A Radical Call to Love

The pacifism of the Catholic Worker movement is firmly rooted in the teachings of the Gospel known as the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7 and Luke 6:20-36). Not simply a code of ethics, they are a radical call to the nonviolent way of life that reaches its perfection In the action of selfless love and sacrificial service. It is a call to which we strive constantly to listen and respond while being continually mindful of our weaknesses and failures to do the good we know we ought to do. (One need only spend a day at either of our two houses of hospitality to understand how easy it is to fail in matters of love!) While some reasons can always be found to justify the use of force or violence as a temporary means of securing justice, Christ teaches us, through His life and death, that true justice is based on the reconciling power of suffering love —the power and folly of the Cross. For me, this truth of faith is a very difficult one to put into practice. Some would say it is Impossible. However, when the apostle Peter, in a mood of desperation, asked Jesus (after He addressed the rich young man) “Who can be saved?” Jesus responded that for us who are human it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.

A commitment of faith to the truth of God’s love, revealed by the Cross, means a willingness to endure and suffer violence, rather than Inflict it on another person made in the image of God. Though we often fail to enflesh this radical call to love, we nevertheless are called to try, relying on God’s grace, supported by a life of prayer, the reception of the Sacraments, and the witness of countless saints and martyrs throughout history. It is no accident that the Sermon on the Mount led Jesus directly to another mount, the mount called Golgotha, where the ultimate expression of His love was mocked and ridiculed by the Roman soldiers and other passersby.

In the early 1940’s when Europe and parts of Asia were being ravished by war, a reader of The Catholic Worker sent a letter to the editor. The reader questioned strongly Dorothy Day’s insistence on her pacifist response to the war. The correspondent wrote, “I have always felt that your work of feeding the poor and harboring the homeless was really the work of Christ. Now, however, you seem to have entered another field of action.” In the mind of the writer, the works of mercy, stated in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, were the only teachings of Jesus. The Catholic Worker’s pacifism was seen as an aberration of those teachings.

The Catholic Worker tradition, however, draws no distinction between the call to perform the works of mercy and the call to protest the ultimate violation of the image of God within each person —which is the result of all war. The works of mercy, including active resistance to the works of war, are rooted in the Gospel command to bear witness to the truth and love of God in the world by loving one another. This love is expressed when we answer the call to build up and strengthen the Mystical Body of Christ through feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, giving drink to the thirsty, comforting the sick, visiting the imprisoned and clothing the naked. But, by supporting conscription, paying war taxes, justifying militarism in the name of national security, and causing the poor to starve by an ever-expanding nuclear and conventional arms race, we mutilate the Mystical Body we are called to build up, strengthen and sustain with love.

Jesus taught us that we cannot serve two masters. When we are tempted into thinking that It is possible to serve both, perhaps we should ask ourselves the questions that St. Clement of Rome once addressed to the Christian community: “Why do the members of Christ tear one another? Why do we rise up against our own body in such madness? Have we forgotten that we are all members of one another?”

We at the Catholic Worker believe that the true power of God’s love is revealed when we perform the works of mercy and, despite our common failures, try to follow the counsels of perfection In the Sermon on the Mount. Dorothy Day once wrote, ‘‘Our arms will be the love of God and our Brother.” Arthur Sheehan, the biographer and personal friend of Peter Maurin, once called the works of mercy “Peter’s Peace Plan.” To carry out such a radical call to discipleship, the call to become peacemakers in a world so deeply scarred and disfigured by hatred, violence and war, we need to be clothed by grace, whose source and sustenance is God’s boundless love and mercy. Such a love was revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. May we be granted the grace and courage to follow Him.