St. Mary Star of the Sea
Pastoral Message
The Good News!
In Luke’s Gospel today, Jesus talks to the big crowds following him. That audience extends through time and embraces us. We’re traveling with him too. And today we hear Jesus teaching with “hard sayings”: If we don’t hate those we love, if we don’t hate even our own life, we cannot keep following him.
Can Jesus possibly mean for us to hate others and ourselves? One explanation for his choice of words is that in his time and place, such words could be used in this stark way to make a strong point. The love we have for Jesus should make all our other loves pale in comparison.
This could mean our priorities won’t be understood by others. Sometimes even those closest to us won’t get what we’re doing. If serving God is our top priority, sometimes our other priorities will simply look like—well, like they’re not our top priority. Other priorities may look neglected.
Christ is challenging us. Where does our heart find itself? Where will we know who we are? Where will I find fulfillment? We’re challenged then to ask, are other things in the way?
In most of our lives, we’re asked to love the Lord through our love of others. We’re asked to serve God through our work, through our choices in how we spend money, through our decisions about how we use our time. Most days it’s not an either/or decision between God and the world; it’s a process of figuring out how to serve God in the world.
We can all be tempted, though, to lose our balance, to lose our focus. Then Jesus’ words are a “gut” check — a “heart” check.
Dan Finucane | sundaybulletins@liguori.org
DEAR PADRE
Who was Dorothy Day?
A friend sent me a copy of a newspaper called The Catholic Worker. It was founded by one of his heroes, Dorothy Day. What can you tell me about her? - Paul
Dear Paul,
Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn in 1897. She finished high school at sixteen and joined the Socialist Party in 1914 as a college student. She converted to Catholicism in 1927
.During the Great Depression, Dorothy’s commitment to the poor deepened. In 1932 she met Peter Maurin, with whom she founded the Catholic Worker Movement. Seeing a need for a Catholic newspaper for the unemployed, in 1933 she created The Catholic Worker newspaper.
Through her newspaper, Dorothy Day proclaimed the rights of workers to dignity and to fair and honest treatment by industry and government, landlords, and neighbors. Dorothy’s prolabor and antiwar beliefs caused her to be labeled a Communist, but she was never a member of the Communist Party.
Dorothy’s concern for social justice grew—among other things, she worked with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers—and so did her Catholic faith. She was orthodox and pious and had a deep sense of Catholic morality.
In 1972 she received the University of Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal. Three years after her death in 1980, the Claretians called for her canonization; in 2000, Pope John Paul I granted the Archdiocese of New York permission to open a “cause” for Dorothy Day’s sainthood.
Rick Potts, C.Ss.R