Download Lecture 1- “We must be saved together.” Dorothy Day “We each cast

Lecture 1- “We must be saved together.” Dorothy Day
“We each cast our little pebble into the pool of humanity, and watch the rings expand, knowing that in
God’s upside down kingdom, every menial task done in this Love is graced with an eternal significance.”
(23) Dorothy Day
The movement Dorothy Day begun with Peter Maurin in 1932, the Catholic Worker Movement, set in
motion a new era of Christian Social Justice. Finding its energy in the story of the Good Samaritan, Day
promoted a form of non-violent resistance to those institutionalized practices and ideologies that
marginalize those who most impacted by poverty. She famously stated that when someone is hungry,
they must be fed. This is merciful and required of a Christian. However, the Christian must also find ways
to change the systems and institutions that caused one to be hungry in the first place. For Dorothy Day
and the Catholic Worker Movement one must balance merciful acts with those that will confront unjust
social systems. A baptized Christian has a vocation to lovingly anticipate the needs of one’s brothers and
sisters. The highest purpose for which God has lovingly created humans is to care for one another, without
concern about cost to one’s self.
At the center of Christianity, the story of the Good Samaritan challenges all who identify with and seek to
imitate the humanity of Jesus. Luke’s gospel recounts the story first told by Jesus when asked by a local
lawyer what he had to do to inherit eternal life. In response to the question, Jesus offers what was to
become one of the most often repeated and perplexing of all of Jesus’ sayings: “You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and
your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus then continued with this vivid parable:
“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him
and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that
road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.”
“So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.”
“But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had
compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him
on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out
two denarii [about a day’s wages] and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and
whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’
Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the
robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do
likewise.”
A lawyer in Jesus’ time was well-versed in the laws of God. Jesus’ words were most certainly considered
perplexing, even unfaithful, to his Jewish disciples. The commissioning of humans to become the essence
of loving kin to one another, regardless of one’s ethnic origins, race, religious affiliation, political ideology,
criminal history, education, sin or other differentiating human characteristics, is arguably the most
challenging of all of Jesus’ commands. Responding as the Good Samaritan is the only way one can fully
honor one’s human dignity in the eyes of God.
So, what did it cost the Good Samaritan to act in this way? If he was simply behaving as God would have
him act, then why is it so hard for us humans to love in ways that transform human suffering and evil?
A Samaritan caring for a Jew would have been strictly forbidden in the time of Jesus. First, there was the
issue of purity. A bleeding man presented a problem for the Jewish men who passed by. Should they touch
the blood, they would be in violation of Jewish Law. Then, there was the sad and disturbing history
between the Jewish and Samaritan people. Northern and Southern tribes of Jews had long been divided.
Samaritans were among those Jews who worshipped multiple gods, including Yahweh. During the
Babylonian exile, Samaritans remained in Israel and continued to practice polytheism. At one point, upon
their return from exile, a monotheistic Jewish group unsuccessfully attempted to reform the Samaritans.
Samaritans wanted to participate in the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, but were rejected as
infidels. Samaritan rulers made it very difficult for the Temple project to proceed with haste—and a series
of retaliatory destructive attacks on their respective Temples eventually led to a complete break between
the Jews of Jerusalem and the Samaritans.
One historian points out that “around the time of Jesus' birth, a band of Samaritans profaned the Temple
in Jerusalem by scattering the bones of dead people in the sanctuary.”
“Imagine the hatred between Serbs and Muslims in modern Bosnia, the enmity between Catholics and
Protestants in Northern Ireland or the feuding between street gangs in Los Angeles or New York, and you
have some idea of the feeling and its causes between Jews and Samaritans in the time of Jesus. Both
politics and religion were involved. “ (St. Anthony Messenger)
In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus presents the disciples with five insights about human vocation.
[HUMAN VOCATION] These five insights have guided all Christians considering situations of social
injustice.
First, the injured man who the priest walks past is created in the image of God. The Samaritan who stops
to care for the broken, beaten human is also created in the image of God. For that matter, the robbers
and the Levite and the priest also share a likeness to God. The question is who will act from this place of
likeness and respond to the broken human, showing unconditional mercy? [CREATED IN THE IMAGE AND
LIKENESS OF GOD]
Sin is often a matter of social conditioning. Evil is real. Evil has social roots. Prejudices and biases that
separate, disempower, marginalize, or disenfranchise some humans are institutionalized in laws and
practices that cause suffering. The Levite and the priest in the story of the Good Samaritan were acting
appropriately in light of long-standing purity laws. Both had been groomed by their religious convictions
and social conditioning to behave as they did. Jesus challenges these socially institutionalized practices
that diminished the dignity of the broken Jewish man on the road. In the letter to the Romans, Paul recalls
the newly-instituted Law of Christ. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself… therefore love is the fulfilling
of the law.”[SIN AS SOCIAL]
The beaten man on the road is no more than an object, according to the Jewish laws that forbid a pure
Levite or priest from touching his body. Jesus the true nature of the broken man is one whose destiny is
God. Humanity’s true nature is not defined by social designation but by God’s eternal communion with
each individual person. [HUMANITY’S ESSENTIAL NATURE]
God converses with humans in our circumstances. “Humans are the language of God,” as Jewish midrash
theologians have suggested. God’s gift of life flows from God’s great desire to share God’s love. The
amazing act of self-giving love flows through our human situation. [LOVE KEEPS HUMANS IN EXISTENCE]
Jesus as the “mystery of God made flesh” makes clear God’s intention for social beings. Humans have a
higher calling than mere existence. Like Jesus, humans are “bound both by need and by duty to struggle
with evil through many afflictions and to suffer death, but must live in hope. Jesus’ resurrection is the final
visible sign of God’s enduring love, compassion and justice. Created in the image of God, human pursuit
for justice must be accompanied with infinite hope and joy. The Good Samaritan not only cares for the
physical needs of the broken man. The Good Samaritan transcends the power of institutionalized injustice
by restoring dignity to the human situation. He acted in communion with God. He does not merely pay
for the broken man’s care—he lovingly returns, provides ongoing support and companionship to the man
he found on the road. This is the destiny to which each human is fated. [CHRIST THE NEW HUMAN]
SUMMARIZE KEY POINTS:
Created in the image of God,
 Dignity—able to know and love the Creator
o Humanity is called to communion with God
o Humans exist because God first loved us—and love is the ongoing communication of
god in our world
o Christ is the one who reveals god and unites himself to our individual humanity
o By becoming one of us, Christ came into the sinful world so that our dignity could be
fully realized—Jesus loved in such a way that those suffering, diminished broken people
around him could imagine, hope for, and begin shaping a new world.
 Christ’s love is empowering so that we can become partners in the work of the
Spirit to transform forces of destruction, evil and imposed suffering into
redemption
 Humans inherit from Christ the opportunity to be entirely renewed BY fully
participating in the efforts we make to heal and renew one another—
 Human vocation is the ever-willing attitude that we are in a partnership with
God to make the world more loving and less terrorized by hate and violence
 Christ suffered, died, and rose—thus will be the journey of the Christian
 Vocation- to be in communion with all of creation, especially with other humans
o Vocation= a higher calling to recognize opportunities to confront sin and the causes of
suffering
o Vocation = honor the inner awareness of goodness by knowing self and deciding on a
destiny that conveys love at all costs
o Sin- humans initially tried to attain their goal apart from god
 Examining our hearts points humans toward that which makes us broken and
unjust toward one another
 Sin diminishes all humans