Catholics On Call - Reflections On Call

Reflections On Call

My Experience in a Catholic Worker House: LACW and "Black Jesus"

This summer I spent part of my vacation visiting the Los Angeles Catholic Worker. The Catholic Worker movement, initiated by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in the 1930s, began with people talking. They talked about what it would take to create a world where it was easier for people to be good. They talked about what it means to live justly and love one’s neighbor. They talked themselves right into action. Beginning as the header of a newsletter, “The Catholic Worker,” began to define a movement: houses of hospitality where strangers were welcomed, soup kitchens where the hungry were fed, farms where city people reconnected with the earth and the jobless were given work, community living where resources were shared in common. Today Catholic Worker communities are still alive and thriving. Each community is unique in practice, while holding in common the principle of Personalism, the idea that we are indeed responsible, not only for ourselves but for one another.

Personalism—essentially, seeing a need and responding, evaluating the consequences of one’s choices and acting accordingly—is one of the things that attracted me most to the movement. I was impressed by the way that in Catholic Worker communities, words, particularly the words of Christ’s gospel, grow arms and legs and influence action in daily life. The LACW has been living out the gospel with intensity and integrity for forty years. Those who comprise the community structure their days around performing “works of mercy.” These include feeding the poor, clothing the naked and giving shelter to the homeless; practices derived from Christ’s admonition in Matthew 25:40, “as much as you did to the least of these, you did it to me…and as much as you did not do it to the least of these, you did not do it to me”.

Roughly twenty-five men and women reside at the LACW. Eight are Catholic Workers. The remainder is comprised of a handful of summer-interns and “guests.” Some guests have lived in the house for as long as or longer than some of the workers. All are men and women the Workers met through the “Hippie Kitchen.” The heart of the LACW is this soup kitchen that beats out its life giving rhythm in downtown LA’s “skid row.” Never have I encountered homelessness and hunger like there is in downtown Los Angeles’ skid row. Driving at night I saw blocks of sidewalks lined with tents, make-shift shanties of boxes and debris, church parking lots with bodies parked in every available space.

Three weeks out of the summer, the LACW rents a bus, fills it with their friends who regularly eat at the Kitchen, and drives to a lovely lakeside park. Workers prepare food early and are there to meet the bus load of skid row residents with chips and salsa and fruit. Grills are ignited and before long servers and those served share a meal, play frisbee, take a stroll, or simply rest in the grass beneath a shade tree. Here I had the opportunity to say more than “good morning” while quickly scooping salad onto a plate or sticking a spoon into a bowl of oatmeal. I had the opportunity to talk with and listen to my brothers and sisters who so readily welcomed me though I was a stranger.

The person who prevails over my memory is “Black Jesus.” He gave himself that name as a testament to his faith and a challenge to live an exemplary life. Black Jesus is sinewy and tall. He stands stooped and laughs soft and high like a little child. Thinking of him invariably brings to mind Jesus’ words:

Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. 6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
(Matt. 18:6, KJV)

Black Jesus is one example of the many men and women the LACW fellowships with daily, a representative of the millions of men and women throughout our country who experience homelessness and hardship and who are rejected by the mainstream. These are the least Jesus referred to. Their faces are the face of Christ: thirsty, hungry, naked, homeless, [often] imprisoned. When we avert our eyes, or cross the street, it is Christ we turn from. When we wait for someone else to meet the need we find overwhelming or outside our responsibility, it is Christ’s need we neglect. As a Catholic woman I am confronted with the responsibility to respond. What is required? Interacting with these men and women, I did not get the sense that their need would be satisfied by having the gospel preached to them. What was required for them, what is required from me, is that the gospel be practiced.

by Amy Nee

(Amy is a 2010 Catholics on Call alumna. She was a student at Loyola University in Chicago taking classes in Pastoral Studies. She just moved into the White Rose Catholic Worker House in Chicago. The email address is: whiterosecw@gmail.com)

Share your comments, questions, reflections with the CoC community on facebook.

send to friend

Reflections On Call