This past week, I was the substitute music leader at my church. Before leaving town, the usual leader had asked me to include a new song (for us, at least) about compassion called “The Body of Love.” The song’s bridge says,

The ache in your heart is holy;

The ache in your heart is good.

The ache in your heart is the ache of being one with the body of love.

She could not have picked a more perfect song for how it feels to be a volunteer with F.A.I.T.H. as we “accompany” those going through immigration detention and deportation proceedings.

I owe a great debt to Latin American Catholic theologians who have articulated the spiritual concept of Accompaniment so beautifully (and to the San Diego Catholic diocese, which launched FAITH last Spring). I recently told some fellow volunteers that during my decades working for compassionate ministries, I always strove to practice accompaniment through “the ministry of presence.” But while I perhaps personally brought nothing but my presence to my encounters with those in need, always behind me—whether with World Vision or even my current church’s weekly hunger dinner—has been an entity that is also bringing tangible help. So my personal ‘accompaniment’ has always been hitched to a larger wagon.

But in this FAITH immigrant ministry, we “fix” nothing. Yes, sometimes we’ll point a person to resource sites they may not have known about. But generally, my presence, my compassionate listening, my prayers are all there is… There is nothing else on offer.

Tonight, I read a reflection from a fellow volunteer, and this portion really spelled it out:

When we accompany them in courtrooms, interviews, and supervision check-ins, injustice is no longer an abstract idea. It has a face. It has a name. And it breaks our hearts.

In these spaces, we may feel anger, grief, or deep helplessness. We may be moved to tears. Often, there is nothing we can do to change the outcome before us. All we can do is remain—accompanying, encouraging, and sometimes crying alongside those we walk with.

And yet, this is not nothing.

To hunger and thirst for justice is not simply to want things to be different; it is to allow the suffering of others to touch us, to disturb us, and to shape how we stand in the world.

If the many encouraging replies to my prior meditation spoke anything to me, respondents were saying, “This is not nothing.”

If the seemingly sincere gratitude from clients and their attorneys—and even occasionally from government employees—speak anything, they are saying “This is not nothing.”

Yet often enough, it feels like nothing. And this tells me that I still have more to learn about accompaniment. And about the ache of being one with the body of love.

But I know this: That ache in our hearts is holy.

Cory

February 2026