Surrender to a Peace that the World Cannot Give

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter - Year B

[The Readings of the day are Acts 9; 1 John 3:18-24; and Gospel of John, 15:1-8]

We all likely know the story of St. Paul’s encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus. It was not simply a conversion, but a total surrender! A flash of light rendered him completely blind and Paul heard the voice of Jesus say: Be my disciple.

But now Paul is in real trouble. He was Christian enemy number one; the nemesis to the early Jesus movement, but now also considered a heretic and traitor to Judaism.

So when he shows up in Jerusalem supposedly a disciple, we can understand the fear and anxiety of the church. After all, he was the one responsible for St. Stephen’s martyrdom.

Paul is an exile. He’s been proclaiming Jesus as Lord, but now he is in trouble for it, not only from the Pharisees and Jewish religious establishment, but now he is being held suspect by the Church, or at least the leaders, the early bishops we might say, and even Pope Peter.

Fear can truly arrest people. New ideas scare folks. Many people fear change. People are often suspicious of newcomers. It could be a fear of different language, different cultural backgrounds, or even a fear of others who become knowledgeable in matters of faith.

There are those who have great insecurity when people think and pray and even do theology differently or, dare I say, fight poverty and economic injustice. We know there are those who would like have us keep our faith in the sanctuary and not challenge the social, economic, and/or political order, yet we are called to forge ahead with the full gospel.

So how is Paul going to join the Church community? Who will help him convince the leaders that he really is one of them?

He meets Barnabas!

Barnabas was of the Jewish priestly class, a Sadducee, who had come to believe in the Resurrection of Jesus. Now this in itself is amazing because the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead! But Barnabas was filled with the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit blew away all his old fears, fired his faith, and gave him the wisdom to proclaim the Good News of Christ!

And in Luke’s account, Barnabas not only believes in Christ, but he believes Paul’s story. And it is Barnabas that took charge of Paul and brought him to the other apostles. Barnabas is risking it all and surrenders his reputation for Paul’s sake. Barnabas loses himself all for the newcomer Paul, a former enemy of the faith. And when he does, the disciples receive Paul as their own.

But only because of Barnabas!

It took a Barnabas to bring the disciples and Paul together. 

Barnabas was a nickname. Bar-nabas means “child of encouragement’ or “child of Consolation”. Each of us are called to be encouragers, consolers, encouraging one another in the faith, in love, in charity, in hope!

But, more trouble came for Paul when he spoke with and debated with the Hellenists, the Greeks. They tried to kill him!

 There is a risk in discipleship. It is dangerous being a prophet, it’s dangerous being church!  

It may remind us of Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker.  Dorothy was willing to risk her reputation for the sake of the gospel. She was not seen as a “good” Catholic by many in the church because of her subversive ministry to the despised, the powerless, downtrodden, and praying for and working for social and economic justice and peace.

Her bishop said to her, “Dorothy, there are those who say you and your companions are destroying the church.”

To which she replied: “I thought we were being the church.”

[And today there may be certain voices in the church who simply want parishioners who pray, pay, and obey, but we are called to be more than Catholic bobble-heads!

Our faith must be a lived reality, following Jesus Christ as a way of life!  

So we have an inkling of why some religious people wanted to kill Paul. To the religious establishment, he was not only ruining Judaism, but he was ruining the Christian Way. He was breaking boundaries, even allowing women leaders and Gentiles to become followers of Christ.

In Paul’s letters he called certain women his fellow laborers and co-workers in the gospel. There were those who were very critical of his allowing women leadership positions in the Church. And [my wife said], don’t think the women were just darning the apostles’ socks or carrying their well-water either.

We only have to think of the thousands of religious sisters  and lay Catholic women who are workers in the vineyard, teaching, comforting the sick and dying, prisoners, and assisting the immigrant, the hungry, the forgotten and the hopeless.

Really, it all began with Mary of Nazareth, who proclaimed: “Let it be done to me according to your Word!”

And later it was Mary Magdalene took the message of the 

Resurrection of Christ to the fearful apostles hiding behind locked doors in the all important upper room where all theological decisions were being made!

[Or just one example among many, I could tell the story of St. Catherine of Siena – a doctor of the Church – who helped restore the church’s unity, but alas, that would be another homily.]

Suffice it to say, in the Christian community women were leaders. 

As they are still today.

As for St. Paul, after the Greeks tried to kill him, the disciples send him to Tarsus, his home, where he could process his entire experience. Sort of a retreat of sorts. Paul's faith and ideas were a real challenge to Peter and the boys.

But what is so interesting in the first reading is that despite all the fear surrounding Paul and the desire to kill him, Luke immediately tells us that THE CHURCH WAS AT PEACE. Peace? 

Really? The Church was at peace. How??? 

How can there be peace with so much distrust, fear, insecurity, and suspicion?

Where would this peace come from? How can there be peace?

Luke tells us it was “with the consolation of the Holy Spirit.”

St. John tells us in his gospel that there is a peace that only Christ Jesus can give.

So how can we as individuals and as a church community be at peace? 

Well, what did Barnabas do?

Barnabas took the time to listen. He listened to Paul’s story. Barnabas made himself vulnerable. Barnabas surrendered his own concerns for the concern of another. Barnabas reconciled Paul with the church. Barnabas did not judge Paul.

Barnabas let go of himself…

And WHAT BARNABAS DID WE ARE CALLED TO DO.

For to be at peace is to be in Christ.

And Barnabas had found that peace.

And Barnabas shared that peace with Peter and Paul and all the church.

Because, you see, Barnabas was rooted in the vine of Christ.

You and I are called to be the Barnabases in others’ people lives.

Yes, there is a risk in ministry, yet Barnabas’ example shows us that to be church means to be at peace even amidst conflicts and differences.

With such encouraging words, can we imagine the great things the Lord will do through us, his weak human instruments, if we would but trust in Christ, being fruitful branches of Christ, wherever we are, and to whomever we encounter, regardless what some may say?!

Christ promises us that he will remain in us if we remain in him!

We hear the Word and take it in, and allow it to form us, and then when we approach this altar and receive the Eucharist, Christ will dwell within us in an intimate way, so that we might be Christ to one another.

As St. Paul wrote: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”

So, we pray, O Lord, make us your branches like Barnabas to be your message of mercy to everyone we meet, to those who think they have no one, and let them know that there is a living Church community they can call home, where they can be tended to and nourished and allowed to grow.

O God, give us the courage to risk all and be like Barnabas, children of encouragement – to one another – and to a fearful world – that we might lead others to that peace which is beyond all our understanding and is found in you alone. Amen.

THE DUTY OF DELIGHT: THE DIARIES OF DOROTHY DAY 1934-1980

The Duty of Delight: the Diaries of Dorothy Day
Edited by Robert Ellsberg. Image Books, 2011.
Reviewed by Deacon John William McMullen

At the time of Dorothy Day’s death, David O’Brien, writing in Commonweal, notably called Day “the most significant, interesting, and influential person in the history of American Catholicism.” Certainly the publication of The Duty of Delight: the Diaries of Dorothy Day confirms that she is indeed to be numbered among the likes of the American Trappist monk Thomas Merton and the author Flannery O’Connor.

            This woman, a symbol of civil disobedience, was ever obedient to her God and to her conscience and her convictions.

In her diaries we follow her through the 1930s when she first met Peter Maurin and established the houses of hospitality and the farming communities; in the 1940s when the U.S. entered the war she prophetically challenged the wisdom of solving problems through violence; through the 1950s she witnessed to the ridiculous notion that a nuclear war was somehow winnable and rational, and that air raid drills somehow made the citizens safer; amid the social turmoil of the 1960s with racial unrest, political assignations, and the Vietnam War; and through the uncertainty of the 1970s, until her death in November of 1980.

As I opened this formidable book by one of the greatest spiritual guides of the past century, I immediately thought to myself, why haven’t I been keeping a diary or a journal for the past twenty years? Her note to Robert Ellsberg: “Good thing to keep a journal,” convicted me. In comparison to Dorothy Day I have no idea where I have been and, I fear, perhaps I have no idea where I am going. Okay, that might sound a bit dramatic, but the practice of journaling definitely serves as marking one’s path with milestones. Indeed, Dorothy herself heeded the advice.

            In The Duty of Delight, her diary entries begin in March of 1934, well after the birth of her daughter Tamar, her 1932 prayer for guidance at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., Peter Maurin’s entrance in her life, and not quite a year after the founding of the Catholic Worker on May 1, 1933. Al of these events are recorded in her Long Loneliness and are likely well-known to Dorothy Day’s devotees. This collection of her diaries is, as Dorothy might say, “a good long book to live with for a few weeks” (Diary entry, May 20, 1979). However, in this case it may well take more than a few weeks, and for good reason. These diaries cover nearly forty-six years of a life well-lived and therefore, ought to be read with loving devotion, the same love and devotion with which they were written.

The day I began reading The Duty of Delight, I couldn’t help but note a similarity in Dorothy’s diaries to Flannery O’Connor’s letters which are collected in The Habit of Being. Fittingly, Dorothy began reading Flannery O’Connor’s letters in June of 1979.

            Here is an ordinary woman, now being considered for sainthood, who admired Pope Pius XII, and yet as a faithful Catholic, who, prior to the Papacy of Pope John XXIII, lamented the priests who mumbled through the Latin Mass and the laity which did not participate in Mass.

She welcomed the Second Vatican Council and applauded the changes to the Liturgy so that the words of the Gospel might be truly heard and that the faithful might live out their baptismal promises and be living, conscious, and active members of the Body of Christ. Already in 1951, she wrote: “One comes alive in the Mass, is a living part of it.”  In 1960 she wrote: “Nonparticipation is so stifling” (August 24). By 1967 the Liturgical changes as a result of Vatican II were being implemented. She wrote; “The participation of the people [at Mass] is so easy and natural. One cannot conceive of the old silent Masses, often a half hour of dreaming and distraction.”

            Her point was that the faithful were drawn forth to the altar in the universal call to holiness. Nevertheless, she still loved the beauty of Gregorian chant and was ever faithful to the daily office of the Liturgy of the Hours, ever being conscious of her salvation daily as she joined thousands of Christians throughout the world who were praising God and praying for the welfare of all souls, in heaven and on earth. She became a Benedictine Oblate in 1955, although she had regularly prayed the Divine Office after her conversion and truly lived the Benedictine motto of “Ora et labora”, “Prayer and work.”

Dorothy visited Rome during the council, attended Mass, and was involved in discussion of the schema of the document Gaudium et spes. Her efforts, along with others’, such as Thomas Merton’s writings, at having the Council address war (September 1965) seemed to have had some impact. For Gaudium et spes contained the only condemnation of the Council (G.S. 80). It was the condemnation of acts of war which aim at entire cities or areas along with their populations.

In the 1950s she saw the insanity of the Cold War and refused to hide in a bunker rehearsing her role for when the world would burn in fiery radiation, and she paid for it with jail time. Dorothy’s legacy continues today in the Catholic Workers’ voice for peace amid a nation built upon the military-industrial complex, in the hauntingly prophetic phrase of President Eisenhower.

One can speculate all day as to where Dorothy would be in regards to the Occupy Wall Street movement, but we are remiss if we fail to recall that Dorothy noted the October 29, 1979 sit-in on Wall Street where Catholic Worker members and others were arrested as they protested the immense corporate complicity in the nuclear weapons industry. According to Robert Ellsberg, (who was arrested as one of the CW protesters), the protest was also planned to mark the “50^th anniversary of the stock market crash of 1929, thus generating enormous publicity.” The Catholic Worker is there now still distributing the literature advocating a Distributivist Economy.

She was nonplussed with Woodstock in 1969 and had no use for recreational drug use or abuse, promiscuity and nihilism. She insisted upon personal responsibility and self-sacrifice, prayer and worship.

Writing, for her, was a form of prayer. “Writing is an act of community….It is an expression of our love and concern for each other.” Her daily life was spent in the constant company of God and neighbor. Even in her rare moments of solitude, God and neighbor were the concerns of her heart and mind and soul.

She truly struggled to love her neighbor—whether she liked him or her or not—she was under the command of “love thy neighbor.” For her the real counter-culture was to believe that every human being was connected somehow, and that each person was a potential member of the body of Christ.

She witnessed to this radical love of neighbor when her former lover and father of her daughter, Forster Batterham, returned in her life when his partner of thirty years, Nanette, was diagnosed with cancer. Dorothy willingly care for Nanette and, much to the chagrin of Forster, as Nanette approached death she asked to be baptized a Catholic. Dorothy couldn’t help Forster, just as she couldn’t help him so many years before when Dorothy herself surrendered to Christ causing her and Forster the atheist to sever ties. Yet Forster remained close to his and Dorothy’s daughter, Tamar, and in the process close to Dorothy to the last.

Being a married man for nearly 20 years, I have learned greatly from the pen of Dorothy some of the travails my wife and other female friends have experienced. Dorothy, a single mother, ostracized by many and despised by others, continually lived her faith in each moment, even through menopause, and disappointment in herself, her daughter, and grandchildren.

Her constant faith and trust gave her and those around her a hope in divine Providence. She lived each moment, often literally, depending on who knocked on the door, according to Providence.

Lest I give away too much, I will allow the reader himself or herself to discover the soul of a devoutly active Catholic often called a Communist and un-American, yet one who loved her country so much she was willing to be a prophetic witness to the truth which is always inconvenient to those who wield economic control at the expense of the poor and weakest members of society and exercise power over the rights of all.

            The quotidian duties of daily life gave her delight, and in being a sincere follower of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the “Little Flower” and her “Little Way,” she believed that each act of love, each sorrow, and each joy of daily life was a source of delight. Hence the delight that she discovered in her daily duty – despite the pain of violence, war, death, destruction, injustice, hatred, apathy, cynicism and despair. And through her words, we discover that it is our duty to find delight in all we do, for to serve one another is to serve Christ.

At the end of her life, all this Servant of God could do was pray. Her life was spent doing good, living a very human life, and all the way to heaven she was both experiencing Christ, who is “The Way” to heaven, and giving witness to the existence of Him in our midst.

All of us are beggars before the throne of grace, all of us have received a free hand-out from the Providence of God. Those among us who fail to acknowledge or remember this, do so at their own peril.

Dorothy Day’s first memoir From Union Square to Rome (1938) and her autobiography The Long Lonliness (1952) will be fine companions to this work, as will her 1963 book Loaves and Fishes.  We discover a beautiful soul, and in reading the thoughts of this saint (who didn’t want to be so easily dismissed as such), you hope you get the chance to meet her. Those of us who believe in the communion of saints will have that opportunity one day.

Among her worldly joy of reading, she often quoted Dostoevsky: “the world will be saved by beauty.” In her diaries, one finds her soul dutifully unveiled in beauty.

        And in her duty we delight.



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