What we're doing

Each day, seven days a weekthe homeless and the poor line up at the rectory door at about 11 a.m. We provide them with a voucher for lunch and address any other needs we may discover; bus fare home to another state, a warm jacket, even redeemed one's beloved dog from the animal shelter.

The number of poor people we see is increasing. Some days we have fed more than 40 people.

The vouchers are good at a local fast food restaurant. Here, too, we have had problems. Some merchants refuse to feed the hungry, even when we pay full price for the food. Neverthless, when one rebuffs us, we find another. We have a commitment to those who depend upon us to keep the program going as long as we can.

This work is undertaken solely through the generosity of our parishioners, and it is no small amount; it costs thousands of dollars a month.

The Scandal of the Works of Mercy

by Dorothy Day

The Spiritual Works of Mercy are: to admonish the sinner, to instruct the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to comfort the sorrowful, to bear wrongs patiently, to forgive all injuries, and to pray for the living and the dead.

The Corporal Works are to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to ransom the captive, to harbor the harborless, to visit the sick, and to bury the dead.

When Peter Maurin talked about the necessity of practicing the Works of Mercy, he meant all of them. He envisioned Houses of Hospitality in poor parishes in every city of the country, where these precepts of Our Lord could be put into effect. He pointed out that we have turned to state responsibility through home relief, social legislation, and social security, that we no longer practice personal responsibility, but are repeating the words of the first murderer, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

The Works of Mercy are a wonderful stimulus to our growth in faith as well as love. Our faith is taxed to the utmost and so grows through this strain put upon it. It is pruned again and again, and springs up bearing much fruit. For anyone starting to live literally the words of the Fathers of the Church-"The bread you retain belongs to the hungry, the dress you lock up is the property of the naked"; "What is superfluous for one's need is to be regarded as plunder if one retains it for one's self"-there is always a trial ahead. "Our faith, more precious than gold, must be tried as though by fire."

Here is a letter we received today: "I took a gentleman seemingly in need of spiritual and temporal guidance into my home on a Sunday afternoon. Let him have a nap on my bed, went through the want ads with him, made coffee and sandwiches for him, and when he left, I found my wallet had gone also."

I can only say that the saints would only bow their heads and not try to understand or judge. They received no thanks-well then, God had to repay them. They forbore to judge, and it was as though they took off their cloak besides their coat to give away. This is expecting heroic charity, of course. But these things happen for our discouragement, for our testing. We are sowing the seed of love, and we are not living in the harvest time. We must love to the point of folly, and we are indeed fools, as Our Lord Himself was who died for such a one as this. We lay down our lives, too, when we have performed so painfully thankless an act, for our correspondent is poor in this world's goods. It is agony to go through such bitter experiences, because we all want to love, we desire with a great longing to love our fellows, and our hearts are often crushed at such rejections. But, as a Carmelite nun said to me last week, "it is the crushed heart which is the soft heart, the tender heart."

Such an experience is crueler than that of our young men in Baltimore, who were arrested for running a disorderly house, i.e., our St. AnthonyÕs House of Hospitality, and who spent a few nights in jail. Such an experience is even crueler than that which happened to one of our men here in New York who was attacked (for his pacifism) by a maniac with a knife. Actually to shed one's blood is a less bitter experience.

Well, our friend has suffered from his experience and it is part of the bitterness of the poor, who cheat each other, who exploit each other even as they are exploited, who despise each other even as they are the despised.

And is it to be expected that virtue and destitution should go together? No, as John Cogley has written, they are the destitute in every way, destitute of this world's goods, destitute of honor, of gratitude, of love; they need so much that we cannot take the Works of Mercy apart and say I will do this one or that one Work of Mercy. We find they all go together.

Some years ago there was an article in The Commonweal by Georges Bernanos. He ended it on a warning note for these apocalyptic times:

"Every particle of Christ's divine charity is today more precious for your security-for your security, I say-than all the atom bombs in all the stockpiles. "

It is by the Works of Mercy that we shall be judged.

Commonweal, November 4, 1949