Andrew Garfield, a fine actor soon to be seen in Martin Scorcese’s “Silence,” is on a journey. I’m sure there are others. Vincentians can walk with them.

It was also clear that his “vast inner landscape” is, like many of ours, full of wounds and vulnerability. He knows well the longing for love, and at times, it is a torturous longing.

“I have been drawn to stories that are attempting to turn suffering into beauty,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been gifted and cursed with a closeness to some grief…the grief of living….” He paused as if gathering strength to say what he really meant, and then the source of the weariness I had sensed earlier was revealed: “…the grief of living in a time and a place where a life of joy and love is f–ing impossible.”

Beauty out of suffering, as in the words of Elizabeth Ann Seton:

God is with us‑‑and if sufferings abound in us, his Consolations also greatly abound, and far exceed all utterance . . . .[I was] not only willing to take my cross but kissed it too.[The Italian Journal, Kelly and Melville, Elizabeth Seton Selected Writings, 105, 109.]

People enter the spiritual life from a variety of avenues. Like Andrew Garfield. When one enters from the “inner life,’ always there is a call back “into the world.” They are on the way to becoming “Vincentians of Wherever,” ready to enter the world of the poor.

Can you accompany them?

Read this startling article in America.