I am reading, “By Little and By Little. The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day”, and just wanted to share a passage about Peter Maurin that brought tears to my eyes:
Peter had been insulted and misunderstood in his life as well as loved. He had been taken for a plumber and left to sit in the basement when he had been invited for dinner and an evening of conversation. He had been thrown out of a Knights of Columbus meeting. One pastor who invited him to speak demanded his money back which he had sent Peter for carfare to his upstate parish because, he said, we had sent him a Bowery bum, and not the speaker he expected. “This then is perfect joy,” Peter could say, quoting the words of St. Francis to Friar Leo.
He was a man of sincerity and peace, and yet one letter came to us recently, accusing him of having a holier-than-thou attitude. Yes, Peter pointed out that it was a precept that we should love God with our whole heart and soul and mind and strength, and not just a counsel, and he taught us all what it meant to be children of God, and restored to us our sense of responsibility in a chaotic world. Yes, he was “holier than thou,” holier than anyone we ever knew.
[Excerpt from: By Little and By Little. The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day, Edited, with an Introduction, by Robert Ellsberg, pg. 127, from a letter entitled "Peter Maurin. A Poor Man", dated June 1949]
From St. Faustina’s Diary, Divine Mercy in My Soul:
532 After Holy Communion, I saw the Lord Jesus, who said these words to me: Today, penetrate into the spirit of My poverty and arrange everything in such a way that the most destitute will have no reason to envy you. I find pleasure, not in large buildings and magnificent structures, but in a pure and humble heart.
533 When I was by myself, I began to reflect on the spirit of poverty. I clearly saw that Jesus, although He is Lord of all things, possessed nothing. From a borrowed manger He went through life doing good to all, but Himself having no place to lay His head. And on the Cross, I see the summit of His poverty, for He does not even have a garment on Himself.
A friend, who returns home time and time again exhausted in spirit and body from her work in the soup kitchen, writes: “I’m happy. In a very sad kind of way. I am happy with the poor-exhausted. It makes no sense. Like all of His paradoxes, it only makes love, not sense.”
Who are they who choose love over what makes sense? To whom does this kind of sacrifice, to the point of complete spiritual, emotional and physical exhaustion, bring profound joy? To the Holy Fools. We all know them in our own lives. We know them also from history – St. Francis, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, and our beloved Catherine Doherty, to name but a few. My friend would deny being in the same category as these, yet even if the scope of the work is not as broad, the calling is the same; the kenosis is the same; the exhaustion is the same. Catherine Doherty writes:
Sitting at the very edge of the pine forest in the eventide, I look down. Suddenly I am not there at all! I am where my heart has always been; I am with the poor. A love, a joy, a simple, childlike joy fills my heart and I tell myself, “I am descending the holy mountain to go to the poor.”
I was tired beyond my own understanding, and, I think, beyond the understanding of many. I knew that the people chosen by God to bring his message to the world were always tired. But I did not know how tired. Did you ever feel this numbing, crushing tiredness that takes hold of you and seems to crush you into powder? There you are, lying on the road, a little handful of powder.
Don’t you understand, don’t we all understand, that we must begin to share? We must! It is not a question of tithing. It is a question of sharing, because unless we share, we will become atomic dust.
And from the winds came the familiar voice, “Now you know how tired I was when I hung on the Cross. But love overcomes tiredness. Mine did.”
From: “Urodivoi. Holy Fools. The Prophetic Call of a Modern Fool for Christ”, by Catherine Doherty.
I am reminded once again, by prayer requests in my inbox, of the incredibly difficult and often painful lives of our elderly; also, of the enormous amount of strength and dedication required of their caregivers.
And once again, I am profoundly moved by the powerful life, spirituality and writing of Servant of God Catherine Doherty, who, in her book, “Molchanie. Experiencing the Silence of God”, gives us a whole chapter entitled, The Silence of Old Age.
Catherine speaks of her own experience of aging in this chapter, and I would like to share just a few passages with you here:
“Somehow it never occurs to us that tomorrow or the day after, our steps will falter, that we will be too weak to do what we would like. And yet, I think this ‘unfreedom’ of old age is also an entry into the silence of God.”
“…the silence of old age, with its accompanying lack of exterior freedom. My own heart must learn to accept this lack of freedom….This is good, because now I enter a new depth of silence, and the very essence of poverty, for which I have so longed. Now I am exceedingly free.”
“The earth is becoming a narrow sliver, of no more importance. Heaven is opening before me. This is the goal I always wanted to attain. No wonder earthly landscapes pass out of view. God has given me a new key to the landscape of his heart, and nobody can stop me from entering it.”
A new key, a new landscape, a deeper poverty, silence and union. Let us pray for our elderly, for their caregivers and for ourselves. No matter whether we are young or old, able to move or not, speak or not, swallow or not, let us pray that we will enter the landscape of God’s heart, and be as Catherine Doherty - although “bound” exteriorly as she advanced in age, able to shout with joy, “I am lost in the tenderness of God.”
My train of thought re detachment has been interrupted once again. This time, by something I just read. When asked, “What is poverty?”, here were the responses of some Grade 4 and 5 children from North Bay, Ontario. Poverty is:
feeling ashamed when my Dad can’t get a job
pretending that you forgot your lunch
being teased for the way you are dressed
being afraid to tell your Mom you need gym shoes
hearing Mom and Dad fight over money
hiding your feet so the teacher won’t get cross when you don’t have boots
Did you ever feel this numbing, crushing tiredness that takes hold of you and seems to crush you into powder? There you are, lying on the road, a little handful of powder.
I am reminded once again, by prayer requests in my inbox, of the incredibly difficult and often painful lives of our elderly; also, of the enormous amount of strength and dedication required of their caregivers.
