Day By Day #34

Day by Day #34

MORNING/MIDDAY OFFICE

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Matthew 5:1–7

Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.

He said:

            “Blessed are the poor in spirit,

               for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

            Blessed are those who mourn,

               for they will be comforted.

            Blessed are the meek,

               for they will inherit the earth.

            Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

               for they will be filled.

            Blessed are the merciful,

               for they will be shown mercy.”

Devotional

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) was a cofounder of the Catholic Worker Movement. Best known for her radical embodiment of the gospel through feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, she also engaged in a radical pacifism as a witness to loving all people. Her life and writings continue to serve as a sign to the world of the mercy of God in a harsh world. This story gives us a glimpse into her deep insight into Jesus and his kingdom:

It was . . . almost thirty-five years ago that I first met Dorothy Day. She was sitting at a table, talking with a woman who was, I quickly realized, quite drunk, yet determined to carry on a conversation. . . . The woman . . . had a large purple-red birthmark along the right side of her forehead. She kept touching it as she uttered one exclamatory remark after another, none of which seemed to get the slightest rise from the person sitting opposite her.

I found myself increasingly confused by what seemed to be an interminable, essentially absurd exchange taking place between the two middle-aged women. When would it end—the alcoholic ranting and the silent nodding, occasionally interrupted by a brief question, which only served, maddeningly, to wind up the already overtalkative one rather than wind her down? Finally silence fell upon the room. Dorothy Day asked the woman if she would mind an interruption. She got up and came over to me. She said, “Are you waiting to talk with one of us?”

One of us: with those three words she had cut through layers of self-importance, a lifetime of bourgeois privilege, and scraped the hard bone of pride: “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” With those three words, so quietly and politely spoken, she had indirectly told me what the Catholic Worker Movement is all about and what she herself was like.^a

Dorothy Day understood that a genuine relationship with Jesus results in a mercy that makes us softer toward others, not a morality that makes us both harder and superior.

Jesus turned the values of the world upside down. His kingdom, he announces, belongs to the “poor in spirit,” those on the bottom, those who feel crushed, and are completely dependent on others. He makes clear it is not the aggressively self-seeking or the overachievers who will inherit the earth, but the powerless, the sad, the meek, those whom the world considers failures. Those on the top will be on the bottom, and those on the bottom will be on the top.

As we grow in grace to see people as Jesus did, we discover that our defenses diminish and our hearts become softer, especially when we are in tension or conflict with those around us.

Question to Consider

Jesus said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13). What is one concrete way you can show mercy to someone today?

Prayer

A PRAYER OF ST. FURSEY

(Seventh century, Ireland)

The arms of God be around my shoulders,

the touch of the Holy Spirit upon my head,

the sign of Christ’s cross upon my forehead,

the sound of the Holy Spirit in my ears,

the fragrance of the Holy Spirit in my nostrils,

the vision of heaven’s company in my eyes,

the conversation of heaven’s company on my lips,

the work of God’s church with my hands,

the service of God and my neighbor in my feet,

a home for God in my heart,

and to God, the father of all, my entire being.

Amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

MIDDAY/EVENING OFFICE

Silence and Stillness before God (2 minutes)

Scripture Reading: Luke 18:9–14

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Devotional

One of my favorite sayings comes from a story in The Desert Fathers about a fourth-century monk named John the Short. A jealous fellow monk once approached John as he was teaching at the front of the church.

[The monk] said, “John, your cup is full of poison.”

John answered, “Yes . . . it is. But you said that when you could only see the outside; I wonder what you would say if you saw the inside.”^b

John the Short is not defensive in his response. He does not attack the monk or fire off a joke to deflect the conversation away from himself. He courageously admits his vulnerability and what he knows to be true about himself. Like the apostle Paul, he affirms, “I [am] the worst of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:16). John the Short didn’t retreat into a self-protective shell and stop serving others. Rather, he remained open and vulnerable to the one who criticized him.

If our desire is to lead and serve others, we have to come to grips with this plain, hard fact: the degree to which we ignore sinful, ugly parts of ourselves is the degree to which our ability to love and lead others is limited and impaired.^c

Question to Consider

What might it look like for you to respond to criticism in the nondefensive, humble way John the Short did?

Prayer

Father, when I feel attacked, all I want to do is defend myself and attack back. I ask that you fill me with a profound sense of your love today. And do a work in me to change my defensiveness to humility, that your tenderness and love might flow through me. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)

^a Robert Coles, Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1987), xviii.

^b The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003), 172.

^c This story is cited and further amplified in Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader, 64.