Thurs, 4, Nov 2021
Steve Falci
Guides in the Wilderness…A Short Sequel
As we navigated what seemed like the longest Lent of our lives, Nathan and Anne led us through a Lenten series entitled Guides in the Wilderness where we reflected on the lives of Saints, who through the example of how they led their lives in response to God’s call, provided us with guidance amid the wilderness we were experiencing.
The wilderness we have all been navigating continues and includes (but is not limited to) the COVID 19 pandemic, our nation’s continued struggle with racial injustice, the immediate and long term impacts of climate change as well as enduring poverty in the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. In totality - it can be overwhelming.
Amid this wilderness another guide has reemerged for me. A dear friend gave me a recent biography of Dorothy Day[i], who early in my life was a key figure in seeing the inextricable link between Christian faith and the struggle for justice. Reading a recent account of her remarkable life provided me some timely perspective and consolation.
Dorothy was a progressive activist and journalist who became a Christian in the Roman Catholic tradition in her late twenties. The wilderness she navigated included the Great Depression, World War II, the struggle for Civil Rights, the Cold War with the Nuclear Arms Race, and the Vietnam War. She often felt great despair amid this wilderness as witnessed in correspondence with her companions, but her deep faith helped her endure and discern how God was calling her to give witness to her faith and have impact where she could.
She relied on prayer for understanding and strength to help her endure despair as well as for direction in her life. I was particularly struck by the account of how she prayed for direction shortly after becoming a Catholic. What was God calling her to? It created an awareness that shortly thereafter, when an itinerant Frenchman, Peter Maurin, visited her and shared his yearning for a Catholic publication that would focus on the radical call of faith to do justice, she launched The Catholic Worker newspaper, a publication that continues to this day. Moved by the human suffering of the Great Depression, Dorothy and Peter expanded The Catholic Worker to a movement and formed communities with Houses of Hospitality, where they welcomed the indigent and homeless of the Depression as guests, with love and full recognition of their human dignity. The movement endures today as 187 Catholic Worker communities remain passionately committed to prayer, voluntary poverty, and hospitality for the homeless.
The Catholic Worker movement was Dorothy’s answer to her particular call as she navigated the wilderness in her lifetime. While it may seem disheartening that the wilderness endures today, hope and consolation resonates for me in how she journeyed through the wilderness. While often overwhelmed by the magnitude of suffering and injustice, she was sustained by a reliance on prayer and the support of a loving community that nurtured a passion to make a difference with the gifts God had given her in the time and place she lived.
It is in the witness (not necessarily the particulars) of guides and Saints like Dorothy that I believe we can find consolation and direction as we journey through the wilderness of our time. We see their humanity as they struggle and despair as we often do, but also how they navigated their journey with God and community as companions.
Let us too be sustained by prayer and our loving community as we journey together through the wilderness of our time and listen attentively for ways God may be calling us individually or as a community to make a difference.
[i] John Loughery and Blythe Randolph, Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century