There’s this scene in the 2016 film, Moonlight, that comes to mind with today’s readings. Juan, a man who sells drugs in Miami and who will die in a few years, is teaching Chiron, a young boy struggling to know himself, to swim. The water is beautiful and Chiron rests in Juan’s arms. After the lesson they sit together in the sand, and Juan becomes vulnerable about his childhood, finally inviting Chiron into loving who he really is. Tender compassion between a man whose life seems to epitomize immorality and a boy inflicted with trauma: exactly what God imagines for us.
