120 Wounds

A friend wrote this reflection on the Cross, porn addiction and family, and cleaning house. It prepares me for Ash Wednesday. I hope it prepares you. Read it slowly. Let it sink in. Stay tuned with us for an in-depth look at renewing robust chastity in our lives during Lent. 

-Andrew Comiskey

My daughter shared with me a fact deduced from the Shroud of Turin. Apparently, Christ endured 120 wounds during His scourging and crucifixion.

Chicken Spiedini

I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I purposely took them off to protect my eyes, a way to keep them shut. The images were snippets of cloudy, blurry figures as I shoved magazines, tapes, or books into banker’s boxes. My brain and my heart were also shut tight. Again, a purposeful decision I made as I worked to rid the room, the house, of the Toxic Moral Waste (TMW) that had been there for decades. I refuse to call it adult entertainment or any other catchy name. It is waste, pure and simple.

I was getting rid of it in the house of an addict who had passed away. I was doing it for his loved ones to spare them a terrible job. My brain and heart were also closed to thinking about this man or his loved ones while I worked. If I did, the sorrow would flood me and I wouldn’t be able to act.

The one image that stuck in my mind later was of a woman who was bound (bondage was of particular interest to this addict.) All I saw was chicken spiedini. It struck me later that there was some ironic truth to this: human beings are being consumed…chewed up and shat out. They seem more like pieces of meat than living and breathing women with hopes and dreams––unique and unrepeatable, made in God’s image.

Those addicted to these images are also consumed…chewed up and shat out. There is no life, only death. The meat analogy falls short: porn poisons and sustains nothing.

Clear!

We had a system. My adult son and I were never apart while we worked, and we did everything together. We prayed before we began for protection while we did this act of mercy; people I trusted also prayed remotely for us as we worked. We systematically went through every drawer, dumping whole contents into the boxes and putting the lid over it as we went to the next. We would yell, “Clear!” as the shelf or drawer was emptied. It felt very much like we were soldiers, talking to one another as we went through enemy territory, keeping one another safe as we moved together to complete an objective. We wanted to purge what had consumed this addict’s time, money, and parts of his soul all the time we had known him.

We cleared the entire bedroom, carrying nine boxes to the ground floor to take to the car. We took them to be shredded. We wanted no one else to ever look at it again.

I had hoped (foolishly) that we could take care of everything in one visit. Couldn’t. We neither had the space in one vehicle to load it all up nor the time to go through every room in the house that day. It felt hopeless, never-ending and all-consuming, like porn addiction itself.  I suffered for how this man might have felt at the prospect of ever ridding himself of any of it, alone. It would have seemed utterly impossible to dig out of that hole all by himself. It was overwhelming.

We returned three more times to remove it all.

An Evolution

The newest items the addict purchased as late as a couple of months ago were DVDs with both the fronts and backs full of garish, horrible images. They could not be avoided. They wanted to be seen, and if your eyes were open, you would. The only way not to see was to keep putting the lid on the box like you were trying to keep hundreds of spiders from crawling out.

We progressed through another room. Many of the magazines we found mercifully had a back that didn’t show people or bodies, so we could turn them over as we worked. We next uncovered hundreds of stacked half-inch-thick paperback books dedicated to putting words to evil acts towards women. It scared me to think of myself as a young girl. I was a voracious reader and I read everything around me. I would have read one of these books, picking it up without knowing or thinking. These paperbacks somehow felt even more dangerous to me, in a way. I wouldn’t have tasted the poison until it was too late. We stacked many layers of these books into a banker’s box. Small blessing.

As we began to remove older items, we found piles of dulled newspaper print magazines with hand-drawn images. These were very different from the shiny photographs of the modern materials, tamer to the senses. Next we found a cabinet of videos. The opening to each video box was plain black. We discovered that if we turned the tape so the opening faced us, we didn’t have to see the front or the back. We worked at a clip to search and destroy.

We had started on the second floor, had gone through the main floor, and we were now in the basement. As we delved deeper into the tool room in the basement, we found a cabinet full (5 tapes deep, 2 tapes high, and 12 tapes wide on two shelves) of black VHS boxes, where he had meticulously hand-written the names of these “movies” on tiny white-lined stickers. It was a respite. We didn’t have to worry about what we would see for just a moment as we filled box after box after box with them.

It was getting harder to block out my feelings of rage at the idea that this waste is protected by law under the guise of free speech and capitalism.

We were witnessing an evolution as we worked from the modern stuff backwards into the recesses of his house. What might have once satisfied this man gave way to more graphic, violent images as the years passed. The older contents were “kinder and gentler” than the new stuff.

This addict had also saved invoices from mail-order purchases through the years. They generously supplied full-color catalogs and pages in each order so he could select and buy more. Initially, because we didn’t know what these envelopes were, we weren’t expecting the images. We weren’t steeled when we investigated. They reminded me of snakes––curled up, waiting to bite.

His computer hadn’t worked for 5 years. We found a notebook with hundreds of handwritten internet sites. I felt that Providence had stepped in with the loss of his computer. It filled me with gratitude.

The Apple Box

While we had to fill many boxes ourselves with content, we found that the very last box of TMW (the moral waste) in the tool room was already filled. That box once held apples. It had red writing and a green border on the lid. I immediately thought of the fruit of the tree of Good and Evil. I thought of Eve. I thought of Adam. I thought of their nakedness in the Garden of Eden and how far any of this was from Paradise. I thought of this man and his addiction. Consumed by bondage, he lived in perpetual chains himself. Like attracts like. Maybe he had tried to break free of his slavery in vain.

I thought of his wife, his children and how, in the end, nothing is ever hidden. The box was so heavy I dropped it.  

A friend once told me that in prayer she had seen Jesus give me just a tiny sliver of His cross when our family encountered a serious trial that lasted 3 long years. At that time in my life, it was physically difficult to get up from kneeling. I felt a weight that I could not explain. This box brought me back to that sliver of Cross. It reminded me that Jesus carried His full Cross for every book, magazine, tape, and DVD we came across. Jesus carried the Cross for every human being caught up in that addiction and for every woman and man who were trafficked and degraded to make money for a demonic billion-dollar industry. Christ became the sacrificial lamb, the offering for all our sins. And it wasn’t lost on me that many of those women in the videos and magazines were tied up as a sort of anti-sacrifice, a perversion of Christ’s best, a mockery of Jesus’ offering of Himself.

I thought of Jesus and the scourging at the pillar. I thought of how we pray for purity as the fruit of that mystery of the rosary. At our final count, we destroyed 120 boxes, with boxes stacked to the roof in 5 carloads. When we returned the third time, one of the guys who worked at the shredding place recognized us and knew why we were there. “Jesus Christ!” he said, shaking his head. It didn’t feel like he took the Lord’s name in vain, but rather that he was calling Him into the chasm. The sheer volume was overwhelming. Every box was a part of that scourging, every box one of those 120 wounds inflicted on Jesus. And not only was Jesus wounded by them, but he carried those boxes through the Cross’ weight.

I marveled at the strength and fortitude of His love. I could barely suffer a few moments.

I cling to Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Jesus has to enter into this. His Divine Mercy reaches here. This is why Divine Mercy exists. Jesus must be in the toolroom, in the basement, inside the apple box. He can only heal us if He assumes sin’s weight.

The Mirror

When I went home, I needed to take a bath. I needed to be clean. But I noticed I avoided looking in the mirror. I didn’t want to see another naked body, even my own. It is hard for me to imagine how disintegrated this man was, hard to see what kind of mental and spiritual gymnastics he performed to live in hiding.  

How do we excuse this? How do we explain this? How do we suffer this? I don’t want to live with the pain this caused for his family, perhaps especially his wife. I’m angry to think of all the waste, all that was laid to waste. On the surface of things, with sore muscles from moving boxes and a heart beaten up a bit about all of this, it’s hard to think of this man receiving mercy. If I’m honest, it’s sometimes hard to desire mercy for him. But then I remember the definition of mercy: simply the easing of, or the relief of, suffering. Jesus spoke clearly to Saint Faustina: Don’t make excuses for not showing My mercy to others. Show My mercy every day to those you encounter.

The discreet removal of this waste was a mercy to him and to his family. Mercy doesn’t have to be warm and fuzzy. Perhaps the loving feelings come later.

I don’t know when porn addiction began for this man. But I know that addiction begins as a way to prevent pain. It’s a way to stop the feelings that you don’t want to feel. It’s a way to protect yourself. Then something happens to the body. That pain deferred doesn’t go away. It just stacks up and suddenly one box can’t hold it. Then you need more. And maybe you think the pain will go away if you try something a little different then it spills out of that second box. Nothing truly satisfies. The wound never fully closes. The pain has grown exponentially.

And maybe then the hopelessness sets in––you believe the lie that this will never stop and there is nothing to be done. Just keep doing what you’re doing. And suddenly it’s 20, 40, then 60 years later, and the pain is laid bare because in death you just can’t hide 120 boxes full of it.

I hope and pray that Jesus embraces him. I hope and pray that Jesus holds him and heals him until there is no more pain, until he can be fully the beautiful man God created him to be. And I hope I get to meet that man someday––to marvel at who he is, washed in the blood of the Lamb. His addiction cheated me out of knowing him in this life. I hope and pray that Mother Mary intercedes for him and gives him the feminine love that was so distorted and disfigured for much of his life.

I seriously consider my own hidden pain, my own sinfulness, and what I can’t hide in the end. I don’t want to hide anymore. There but for the grace of God go I.

“Do you want to be made well?” Jesus asks.

I pray that moving 120 boxes changes me. I see clearly that I am really no different than the porn addict; I just try to prevent my pain in less destructive, more acceptable ways. Today is a call to conversion. Today is a call to take the boxes to Jesus. Today is a call to go through the shelves and drawers and under the bed and behind the closed doors of myself, of ourselves. I have to “sweep the house clean” and then pray and fast so that with Grace it stays that way. I need to cry out, “Jesus Christ!” and lay my voluminous mess at the Cross.

My son has said to me, “We will do better.” Pray for us, for me, that I have the strength to do it, the courage to take my boxes to Jesus, the grace to recognize His Divine Mercy…to see that from the beginning, Jesus always knew the addict and knew about the apple box. Jesus knew the choices the addict could and could not make. Jesus always knew me and that I would find it and that it would be way too heavy for me to carry.

Pray that salvation has come to our house this day.