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Homily: Nov. 5, 2017

All Saints tr. ⚜ St. Paul’s, Monroe, NC

Many years ago my brother sent me an audio tape of a concert / program given at Carnegie Hall in honor of Harry Chapin’s 45th birthday. 12/7/87. He had died, tragically a few years earlier. Harry Belafonte was mc’'íng the program. Somebody said to him that the Smothers Brothers were next on the program. Belafonte feigned surprise. He said.

They’re here? My god, I’m glad I came man. Isn’t it great.

Harry Chapin was a personal saint of mine. I first encountered him as a gifted folk singer, a singer of tales. Then I learned that he was one of the first – if not the first – artist to bring attention to world hunger. It was reported and commonly known that he would do one concert for himself and then do another concert where the proceeds went toward a charity of some kind. His legacy lives on to this day in the form food banks.

Chapin was also a dedicated humanitarian who fought to end world hunger; he was a key participant in the creation of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger in 1977.[1] In 1987, Chapin was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his humanitarian work.

He sang a song about how he had just experienced his 34rd birthday. There was some relief because as he said so many great people died at 33.

When I started this song I was still thirty-three
The age that Mozart died and sweet Jesus was set free
Keats and Shelley too soon finished, Charley Parker would be
And I fantasized some tragedy’d be soon curtailing me (There Only Was One Choice)

He made 34., but 5 years later (1987) he died in a fiery car crash on the Long Island Freeway – on his way to a free concert.

his epitaph reads:

Oh if a man tried
To take his time on Earth
And prove before he died
What one man’s life could be worth
I wonder what would happen
to this world

My God, I’m glad I’m here, man. Or as I might put it, I’m glad I count harry Chapin a part of the communion of saints. I’m glad we’re in the same family, man.

Blessed among us

Mary Pat and I read each day at morning prayer about saints, some of them well known, others less so. Some of them recognized as saints. Some of them not so much. The section of the prayer is called blessed among us.

One of the things we like about it is that we read about unusual “saints”. Not on the usual lists. Not on any list in some cases.

Peace Pilgrim: Wikipedia

One them we learned about some months ago lived much of her remarkable life in anonymity. She walked. And she walked and she walked. In the 1950’s she started walking across the US talking to whoever she could and whoever was willing about peace. In 1953 she gave up using her real name and just referred to herself as Peace Pilgrim.

She stopped counting the miles she had walked in 1964 at which point she had walked 25,000 miles for peace. She became known as: spiritual teacher, mystic, pacifist, vegetarian activist as well as peace activist. She was on her 7th cross country journey when she died in 1981.

Because of the communion of the saints I get to count her as part of the family I belong to.

I’m glad we’re in the same family, man.

Peace Lady homeless blessing citynews

Along the way I learned about another peace lady. In April of this year a lady died known to most of the people in Toronto as the Peace Lady.

Donning an all white gown, her arms outstretched – one holding a white flag the other making the peace symbol, Davis would stand for hours.

In 2009, Davis told the Toronto Sun she decided to end her highway blessing mission when a driver suddenly stopped his car in the middle of the DVP to take her picture, nearly causing a massive crash.

When she wasn’t blessing drivers, Davis spent most of her life living in a tent by a ravine near the Don River.

She was a mother, a grandmother and even a great grandmother.

I confess to you that I have a special place in my heart for homeless people. They can often be very weak in defenses, they don’t have property or pride to protect, and they can be simply present. I’m glad I’m in the same family as the peace lady.

Summoned by Love

On my birthday the person we read about was a French man named Carlo Carretto. blog about him I lived with him every day while I was in seminary. I stumbled upon his book Summoned by Love and used it to keep myself going during days of discouragement and loss of vision.

He was an activist for the church in the early 20th c. when suddenly at age 44 he gave up the life he had known and became a contemplative monk of the Little Brothers of Jesus, inspired by the life and witness of Charles de Foucauld.

Essentially, he showed how to live a contemplative life in the midst of the world, in the desert that is ultimately everywhere. The challenge of the Gospel, as he saw it, was to create in this desert an oasis of love. He died on my birthday in 1988.

I’m really glad we’re in the same family, man

Righteous Gentile

A few days later we read about Oskar Schindler. That’s a name more of you may be familiar with. He’s not on any list of saints that I know of. But he became a hero of mine as soon as I learned about in the 1990’s as the movie about him was being produced.

He was in so many ways nothing like what we might think of as a saint. He wasn’t pious and demure. He wasn’t an obvious model citizen or father. He was flawed. But in all his ambiguity, in the raw grit of his life and times – he became a hero of the spirit, a person that I am glad to call a part of my family.

As the catastrophe of the European Jews was rapidly accelerating into genocide and mass murder, through deception and cunning, he found a way to save thousands of Jews – "Schindler’s Jews. At his death, at his request, he was buried in Jerusalem.

In the words of the Talmud, “He who saves one life, saves the entire world.”

I’m really glad we’re in the same family, man

Conscientious Objector

The person marked in our prayer book for Mary Pat’s and my anniversary was a traditional Christian. In his case it was Catholic, but it might have been any denomination. He followed the ritual and doctrine. But then he came up against a brick wall. And it was 1942. And he found that he could find nothing in the teachings of Christ that would give justification for killing another human being. He announced that he was a conscientious objector – in the midst of WW2, after all! Gordon Zahn was one of my personal models when I was in my 20’s during the VIetnam War.

Zahn wrote and taught tirelessly about the cause of peace and helped found Pax Christi USA (Peace of Christ). He died 2 days after Franz Jäggerstätter was beatified. Franz had died for refusing to be drafted by the the Nazi’s.

I’m really glad we’re in the same family, man

“All I see is Christ”

Dorothy Day died on Nov. 29th, 1980. She became one of my saints when I had to teach about her life and witness during my graduate studies at Notre Dame. For all her activism, support for the downcast and homeless and hopeless, for all her interest in social justice of all kinds, the one thing that cemented her as part of the family I wanted to be a part of was a video clip that we would show the students at ND.

In the clip, one of Dorothy’s friends was interviewed at the New York Catholic Worker House. She related an episode where a man had come to the back door (the camera panned to that door) and asked for a place to spend the night. He asked if there was an extra bed. Dorothy said, “Yes.”

At that her friend pulled her aside and said, “We don’t have any extra beds.” To which Dorothy replied, “Yes, we do. I will give him my bed.” At that her friend was exasperated and said, “But Dorothy, didn’t you see that he has open sores all over his body?” Without hesitation Dorothy responded, “No. All I saw was Jesus.”

I love the fact that I can count Dorothy a part of my family. I’m glad we’re related, man

The church and the poor

10/27 Fr. Henri Perrin (Worker priests)

I first learned about Henri Perrin and his fellow worker priests in the 1970’s. They and some other priests had volunteered during WW2 to work in labor camps to which many of the French had been conscripted in order to work for the Nazi war effort. Their experience led them to later give up traditional parish work and to take jobs with other factory workers, seeking to break down barriers between rich and poor. Eventually the organized church banned this experiment.

But their vision lived on and it became my own initial vision for my ministry. I told my bishop back in the 1970’s that the way I imagined my work was to be with the outcast, the disenfranchised, and the weakest in our communities. By that I had in mind, working with the dying and with small congregations that couldn’t afford “normal” clergy. In order to make that possible, I thought, I will have a 2nd paying job which will pay for my real ministry.

I have at least in part lived out that vision and I owe so much of it to Fr. Henri Perrin. I’m glad we’re part of the same family, man.

Prayer

I’m glad we’re in the same family, man.

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one
communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son
Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints
in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those
ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love
you; through Jesus Christ our Lord,