Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The Catholic Worker movement was born out of the meeting of Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day on this day, December 8, 1932.
Dorothy wrote a series of reflections on Advent in 1966. Here are some of her thoughts on week two, which begins this Sunday:
{I]t is not to discuss solutions proffered by government or city agencies that I wish to write. War, and the poverty of peoples which leads to war, are the great problems of the day and the fundamental solution is the personal response which each of us makes to the message of Jesus Christ. It is the solution which works from the bottom up rather than from the top down, and makes for readiness to join in larger regional solutions like the organizing of farm workers with Cesar Chavez, community solutions of Saul Alinsky, village solutions like Vinoba Bhave's in India, etc.
The wonderful thing is that each one of us can do something about the problem, each one of us can give his response and can go as far as the grace of God leads him; and God "ordereth all things sweetly," and there is no need to be afraid as to where such a response will lead US.
"Ask and you shall receive," Jesus told us, and this asking may be just that question "What shall we do?" Samuel asked it, St. Paul asked it--"Lord, what will you have me do?" and they seemed to get direct answers. Paul was struck blind, literally and to everything else around him except that one great fact, "whatever ye do to the least of these My brethren, ye do to Me." If you feed them, clothe them, shelter them, visit them in prison (or go to prison and so are with them!), serve the sick, in general perform the works of mercy, you are serving Christ and alleviating poverty by direct action. If you are persecuting them, killing them, throwing them in prison, you are doing it to Christ. He said so.
When the crowd was moved by John the Baptist and asked, "What shall we do?" he said to them, "He who has two coats give to him who has none." He also said, "Do injury to no man. Be content with your pay." Or with no pay at all. If you are voluntarily giving away what you have, giving your coat, don't expect thanks or the reform of the recipient. We don't do it for that motive, with the expectation of reward. We must do it for love of Jesus, in His humanity, for love of our brother, for love of our enemy.
Charles Peguy in one of his poems, God Speaks, tells the story of the prodigal son and comments, "That's the kind of a Father we have, who loves even to folly, who forgives seventy times seven, who rushes out to embrace and feast the prodigal son." This is the kind of love we must have for the poor. The kind of love which will give away cloak also if coat is demanded of you.
Nobody is too poor to help another. The stories in the New Testament are of the widow's mite, of the little boy's loaves and fishes, of the cloak, of the time given when one is asked to walk a second mile.
Another Russian story which profoundly moved me was The Honest Thief, by Dostoievsky of the hardworking tailor who lived in a corner of a room, and yet who took in one of the destitute he encountered. The guest begged and drank and the tailor suspected him of stealing his one treasure, an old army coat. He spoke to him harshly, but when the thief ran away, the tailor searched him out and brought him back to his corner to nurse him in his illness. "Love is the measure by which we shall be judged." And by not judging we too shall not be judged.
I am thinking of how many leave the Church because of the scandal of the wealth of the Church, the luxury of the Church which began in the very earliest day, even perhaps when the Apostles debated on which should be highest in the kingdom and when the poor began quarreling as to who were receiving the most from the common table, the Greek Jews or the Jerusalem Jews. St. Paul commented on the lack of esteem for the poor, and the kowtowing to the rich, and St. John in the Apocalypse spoke of the scandal of the churches "where charity had grown cold."
Thank God for the sacraments, the food of life which we can receive to strengthen us. Thank God for the Word made flesh and for the Word in the Scriptures. Thank God for the Gospel which St. Therese pinned close to her heart, and which the murderer Raskolnikoff listened to from the lips of a prostitute and took with him into the Siberian prison. The Word is our light and our understanding, and it is also our food.
2 comments:
That's a nice picture, but Dorothy Day never wanted to be called a saint (and I doubt the Church will ever name her one). Hopefully it's meant to be ironic.
Before her death,Dorothy begged her followers: "Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed that easily." Unfortunately for Day, the Church began her canonization process several years after her death at the prodding of the notoriously conservative (late) Cardinal O'Connor of New York. The move was not without controversy:
"In March (2000) the Vatican declared Day a "Servant of God" and gave a green light to the process by which Dorothy Day, a founder of the Catholic Worker movement, may be canonized as a Roman Catholic saint. New York City's late Cardinal John O'Connor, who officially initiated Day's canonization process, took fire from traditional and progressive Catholics alike. Traditionalists argue that a woman who had an abortion, had a daughter with her common-law husband, and consorted with communists makes a poor model for a righteous Christian life. Progressives worry that sainthood will trivialize Day and distance her from the everyday world in which she lived so fully." A good article on the pros and cons of Day's sainthood can be found here:
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0007&article=000741e
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