Peter Maurin — co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement along with the more widely known Dorothy Day — used to say that the Church’s mission should be to announce, not to denounce. I’ll introduce Maurin and Day, and the Catholic Worker generally, in more detail in subsequent columns. To introduce the topic, this column addresses this “announcement,” and how Maurin saw it relating to serving the poor and oppressed.
As usual, Maurin broke things down into very simple terms. What was the Catholic Worker in the business of announcing? Christ. How do we announce him? By being his body, the Church. How can we be the Church? By doing what the Church does. What is that? Participating in the Mass, the prayers, and the works of mercy.
We can take these each in turn. Christ comes to us weekly and daily in the Eucharist. The Eucharist, you might say, has tentacles, and it reaches out to touch our whole lives. It wants to devour all that we have and are and bring it into conformity with Christ. To paraphrase St. Augustine, the Eucharist is the one food that consumes the one who eats it. The Christian life, then, is always working out the logic of the Mass — of living the entailments of the Eucharist. This is how Christ devours us.
There are two primary confessions that we make over and over again in the liturgy: the Lord’s worthiness to be praised and adored, and our unworthiness to do so. The confession of praise is constant: “Glory to God,” “Holy! Holy! Holy!” “Thanks be to God.” But equally constant is, “Lord, have mercy,” “I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.” I dare to say that each word of the liturgy could fall under one of these confessions. And these two confessions are exactly what we try to extend throughout our lives.
So, the first tentacles of the Eucharist are our daily prayers, such as the Liturgy of the Hours or the rosary. Morning and evening prayer, for instance, sanctify the rest of the day with exactly the Mass’s twofold logic: “Hallowed be thy name … forgive us our trespasses.”
And this is where we come to Maurin’s vision for the Catholic Worker, and its connection to the Mass. Maurin said that the Church should be about “building a new society within the shell of the old,” by the “daily practice of the works of mercy” — feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and so forth. In light of the twofold affirmation of the Mass, the works of mercy are an essential part of Christianity precisely because in the Mass we participate in the supreme work of mercy — the Passion and resurrection of Christ. So, if we don’t practice the works of mercy, we fail to show that we take seriously what we do at Mass. Giving to those who beg, giving our bed to the homeless, eating with the hungry, forgiving wrongs, praying for enemies — all these Christ did first for us and does for us at each liturgy. Christians welcome especially those who might seem unworthy, precisely because in the Eucharist we are welcomed though unworthy. The works of mercy, then, are not part of an optional outreach or a social program. They are part of the liturgy. It’s part of how we announce Christ to the world.
Miller is director of pastoral care and outreach at Assumption in St. Paul. He has a Ph.D. in theology from Duke University, and lives with his family at the Maurin House Catholic Worker in Columbia Heights. You can reach him at colin.miller1@protonmail.com.
