convicted and crucified. Where did the disciples go? They ran away. They hid in an upstairs room that was bolted shut. They were terrified. All the gospels agree that this is what happened. And rightly so. Their leader was dead. he romans and the Sanhedrin and all their spies were looking for the disciples to kill all of them to quell this new religion. Why then did these twelve scared men suddenly to a man decide to throw open the doors of their only sanctuary against certain death to go out into the streets and proclaim that Jesus was alive and that they had seen him? Logic dictates that Jesus was amongst them when they were suffering and he made himself known to them physically. He let them see and touch his wounds. This is not idle guesswork; this is documented fact. Every one of those disciples no longer feared death. Why? Because they had seen death conquered by the risen Christ. 

 

How can we be sure of this? Twenty-first century people demand proof. So, when I do my school talks as a homeless advocate across every school in Dublin I give them proof. Jesus said of Doubting Thomas, "You believe because you have seen me and touched my wounds. Blessed are they who have not seen and believe.’ The proof I speak of to this generation can be found on Google or YouTube. There exists a piece of linen that is housed in the Turin Cathedral. It is without a doubt the shroud of a crucified man of about thirty years of age. He is taller than the men from Jerusalem and surrounding areas by a good few inches at a height of five foot ten inches. The lines show that his back was heavily shredded and his five wounds include a piercing from a lance. His eyes were closed by coins the outlines of which are clearly visible. They show a man’s head and bear the inscription ‘Tiberius Caesar’. which places this man in the time of Tiberius’s reign as emperor, the exact time of Christ’s death. There are wounds to his head caused by thorns from a plant which was only available in the area of Judea and which has been extinct for two thousand years. Proof of this was found in pollen still contained in the face cloth covering the face of this man. So here we have a tall man who was tortured crucified, killed with a lance and had a crown of thorns placed on his head and the image which is only visible through the negative of a photograph. It is not painted onto the surface of the shroud but is scorched onto it by an internal force of great power to cause the imprint. Ecce Homo.

 

All of this evidence should be enough to convince even the harshest critic of the presence of Jesus of Nazareth not only in the upper room of that house after the crucifixion of Christ but in our everyday lives. Right now, he is in the ICUs of the world as some poor person struggles to breathe. He is whispering prayers and words of comfort to those struggling for breath as the coronavirus steals the life from their lungs. He is omnipotent. He is omniscient. He is omnipresent. He is in the heart of the pandemic. He is comforting the broken hearted. He is carrying children to heaven. His is the last voice that they hear. But it surely comforts us all to know that he is with us through this terrible time. For did Jesus not tell us, ‘Be not afraid. I go before you always. Come, follow me, and I will give you rest.’

 

Peace be to you.

 

Glenn Gannon.

 

 

Glenns book can be bought on VERITAS here: https://bit.ly/33ZbCMa