This is really St. Patrick’s Day. I forgot to wear green to church this morning and heard about it. I can claim confusion since a week ago yesterday, Saturday March 9th, was the St. Patrick day’s parade and there was a lot of partying and drinking. However, this weekend I heard that the taverns were getting ready for a bigger weekend starting Friday night. Taverns stay open longer on this Saturday and on Sunday, today, really St. Patrick’s Day, some opened up 6am in the morning. I guess you can go the tavern before Church this Sunday.
Having a little experience of being marginalized last week at Marquette, Pope Francis to “known trespasser” car, I could relate to an email from a parish leader Catholic leader, in the church who are stewards of the 1.1 million the Catholic Church realized form closing three churches and selling the properties in North Central Milwaukee.
The person accused me of not trusting the select leaders of the church to make the right decision by presenting, with others, proposals like the Cry of the Poor Petition or the which have not gotten any open discussion and some leaders do not even recognize them as being made. I responded that I and others who are in solidarity with the poor and marginalized are not asking for any give outs or charity; we just wanted to be treated with the same dignity and respect as they treat each other. As far as I can tell they are keeping the time and place of the next parish council meeting a secret so we cannot attend as we did last time.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of Society of Jesus or Jesuits, said in the Spiritual Exercises that we should be glad when we suffer poverty or our marginalized in the name of Jesus and to pray for it. I did not pray for it but now that it is coming my way I am having a hard time accepting suffering quietly.
I am tired of people saying and talking how much they care. As St. Ignatius also said “Love is best expressed in deeds over words.” I cannot be silent in the fact of injustice or violence yet must learn how to suffer quietly while persistently breaking the silence. I must do something but in a way that I internalize the suffering and pain.
Gandhi says something similar to St. Ignatius. He defines his Satyagraha or creative nonviolence as “striving nonviolently to the point of sacrifice rather than fighting to attain one’s vision of truth.” Martin Luther King Jr. talks about suffering the blows of officials to show the world how nonviolence exposes the woes of violence.
All this suffering while keeping to “speaking the truth”, at least our opinion according to our conscience, is a lot easier to talk about than practice.
Suffering but being persistent is hard work.
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