23 May 2017 - homily - Tuesday of the 6th week of Easter – Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day - Acts 16:22-34

     Paul and his companions did not have an easy time preaching the Good News of Jesus in their travels throughout the ancient world.  Paul and his companion Silas cured a young girl who was possessed by an unclean spirit, but since she used that spirit to tell the future and to earn money for her masters, they pressed charges against Paul and Silas, accusing them of disturbing the peace and breaking the Roman laws.  

      Paul and Silas were stripped, beaten with rods, and thrown into prison.  Rather than being angry and frustrated with their situation, they lifted it up to the Lord, singing hymns and praying for the other prisoners to hear.  It tickled me when I heard how Paul, Silas and the other prisoners remained in the prison after a great earthquake came and provided a means for them to escape. I thought about the prisoners whom I have ministered to in the federal and state prisons here in Mississippi throughout the years; they would have burst out of that prison with joy as fast as they could, seeing this means of escape as a golden opportunity and as a gift given to them by God.

       Last week, we marked the anniversary of the death of Peter Maurin, a leading Catholic advocate for social justice in the 20th century.  Maurin immigrated from southern France to the United States in 1909.  He devised his own method of Catholic social philosophy, supporting himself with menial jobs along the way.  However, he struggled to find a practical way to apply these teachings to real life situations.  His life changed in 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, when he met a Catholic convert named Dorothy Day.  Maurin and Day founded the Catholic Worker Movement in New York City, a Catholic lay organization that combined corporal works of mercy with a warm welcome to the poor founded on the radical Gospel message that Jesus preached in his day.  Day and Maurin envisioned a new kind of society.  They worked to put many of Maurin’s ideas into action until his death from a stroke in 1949.  The Catholic Worker movement still exists today and still tries to embody the vision that Maurin and Day first had. 

        Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day, along with Paul, Silas and their companions in the Early Church are great examples of Christian charity, great examples of those who followed God’s calling out to them in the reality of their lives. In our own way, may we hear God calling out to us to bring his Good News to the world and to live out our faith.