Celebrating Dorothy Day

Transcription

1 November 7, 2009 George & Nancy Mairs Celebrating Dorothy Day (With Apologies to Dorothy Day) Prayer Requests and Announcements Opening Song "The Cry of the Poor" #590 Readings What people said about Dorothy: 1. I knew Dorothy Day. I first met her through The Long Loneliness. It was the fall of 1952 or very early in 1953, and her autobiography had just been published. I was a freshman at Fairfield University. The book spoke to my condition. Answered some of the questions and raised still others. Finally I said, I gotta go down to the Worker and see for myself. So I took the train into the city, I walked down the Bowery, I walked around the corner, and before I knew it I was at the Worker and up the stairs and into the library, where the Friday night meeting had already started. All the chairs were taken, and people were sitting on the floor and standing along the walls. In the corner was a woman sitting cross-legged and knitting. I don t remember who was talking; I don t remember the topic. All I remember is that the knitting needles clacked when she didn t like what she heard. When she liked what she heard, that was a nice steady, quiet sound of knitting needles touching. She had large bones. She had almond eyes. She had gray hair, braided and twisted into a crown. Someone nudged me and said, That s Dorothy Day. Tom Cornell 2. The Catholic Worker, a lay movement that Dorothy Day founded in 1933 and oversaw for nearly fifty years, was an effort to show that the radical gospel commandment of love could be lived. She understood this challenge not just in the personal form of charity (the works of mercy) but in a political form as well, confronting and resisting the social forces which gave rise to such a need for charity. She represented a new type of political holiness. As a result some people called her a communist. She was shot at, jailed, and investigated repeatedly by the F.B.I. On the other hand there were many who liked to call her saint. When they call you a saint, she often said, it means basically that you re not to be taken

2 seriously. She regarded it as a way of dismissing her challenge. Actually, no one knew as well as she how dearly she had paid for her vocation. Robert Ellsberg 3. Blanche Sargent, who lived alongside Dorothy at St. Mary s House for many years, died in 2009 at the age of 103 in Coler Hospital in New York. There s a letter from Blanche to Dorothy thanking her for a warm coat. She remembered Dorothy clearly to the end of her days. Felton Davis and Sr. Jeanette from St. Mary s House were alone with Blanche in her hospital room at the end of her life. This is Sr. Jeanette s version of the Last Rites: Blanche Sargent, you re not alone here. You don t have to go I mean you don t have to go alone, all by yourself. It s me. It s Jeanette, and you know what s his name. And we re with you here in the hospital. We haven t forgotten you, not even for one day. You understand me? Now let me explain what s happening now. Upstairs where you re going you re gonna meet with okay, probably everybody you ever knew. They re all gonna be there. Your family, your parents, and Annie Skwarek, and who lived up on the 4 th floor, and old Hungerian Anna, and Helgi, and Lena, and Lucy, and Miss Day. Miss Day will be there, I m sure of that. Darphy found a room for you in this world, and she s got a room for you in the next. You understand what I m saying, Blanche? Darphy s got a place for you and that s where you re going now. Okay? Now we re going to say the words, the right words. We re going to do the right thing for you here, because they got no priest. What Dorothy said: Felton Davis 4. Prayer to St. Joseph: "You must help us. The Holy Father says that the masses are lost to the Church. We must reach them, we must speak to them and bring them to the love of God. The disciples didn't know our Lord on that weary walk to Emmaus until He sat down and ate with them. 'They knew Him in the breaking of bread.' And how many loaves of bread are we breaking with our hungry fellows these days--' 3,500 or so this last month. Help us to do this work, help us to know each other in the breaking of bread! In knowing each other, in knowing the least of His children, we are knowing Him. 5. We have been called necrophiliacs, we have been accused of taking a morbid delight in the gutter and worshiping ashcans. The fact of the matter

3 is that God transforms it all, so that out of this junkheap comes beauty. We have poetry and painting and sculpture and music and all of these things for the delight of the senses that are given to us right in the midst of filth and degradation and mires so that I often feel we know whereof we speak. God certainly comes to the rescue over and over again and enables us to do what seems utterly impossible. Many a person comes into the Church under utterly impossible circumstances; it as though they were taking their own life, as though they were dying, in order to do this. I have seen people unhinged by it. We have quite a few with us who are disturbed, who have suffered extremely, have cut themselves off from their families and backgrounds. It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. It is not anything that we can take except with the utmost seriousness and yet it is of course the greatest joy in the world. 6. Whatever I had read as a child about the saints had thrilled me. I could see the nobility of giving one s life for the sick, the maimed, the leper But there was another question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place? Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but to do away with slavery. Responsorial Psalm 146 Alleluia. O God, you keep faith forever, secure justice for the oppressed, give food to the hungry, set captives free. You give sight to the blind. You raise up those who were bowed down; You love the just. You protect strangers. The fatherless and the widow you sustain, but the way of the wicked you thwart. You shall reign forever, through all generations. Alleluia. Gospel Reading John 13: 12-17, 34 (chosen because it was a favorite of Dorothy s. God be with you. And also with you. A reading from the holy gospel according to John. Glory to you, O God. When Jesus had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and resumed his place, he said to them, Do you know what I have done to you? You call

4 me 'teacher' and 'master,' and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Truly, truly I say to you, slaves are not greater than their masters; nor those who are sent greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. A new commandment. I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. The Good News of Salvation! Glory and praise to our Savior, Jesus Christ. Silent Reflection, followed by Discussion Intercessions Response: O God, Hear Our Prayer. (Sung) Compassionate God, you have given us women and men who, like Jesus, have preached the Gospel with their lives. May their example inspire us to greater commitment to the cause of peace and justice, we pray. For those who live fearlessly your gospel of love, we pray. For the poor, the persecuted and the voiceless, we pray. O God, we ask these things through the intercession of those who have lived and died for compassion and justice, following Jesus example. Amen. Breaking of the Bread Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to God. Let us give thanks to God our Creator. It is right to give God thanks and praise. We take bread, symbol of labor, exploited, degraded, symbol of life. We will break the bread because Christ, the source of life, was broken for the exploited and downtrodden. Now the bread is before us, the memory of our meals, our working, our talking, the story which shapes us, our joy and our pain. And we give thanks for all that holds us together in our humanity; that binds us to all who live and have lived, who have cried and have given comfort, who hunger and have shared bread, who pine for fairness, and have sacrificed for justice. And in this we are bound to Jesus, whose death we celebrate, and whose new life we proclaim,

5 the risen Jesus who was not recognized by his own disciples on the road to Emmaus until they sat at table, and Jesus took bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to them. It was then that their eyes were opened, and they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. (Sing Amen.) Sharing of the Bread "Our Father" (Joe Wise) Silent Reflection Closing Prayer and Blessing Like Dorothy, may we tend to our knitting while being present to those around us, may we respectfully decline sainthood and other hindrances to our performing simple, loving acts, and may we always be there to prepare a room for those who need it. And may we bring God s blessing, the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Breath of Life, with us wherever and whenever we may go! Closing Song "Granito de Mostaza" Happy Birthday, Bill Hallinan! Sharing the Peace