I don’t remember the first time I heard the song “Hard Times Come Again No More.” It has stayed with me for some time. Written in 1854 by Stephen Foster the song is a lament. A prayer breaking out from a spirit that knows, too well, the cruelty of the world.

A prayer, I think, for today.

Those of us called to a ministry of authentic companionship to the “least” in the world often hear stories of hard times. Our “hearing” is more than just a benevolent acknowledgment of someone’s adverse life experiences. If we are true to our calling, hearing someone’s story of hard times becomes an “up close and personal” encounter with the flesh and blood, heart and soul reality of a unique human person. As their story unfolds, we are privileged to look beyond their history and witness the wreckage to body, mind, heart, and spirit.

When we do not turn away from the storyteller, we see hard times written on their face and in their eyes.  When we do not close our ears to the storyteller, we hear a tired voice that, for too long, has been ignored or silenced.  When we do not back away from the story and the storyteller, we touch the history of hard times on rough hands that reach out to us in greeting or in supplication. Through these intimate encounters our hearts become more tender as we come to know the deeper suffering behind their lament: “hard times come again no more”.

“Shadows Into Light” is Theresa Betancourt’s compelling account of her 20-year empathic study of former child victims and child soldiers in Sierra Leone.  In the introduction, Moses Zombo says, “if you want someone telling your story it had better be someone with a heart”.  If we are true to our calling as ministers of charity, “up close and personal” conversations become “heart to heart” encounters.

Pope Francis invited us to consider the following question: “Do I, as a Christian, have at least one poor person as a friend?”  I do not think he was speaking of a specific type of relationship; he was, I think, asking about the tenderness of our hearts.

In his song, Stephen Foster describes how a friendship emerges from this heart-to-heart encounter:

When we are true to our calling, we are sometimes found worthy to taste the bitter harvest of someone’s hard times. To sup sorrow is to taste their poverty. To sup sorrow is to taste their trauma. To sup sorrow is to taste their anger, their grief, their despair. Although we can never fully experience the full measure of their suffering, it is in the shared supping of sorrow where friendship is born and where grace may emerge. Drawing on his transformative friendship with lepers, Francis of Assisi spoke of this miracle of grace: