Dorothy Day on Peter Maurin

Time-worthy passages from PETER MAURIN: Apostle to the World
By Dorothy Day.

[Peter] used to say that when he appeared before God, God would say to him, "Where are the others?” So the problem was how to reach them, how to influence them. "By being what you wanted the other fellow to be,” Peter said simply in one of his little essays. (48)

"By the feast of our baptism we are partakers of divine life," he would remind us. "Grace is like the blood of Christ in our veins. Our relationship with each other is closer than that of blood." The Christ life was in us, yes, but not as it was in Peter. (48) To be partakers of the divine life is not enough. We must grow in it. Those of us who have worked with Peter these past fifteen years [ed. note, 1932-1947] feel that Peter is one of those who have grown in divine life, while we have been but babes. (48-9) ...



The Catholic Worker believes in creating a new society within the shell of the old...with a philosophy that is not a new philosophy but a very old philosophy, a philosophy so old that if looks like new. (50)

We were to reach them by doing the works of mercy which meant feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner, sheltering the harborless, and so on. We were to do this by being poor ourselves, giving everything we had; then others would give, too. Voluntary poverty and the works of mercy were the things [Peter] stressed above all. This was the core of his message. It had such appeal that it inspired us to action-action which certainly kept us busy and got us into all kinds of trouble besides. (50)

As Marx and Engels put it: "Each man works according to his ability and receives according to his need." Or as Paul put it, "Let your abundance supply their want." Men are beginning to think of the annual wages in the unions, but not the family wage. Usually it is "equal pay for equal work."

Peter used to say, “John Smith puts on his hat and goes to church on Sunday, and John Smith goes to hell for what he does on Monday.” We participate in the sin of others; we are all helping to make the kind of world that makes for war. (58)

When we talk of the works of mercy, we usually think of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked. Some grow disillusioned with this less romantic work. But we have had to do them all, even burying dead. One does not necessarily have to establish, run, or live in a House of Hospitality, as Peter named the hospices we have running around the country, in order to practice the works of mercy. The early Fathers of the Church said that every house should have a Christ room. A college graduate hitchhiking across the country during the Depression said that the only place he found hospitality was among the Negroes the Mexicans. Every house should have a Christ room. The coat that hangs in your closet belongs to the poor. If your brother comes to you hungry you say, "Go, be thou filled," what kind of hospitality is that? It is no use turning people away to an agency, to the city or the state or Catholic Charities. It is you yourself who must perform the works of mercy. Perhaps you can only give she price of a meal, or a bed…and often you can only hope that it will be spent for that. Often you can literally take off a garment, if it only be a scarf, and warm your shivering brother. But personally, at a personal sacrifice, these were the ways, Peter used to insist, to combat the growing tendency on the part of the state to take over. This is the job that Our Lord
gave us to do. "Inasmuch as yon have done it unto one of the least of brethren, you have done it unto me." (59-60)

We do not understand ourselves. (60)

Peter said, "The men of action don't think, and the men who think, don't act." “Workers should be scholars and scholars workers."

Peter loved to fling out catchy slogans, and then watch the fur fly. "It makes for clarification of thought," said Peter happily. “The truth must be restated every twenty years," Peter kept quoting Ibsen.

Peter was always getting back to St. Francis of Assisi.

There are those who spoke of his anarchistic nature, because of his refusal to enter into political controversy, his refusal to use worldly means to change the social order. He does not refuse to use material means, physical means, secular means. But the means of expediency that men have turned to for so many ages, he disdains. He is no diplomat, no politician. He has so thoroughly discouraged in his followers the use of political means that he has been termed an anarchist by many (79).

To give up superfluous possession! Peter had no income so he did not worry about income taxes. He used those things he needed, in the realm of clothing and food, "as though he used them not." He had no worries about style, fit, or fashion. He ate what was put before him, and if he preferred anything he preferred vegetable sews to meat, a hot drink to a cold, olive oil to butter.

Saint Francis desired that men should work with their hands. Peter enjoyed manual labor. We must use the whole man,” says Peter, "so that we may be holy men." (80)

If [Christianity] fails, it is glorious in its failure, the failure of the cross. Peter was patient. Looking at things as he did in the light of history, taking the long view, he was content to play his part, to live by his principles and wait. As Pascal said, "It is not ours to see the triumph of the truth but to fight in its behalf." Peter has emphasized most steadily that famous quote of Chesterton, "Christianity has not failed, it has been found difficult and left untried."

Peter talked about asceticism as a neglected study. To him, religion and asceticism go together. It is inconceivable for instance that one can truly be "religious" and not embrace voluntary poverty (94).

"Some will tell me it is not in the encyclicals. They don't know the encyclicals. The one on St. Francis, for instance. Ours is Franciscan and Benedictine stuff. They have abandoned Franciscanism and so we will show them the way by proving it can be done.” (108)

People are reluctant to shelter the poor, for fear they will have this burden on their backs forever. They are afraid of "pauperizing" the poor. They are afraid of contributing to their delinquency. They want to move them along, to take care of the greatest number in the shortest possible time, to have something to show for their efforts. "How long do you let your people stay?" is one of the questions I am asked. Sometimes the poor are called "cases" or 'clients." One social worker wanted to know what our "caseload" was. And our answer is we let them stay forever. They live with us, they die with us, and we give them a Christian burial. We pray for them after they are dead. Once they are taken in, they become members of the family. Or rather they were always members of our family. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ." To make such a statement to public authority is to ran the risk being committed to a psychiatric ward. (111)

Of course, as Pope Pius XI has pointed out, in many times of crisis the state must intervene to take care of the common good. In times of depression, in times of national catastrophe, the state has the duty to take care of the homeless, the poverty-stricken. But even in those times it is to be understood that all Christians, and men of good will, must do their share first in order to relieve the state of much of the burden. It is only after we have used all our own resources that we should call upon the state. It is only when our insurance, our bank savings, our own families, our own Church can no longer care for us that we should look to the state. (112)

What a strange point of view, the Christian! What an upside-down point of view. What an unusual point of view. But it is the supernatural point of view. To rejoice in tribulation, to love your enemy, to turn the other cheek - is it natural? "No," is the response. “And it is not manly, and surely Christ did not mean all that, and we are not to take him literally. No, if anyone insults me, I’ll let him have it. If anyone spits at me, I’ll knock him down. If anyone encroaches on my rights, I will sick up for them. After all, it is my family, my home, my county. You cannot take these things literally. This is the time for more militant virtues." (114)

And people have their objections: "But we might be murdered in our beds. " The thing to do then is take in half a dozen people. Take in a family. There is safety in numbers; ~they will take care of each other. "But we haven't the means." God would not send the poor to you and not provide the means. If you show enough faith by seeing Christ in those who come to you, receiving the Holy Family when there is no room at the inn, then God will reward that faith. We have proved this over and over again in our Houses of Hospitality throughout the country. “But we must consider the family." We concede that objection. A husband must recognize his wife's limitations, and the wife her husband's. To each perhaps is not given the same measure of faith. And they are one flesh, But the ideal marriage would be that in which each vied with the other in charity. "But we haven't enough for ourselves. Our houses are not large enough. But we could have done without so many things in order to help our brothers-car, radios, even the overheating of our houses.

"Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compares to love in dreams Yes, it is no easy thing to ask. It is no light burden to place on others, this burden of Christianity. But we are not the ones who place this burden on others. Christ, who said, "Take up your cross and follow roe," placed it there, and that cross is very often our brother. (116)

It is because we can only show our love for God by our love for the poor (because how can we love God who we have not seen, if we do not love our neighbor whom we do see?) that we talk so much of this love.

We think in terms of the Mystical Body of Christ. We are all members, one of another, and Christ is our head. We share in each other's sins just as we share in each other's virtues. When the health of one member suffers, the health of the whole body is lowered. An injury to one is an injury to all. War, whether it is international or class war, and even when it is enmity between brothers, is a rending of the Mystical Body of Christ. When my brother sins, it is my sin. And our Houses of Hospitality, which Peter Maurin inspired, are battlegrounds where gigantic forces are at war with one another, forces of good and evil, and we war not against flesh blood but against principalities and powers.