political, and so prayerful.
This is a powerful memory of the past and a
prophetic encouragement for the future and what we now face. This weekend we are
honoring the prophets of another time who stood in our stead
and represented all of
us in the face of an unjust war. We are grateful for their witness, their
sacrifice, their
tenacity, their prophetic action, and their unwavering
commitment to peace and
justice and to calling America to be its best self: Thank you, Dan Berrigan,
Phil Berrigan, David Darst, John Hogan, Tom Lewis, Marjorie
Bradford Melville,
Thomas Melville, George Mische, and Mary Moylan. You changed the course of a
Nation, you changed the course of our lives, and you inspired
many others to follow.
So in your honor we "lift every voice and sing till
earth and heaven ring, Ring with
the harmonies of liberty"---today "let our
rejoicing rise high as the listening skies--and
let it resound loud as the rolling stream". We have not given up. Today is not just a
memory of what was, it is a commitment to what will be. We want you to know that
we will "march on until victory is won". ( Lift Every Voice and Sing--James Weldon
Johnson).
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and other preachers and orators
have used the following
quote to help us understand the dilemma we are in at any given
time. There is some
discrepancy as to the exact translation, but the spirit is
true nonetheless.
We can tonight agree with Dante that " 'the hottest
places in hell are reserved for those,
who in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality '. There comes a time when
silence is betrayal."
These words are difficult to hear,
because we cannot allow silence, or the violence of silence
to overtake us.
You remember, I am sure these words! "'Fools'" said I, "'You do not
know Silence
like a cancer grows. Hear my words that I might teach
you Take my arms that I might
reach you', But my words like silent raindrops fell and
echoed in the wells of silence".
"And the sign said 'The words of the prophets are
written on the subway walls
and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of
silence". (The Sounds of Silence--
Simon and Garfunkel).
We are so glad that the Sounds of Silence did not overtake
the Catonsville Nine,
We are so glad they overcame the temptation to be
silent. We are so glad that
they spoke and acted.
There comes a point in all of our lives when we can no
longer go along with the
path that our elders and leaders have laid out for us.
It is not easy to oppose your government at any time, but it
is important to note that
"dissent and disloyalty are not to be equated. Many people will use any means to
silence dissent, even calling dissent, "Fake
News"!! (If you know what I mean?)
Dr. King was known as a Civil Rights Leader, but as he put
the pieces together
about Civil Rights, Segregation, Integration, and the
Vietnam War, he began to see
greater connections.
On April 4, 1967, a year to the day on which he was assassinated,
He spoke at the Riverside Church in New York and the full
understanding of his
thinking and the political connections was made known. He
could not remain silent any
longer, either. He
said, "I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the
poor and to attack it as such....it became clear to me that
the war was doing far more than
devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers
and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily
high proportions relative to the
rest of the population.
We were taking black young men who had been crippled by our
society and sending them eight thousand miles away to
guarantee liberties in Southeast
Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East
Harlem." I wonder tonight
if you can hear the seeds of the Black Lives Matter movement
in these words of
Dr. King. But these
were similar words of Medgar Evers almost 17 years earlier when
he became a Civil Rights Worker. He said that when he was in France during
WWII, he
was free to walk the streets dating a white woman if he
chose to do so. He was not able
to do that in Jackson, Mississippi, his home town. He joined the Civil Rights Movement
to make a change here in the USA. He was assassinated on June 12, 1963 in his
home
town. Dr. King said
that " we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of
watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and
die together for a nation
that has been unable to seat them together in the same
schools".
Thomas Merton, who also died in 1968, carries on this theme
of Dr. King. In 1965 he
wrote that "We are living in the greatest revolution in
history----a huge spontaneous
upheaval of the entire human race: not the revolution
planned and carried out by any
particular party, race, or nation, but a deep elemental
boiling over of all the inner
contradictions that have ever been in man, a revelation of
the chaotic forces inside
everybody. This is not
something we have chosen, nor is it something we are free to
avoid. This
revolution is a profound spiritual crisis of the whole world..."
If that was true then, you can only imagine what Merton
would say today!
Dr. King said that "the war in Vietnam is but a symptom
of a far deeper malady
within the American Spirit". Has this malady that King refers to, or the
spiritual
crisis that Merton refers to been addressed in our own
time? We still have a choice
today, Dr. King says "nonviolent
coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move
past indecision to action. If you can walk, and you can
breathe, and you can think, and
you can pray, then action still needs to be taken by you and
I.
Where is our spiritual center and where is our ethical
center? Whose voices are being
raised to give us hope?
Are we listening to Black Lives Matter, the Youth from Margery
Stoneman Douglas High School, the youth in our own schools
and families? as the
violence continues and has spread from other countries to
our own city streets.
The Words of hope come from poems, and scripture, and
songs. Dr. Walter
Brueggemann tells us that if the dominant version of reality
is violence than the
church is called to preach the Sub--Version, and if preached
well enough, it becomes
a subversion of the dominant version and gives people hope.
Dr. Brueggemann says that the source of violence is: 1)
Deprivation, 2) Breakdown
of community connections, and 3) silence. The antidote is: 1) Bread and meeting
peoples' needs, 2) solidarity in community, and 3) listening
to another's story and helping
them find their voice.
Alice Walker in her book, Possessing the Secret of Joy, tells the story of the young
African woman named Tashi who killed the woman that
mutilated her as a teen ager. As
Tashi is tried and convicted, her arguments express her
dignity, strength, and the
recovery of
herself. As soldiers line the
roadway to her execution, Tashi's friends boldly
walk through them. They show up on the other side of the field
from where she will be
executed. They unroll
a banner over the wall that gives her, her final message of what
she was able to accomplish.
The banner says that says, "Resistance is the Secret of
Joy".
So, my brothers and sisters, I call you to a continual
spirit of resistance in the
spirit of those we honor this night. Resist!!!
There is so much to do that we cannot give up. So much that came from a dishonest
war that still resonates in our society. So we, too, continue to Resist!!
WE RESIST THE WALL--
WE RESIST THE DIVIDING OF IMMIGRANT FAMILIES THROUGH
DEPORTATION--
WE RESIST THE SLOW DISMANTLING OF OUR GOVERNMENT BY THE
CURRENT ADMINISTRATION--
WE RESIST THE PLETHORA OF GUNS ON OUR STREETS--
WE RESIST THE VIOLENCE THAT CRUSHES OUR FAMILIES--
WE RESIST NEGATIVE WORDS AND DISCRIMINATE ACTONS AGAINST GAY
AND LESBIAN PEOPLE---
WE RESIST RACISM--
WE RESIST THE DESTRUCTIVE DESCRIPTION OF THE MUSLIM
COMMUNITY AS TERRORISTS--
WE RESIST THE MISTREATMENT OF WOMEN--
WE RESIST THE CONTINUAL MARGINALIZATION OF THE NATIVE
AMERICAN TRIBES ACROSS OUR NATION--
WE RESIST THE UNITED STATES AS THE LEADING ARMS SELLER IN
THE WORLD--
WE RESIST THE PRISON INDUSTRY AS ONE OF THE FASTEST GROWING
INDUSTRIES IIN AMERICA..
WE COMMIT OURSELVES TO BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS ACROSS
CULTURAL LINES, ECONOMIC LINES, NEIGHBORHOOD LINES, COLOR LINES, AND RELIGIOUS
LINES---
WE COMMIT OURSELVES TO A NEW SOCIETY, NOT YET ACCOMPLISED,
BUT SEEN IN OUR HEARTS---
WE COMMIT OURSELVES TO NEVER STOP DREAMING OF WHAT WE CAN
BE---
WE COMMIT OURSELVES TO THE CARE OF CREATION AND THE EARTH ON
WHICH WE LIVE---
Let the
reality of this story take root in you.
When it does, you will stand strong
as a community and proclaim that the story has not always
been easy, but you are not
going away, and you are not alone.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met
Thee,
Lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget
Thee;
Shadowed beneath The hand
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.
THANK YOU TO THE CATONSVILLE NINE FOR THE MEMORY OF THIS
NIGHT!!
THANK YOU FOR THE HOPE YOU HAVE GIVEN US!!
THANK YOU FOR THE FUTURE THAT WE NOW LIVE!!
Fr. Joe Muth
Sources:
Possessing the Secret of Joy by
Alice Walker
The Word Militant: Preaching a Decentering Word by
Dr. Walter Brueggemann
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Speech at Riverside Church in New York April 4, 1967
The Sounds of Silence
by Simon and Garfunkel
Lift Every Voice and Sing
by James Weldon Johnson
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by
Thomas Merton
Peace in the Post-Christian Era by
Thomas Merton
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