THE
LIMITS OF OUR POSSIBILITIES
Ferdinand
Spit (Ferrie) was a Dutchman who worked with us at Silveira House in Zimbabwe
in the 1980s on industrial relations. He often spoke of our ‘reaching the
limits of our possibilities’, a phrase a born English speaker would probably not
use. They would go for something simpler like, ‘doing our best.’ But it is a
striking phrase and I remembered it this week when reading about Fr Henry Swift
who was prison chaplain – at first unofficially, then officially and in uniform
- in Harare Central Prison from 1935 to the time of his death in 1973.
When the
state executes a person, it reaches the ‘limits of its possibilities’. It can
give no greater punishment and, while it may welcome the presence of
‘chaplains’ in its prisons, it can not prescribe how they should approach the
condemned or what the effects will be. In Doris Lessing’s The Grass is
Singing, Moses murders madam and awaits his arrest, trial and execution
with seeming equanimity. Lessing does not give us his thoughts. She too has
reached her limits. She leaves us to tease out his motivation.
And we may
come up with wildly different opinions. Was Moses’ composure the result of his
feeling of triumph at having broken through the great wall of racial
segregation and performed a courageous act of expiation for his nation? Maybe.
Henry Swift did not speculate. He knew the Moseses he accompanied to the
scaffold were God’s children and his only desire was that they finish their
journey without fear and at peace. Here is, in part, his own account of what he
did:
… The relays
of guards are very considerate towards the condemned …With Catholics, the faith
helps them to die well. … After Holy Communion … I tell him that later his
hands must be strapped behind him so that he cannot hurt himself – saying
nothing about the fall – that his eyes will probably be covered, that he will
hear my voice on his right and that he will have time to say the name ‘Jesus’
about three times before the rope is made quite tight, at which moment he will
die and should be thinking of going to God. … as he is being strapped, I tell
him the executioner will do everything without hurting him…
For Henry Swift, men and women were born for eternity. There
were no limits. He was a man of his time and we might demur at some of his
choice of words. We would not now, for example, say ‘Catholics’ but, more
inclusively, ‘Christians’. But his gentle, respectful attention to the
condemned speaks of a world view sans frontiers, without limits.
4 July 2021 Sunday14B Ez 2:2-5 2 Cor 12:7-10 Mk
6:1-6
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