Years ago, Dan Berrigan, a Federal prisoner in Danbury, Connecticut had a serious reaction to a dental medication.
Word that got out to fellow activists:
who had the same plea as those two disciples at Emmaus: “Stay with us, Daniel, it is getting dark!”
Then, as now, darkness coming on indeed:
wars, new weapons, Syria, Isis, Iraq, Afghanistan, famine, refugees, immigrants.
We want our heroes with us.
Dan, Brother Phil, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day. Perhaps they are with us in the Communion of Saints.
Heroes?
Someone asked Dan Berrigan: “Hero to so many
Who are your heroes?”
His answer:
“I don’t believe in heroes. I believe in community”.
Mindful of our failings. Church and larger community.
We need to be such a gathering not just today around the altar.
Dan said once:
“Don’t just do something – stand there”.
There is some trying.
Some of us have been to D.C, and to gatherings around. Some of us here were in D.C. just yesterday.
Close to the end after a lifetime of words, protests, courtrooms, prisons, Dan Berrigan said quite painfully:
“These last years of my long life have been the worse”. What did he mean?
Did he see things getting even darker, a new cold war with ever new weapons
an expense that robs the poor of bread?
As early as 1965, Dan wrote from exile:
“The writer or artist who has something to say
may, after he has said everything, still have something undone what is left to do?
Some consuming gift of himself which is art Even his art has left ungiven.”
So. A man of words stops talking Some of us saw it
With courtesy and kindness he stopped talking altogether in that Jesuit Infirmary at Fordham in the Bronx
That despair-like gesture expressed the anguish at the growing darkness a Christ-like question:
“Has it all been a waste?” Christ weeping over Jerusalem: “My God, My God, why have You abandoned me?”
I believe the silence was also a gesture of faith and hope “In the consuming gift of self something still left ungiven”
The complement: “Father into your hands I commend my spirit”. Both are Christ-like.
Woodcut: R.F. McGovern
John P. McNamee Church of the Gesu Philadelphia, PA 30 April 2017
