CHRIST'S COMMAND TO LOVE

     In his book Why Am I Afraid To Love, John Powell tells about a Jew named Mike Gold who was the philosopher of American Communism in the 1920's.  After communism fell into general disrepute in this country, Mike Gold became a man of oblivion.  During that time he wrote a book about his life.  In describing his childhood in New York City, Mike tells of his mother's instructions never to wander beyond four certain streets.  She could not tell him that it was a Jewish ghetto, nor that he had the wrong kind of blood in his veins.  Children don't understand prejudice.  It is a poison that must gradually seep into a person's blood.

     In his narration, Mike Gold tells of the day curiosity lured him beyond the four streets, outside of his ghetto, and how he was accosted by a group of older boys who asked him a puzzling question: "Hey kid, are you a kike?"  "I don't know" was his reply.  He had never heard the word before.  The older boys came back with a paraphrase of their questions.  "Are you a Christ-killer?"  Again, the small boy responded, "I don't know."  He had never heard that word before.  So the older boys asked him where he lived, and trained like most small boys to recite their address in the case of being lost, Mike Gold told them where he lived.  "So you are a kike, you are a Christ-killer.  We're going to teach you to stay where you belong!"  And so they beat the little boy, blooded his face and tore his clothes and sent him home to the jeering litany: :We are Christians and you killed Christ!  Stay where you belong!  We are Christians, and you killed Christ..."

     John Powell then tells what happened after he got home, and years later.  When his frightened mother saw Mike Gold, she asked him: "What happened to you, Mike?"  He could only answer: "I don't know."  "Who did this to you, Mike?"  Again he answered: "I don't know."  And so the mother washed the blood from the face of her little boy and put him into fresh clothes and took him into her lap as she sat in a rocker trying to soothe him.  Mike Gold recalled so much later in life that he raised his small battered lips to the ear of his mother and asked: "Mama, who is Christ?"

     Mike Gold died in 1967.  His last meals were taken at a Catholic Charity house in New York City, run by Dorothy Day.  She once said of him: "Mike Gold eats every day at the table of Christ, but he will probably never accept Him because of the day he first heard His name."  And so Mike Gold died!