Spiritual Reflections

Like two sacred bookends, the first reading from Deuteronomy and the Marcan Gospel complement one another. Together, they attest to the truth that God’s promises are always fulfilled. Speaking for God, Moses announced that God would raise up from among the Israelites a prophet who would also speak for God, as he did. “Listen to this prophet,” advised Moses. When the Marcan Jesus began his public ministry in Capernaum’s synagogue, those present sensed that his words were empowered by God. He spoke with such authority that even evil spirits listened and obeyed.

Two weeks into the new year, the sacred texts alert us yet again to the fact that we do not create our own lives or futures, regardless of our penchant for planning and organization. We are called into being, called to serve and called into the unknown future by a God who knows and loves us and never departs from us. Our response to God is constituted in what we do with all the divine calls that punctuate our days and nights with possibility.

With great hope and genuine pride, the church begins this new year with a celebration of Mary, mother of Jesus, proto-disciple and model of strength, grace and courage for all believers. In his Christmas Eve homily in 1978, Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero affirmed the important role of Mary in God’s plan of salvation.

I was selling my novel, The Book of Sins, at the Call to Action conference several weeks ago when a woman came over and asked in a hushed voice, “is your book all about Jesus?” She was slight, gray-haired and kept looking over her shoulder as if to make sure no one was listening. Her name tag said she was a member of a religious community. I can’t remember the state she was from or her name. She bent in and whispered, “I don’t do much with Jesus anymore. My spirituality is very different now.”

Cookie Monster has made his position known. “99 percent of the world’s cookies are consumed by 1 percent of the monsters,” he has reportedly said. “OCCUPY SESAME STREET!” And while mainstream pundits still ask balefully, “what do the Wall Street occupiers want?” every child on earth knows there is something dangerous and wrong when 1 percent of the monsters consume 99 percent of the cookies. They want it to stop; the situation is catastrophic.

The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day, ed. Robert Ellsberg (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2008; abridged paperback: New York: Doubleday, 2011).

April 21, 1965
Awoke at 5:30. Usual expression over failures, inefficiency, incapacity to cope. Dom Hubert von Zeller’s book, Approach to Calvary, invaluable, teaching one to accept this discouragement which he says will increase with age. But I must learn to contain myself, to do my own work which is writing, correspondence, and the constant study, meditating on both natural and supernatural life. But women, we see the burdens of others, and how little one can do to lighten them. No matter how we try to change things, clean things up, make order, it essentially remains the same. It is hard to keep from heaviness of heart. One must just keep going and my work is to write and I am neglecting it. New resolutions. Will I ever learn that it is only myself I can work on and so much needs doing there.

The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day, ed. Robert Ellsberg (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2008; abridged paperback: New York: Doubleday, 2011).

February 12, 1959
It is hard to convince anyone, priest or people, that Charity must forgive seventy times seven, and that we must not judge. The bitterness with which people regard the poor and down-and-out. Drink, profligate living, laziness, everything is suspected. They help them once, the man who comes to the door, but they come back! They want more help. “Where will it end? Can I accomplish anything? Aren’t there poorer people whom I should be helping?” These are the questions they ask themselves which paralyzes all charity, chills it, stops all good work. If we start in by admitting that what we can do is very small -- a drop in the bucket -- and try to do that very well, it is a beginning and really a great deal.

The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day, ed. Robert Ellsberg (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2008; abridged paperback: New York: Doubleday, 2011).

Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1950
It was a spring-like night tho cold. Then at 1 a man and women came bringing a drunken woman in and I was very harsh in not taking her. As Tom said, before dawn came, I had denied our Lord in her. I felt very guilty -- more for my manner than for doing it, as we could not have all the other women in the house disturbed.

Did you receive an invitation to the recent wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton? Neither did I. But wouldn’t it have been special if we had? Invitations to great events like weddings, birthdays and anniversaries are chances to socialize and celebrate together the blessings that fill our lives with joy.