It rained so heavily and fast again tonight that for the second time this week water came into the basement. Part of the problem is that the rain barrel I put in the back near the deck gets overwhelmed and the relief value is too small. I can fix that problem tomorrow but tonight discovered that I have some holes in the basement wall that water pours in when it rains so hard and fast. However, after watching some of the 24/7 storm news tonight on TV I realize how minor my water problem is. The heavy, fast rain has caused all kinds of flooding and damage throughout the area.

The old saying “When it rains, it pours” certainly applies today. People in need I know experience the meaning of this saying in human ways regularly. It seems like when one thing goes wrong many other things go wrong. For example, people lose a job and then find themselves losing their homes. People get sick and without health insurance their health gets worse and they soon have a severe health situation.

People doing the works of mercy and people suffering the works of war know how one disaster can lead to another. Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement knew how the works of mercy were related to works of war. My friend, Jim Forest, who has written a biography of Dorothy Day, today sent me an excerpt from a letter he sent to a friend yesterday:

“Each of the sentences that Christ uses in Matthew 25 to describe ways in which the saved, knowingly or unknowingly, responded mercifully to him describes actions which are the polar opposite of what combatants are required to do in war. The text then becomes: I was hungry and you destroyed my fields, I was thirsty and you bombed the water works, I was naked and you burned the flesh from my body, I was homeless and you bombed my city, etc. But in the end we still have: What you did to the least person, you did to me.”

He adds: “In various ways, this was a point Dorothy Day — whose life centered on “the works of mercy” — made countless times.”

When it rains, it pours and when war wages the poor and weak suffer the most.

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