In our third event, we will be joined by Margaret Pfeil, Ph.D., Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Theology and Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame. Reflecting on the words and witness of ancient figures of Saints Ireneaus and Basil of Caesaria, and modern figures such as Oscar Romero and Dorothy Day, Dr. Pfiel explores the many facets of (to quote the title of her lecture) “Eucharistic Abundance and Social Regeneration.”
Thanks for listening! The ThinkND Podcast is brought to you by ThinkND, the University of Notre Dame's online learning community. We connect you with videos, podcasts, articles, courses, and other resources to inspire minds and spark conversations on topics that matter to you — everything from faith and politics, to science, technology, and your career.
In our third event, we will be joined by Margaret Pfeil, Ph.D., Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Theology and Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame. Reflecting on the words and witness of ancient figures of Saints Ireneaus and Basil of Caesaria, and modern figures such as Oscar Romero and Dorothy Day, Dr. Pfiel explores the many facets of (to quote the title of her lecture) “Eucharistic Abundance and Social Regeneration.”
Thanks for listening! The ThinkND Podcast is brought to you by ThinkND, the University of Notre Dame's online learning community. We connect you with videos, podcasts, articles, courses, and other resources to inspire minds and spark conversations on topics that matter to you — everything from faith and politics, to science, technology, and your career.
Thanks for this invitation to be with you all tonight on this topic. I'd like to share with you the witness of a few people who have lived out of Eucharistic abundance and into social regeneration. A connecting thread that I hope you'll be able to follow is that there is no separation between the two. The Incarnation, the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ, nourishes us to live into the fullness of life in God, starting here and now, where life is most vulnerable. in the midst of that vulnerability, the abundance of God's love is present. So the first witness to this truth that I offer to you tonight is Dorothy Day. Dorothy Day's spirituality, rich and complex, could be characterized in a number of ways. Seen in the context of the Catholic Worker, the incarnational texture of her lived relationship with God stands out. At the heart of her daily rhythm of life, weaving together contemplation and action, was the Eucharistic Liturgy. Writing in the Catholic Worker newspaper in 1956, She offered this advice. The Mass is not to help the work of the day, which it does of course, but that all the work of the day is to build up to the climax of the Mass, that act of love, that moment of union with God. When we use the Mass to further our work, which we regard as of such importance, and which we need as human beings to regard as of great importance, it is as though we were walking upside down on our heads. We need to stop and write ourselves every now and then, frequently at first, until we get in the habit of walking upright. In the Eucharist, Dorothy found the overflowing abundance of God's love drawn into this reality through the birth of her daughter, Tamar. The very word dilego, the Latin word used for love, means I prefer. It was all well, very well to love God and his works in the beauty of his creation, which was crowned for me by the birth of my child. Forster, her common law husband, had made the physical world come alive for me, and it had awakened in my heart a flood of gratitude. The final object of this love and gratitude was God. No human creature could receive or contain so vast a flood of love and joy as I often felt after the birth of my child. With this came the need to worship, to adore. Through a whole love, both physical and spiritual, I came to know God. Unquote. Soon after Tamar's birth, she sought baptism for herself and her daughter in the Catholic Church, where she had for a long time made a practice of sitting in the back during Mass, drawn by the witness of the working class Catholics who regularly worshipped there. What was it that attracted them, she wondered. Through her faithful witness, God drew her closer. I think of Francis Thompson's poem, The Hound of Heaven. I fled him down the nights and down the days. I fled him down the arches of the years, he writes. God sought Dorothy down the dark alleys of what she called the long loneliness, until at last she surrendered to the light of God's love. I think we've all known the long loneliness. She concluded in her autobiography, and she wrote, The only solution is love, and that love comes with community. Her daughter and the masses of the faithful gathered in mass welcomed her into the community of God's love. She writes, We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know him in the breaking of the bread, and we know each other in the breaking of the bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet, and life is a banquet too, even with a crust, where there is companionship. At the heart of this community is the Incarnation. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. As Dorothy Day and Peter Maran brought the Catholic Worker into being in 1933, Matthew 25, 31 46 was a key touchstone. The basis of what we call the works of mercy. When did I see you hungry and feed you, naked and clothe you? Jesus responds, When you did it to the least of these, you did it to me. The works of mercy invite us to remember the Incarnation in each encounter, each moment. At the conclusion of the Eucharistic Feast, we are sent forth to preach and live the Good News. Finding that of Jesus in each present moment, each encounter, particularly in the midst of great need. Influshes the works of mercy. As in the Eucharistic feast, Jesus feeds his people in the mutuality of encounter. So often at Our Lady of the Road, people who live in material superabundance, but perhaps with deeper spiritual hungers raging, come to share breakfast and enter into conversation with people who are just trying to survive that day. In the midst of that encounter, there's a mutual healing and nourishment. Grace happens. Jesus is there calling us in and through our physical reality to notice the abundance of his love. On the road to Emmaus, his disciples knew him in the breaking of the bread. Broken and shared for the life of the world, Jesus invites us into the healing wholeness of his love through our mutual brokenness. At Our Lady of the Road, we've been blessed through the love and dedication of many generous souls to create a chapel space where the bishop has given us permission to reserve the blessed sacrament. From our small upper room, the Chapel of the Holy Spirit, we can see and pray with our neighbors behind us at the Center for the Homeless and in front of us at the St. Joseph County Jail. In this picture, the jail is the domed building off to the left side there. We've also been blessed to celebrate the entrance into eternal life of several guests over the years, and we've been able to build their coffins in St. Joseph's Woodshop directly below the chapel and provide for their burial. Burying the dead is a work of mercy, one in which Jesus reminds us of the dignity of each and every human person. More than that though, it's another way in which God's love heals our mutual brokenness. Our good friend Al Warner died in 2019, and we were his family, not by blood, but by the bonds of community over many years. Al was among our first guests when we opened our Catholic Worker in 2003 there on West Washington. As he so often did in his life, he prompted us to live into what it means to really be in relationship, undertaking construction of his coffin, finding a burial plot, and gathering together to celebrate his life. Some of you in the room right now were there that day for his burial. In his life and death, Al gathered us together in community, reminded us of what it is, what is at the heart of our Eucharistic faith, love, Jesus loving presence among us. When you did it to the least of these, you did it to me. Al himself lived this invitation of Jesus and practiced hospitality. himself as part of our Catholic Worker, and in doing so he drew our community to embrace Jesus in our midst. In Laudato Si Pope Francis writes, the Lord in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter. He comes not from above but from within. He comes that we might find him in this world of ours. Al drew us to find him. Jesus, right in the midst of this world of ours. In the warmth of early summer, as we gather in the chapel, we also have the chance to watch the sun set over our solar panels during our weekly Wednesday Mass, reminding us of the sacramentality of God's creation. As we give thanks for the bread and wine, fruits of God's earth, offered during Mass, We hear Jesus call to humility as human members of God's creation. A call to cooperate with God's creative energy rather than dominate the rest of creation. In Laudato Si Pope Francis writes, quote, It is in the Eucharist that all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation. Grace, which tends to manifest itself tangibly, found unsurpassable expression when God himself became man and gave himself as food for his creatures. In the Eucharist, fullness is already achieved. It is the living center of the universe, the overflowing core of love and of inexhaustible life. Joined to the Incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the whole cosmos gives thanks to God. Indeed, the Eucharist is itself an act of cosmic love. Yes, cosmic, because even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist or in the upper room at Our Lady of the Road, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world. The Eucharist joins heaven and earth. It embraces and penetrates all creation. The world which came forth from God's hands returns to him in blessed and undivided adoration. In the bread of the Eucharist, creation is projected toward divinization, towards the holy wedding feast, towards unification with the Creator himself. Thus, the Eucharist is also a source of light and motivation for our concerns for the environment, directing us to be stewards of all creation. End. I'll say in this picture, these solar panels were the, senior project of Emily Clements, a student in, civil engineering, chemical engineering, who chose to, fundraise and direct this project of, installing solar panels as part of her understanding of the sacramentality of creation, as part of her understanding of, What it meant to look from the chapel out onto the roof at the solar panels. that was at the heart of her work. with Emily we can ask, how might we care for the abundance God has given us as part of our pilgrimage in, through, and with God's Spirit on our journey back to God? Eucharistic abundance calls us to deeper life in God, particularly in the face of apparent scarcity. ThinkND. com Where is God's love most needed, and what is being asked of us? So often, people are released from the county jail at night and show up at Our Lady of the Road for breakfast the next morning, scantily clad, and without the basic necessities to take the next step. Is it really the case that there are not enough of the world's goods, and that a person in this circumstance must just fend for themselves somehow? Or even worse, that they might be seen to deserve that situation. Dorothy Day offered a pointed response here. She wrote, God help us if we got just what we deserved. Perhaps this can be a meditative mantra as we begin Lent. God help us if we got just what we deserved. The Eucharistic abundance of God's love is totally gratuitous, and we can do nothing to earn it. Freely, lavishly bestowed, God's deepest desire in the gift of Jesus Christ is that God's love be shared with wild abandon, and that can take very incarnational, gritty form. That's been the case for Jesus disciples throughout the Christian tradition. St. Basil of Caesarea, for one, lived into the grittiness and challenged the temptation of the scarcity myth of his own time. In the year 369, Central Asia Minor suffered severe drought, leading to famine that summer. Of that time, Gregory of Nancianzas writes that Quote, the hardest part of the distress was the insensibility and insatiability of those who possessed supplies. The profiteering of the grain merchants at the shortage, unquote. As a presbyter in Cappadocia, St. Basil preached three well known homilies, urging equitable distribution of goods, and he led the effort to establish a soup kitchen where he himself helped to distribute physical food as well as nourishment of the word. My friend and former colleague, Father Brian Daly, traces a central thread through Basil's three homilies. Quote, The goods of the earth are given to us not for possession, but for stewardship. Unquote. In homily six, Basil preaches on Luke 12, 16 to 18, the parable of the man who builds larger barns to store his surplus grains. And of course, he dies in the process, while he's figuring out what to do with all his surplus. Quote, addressing an imagined, wealthy Christian, he says, Recall, my friend, who has given you these things. Remember who you are and what you are asked to manage, the one from whom you receive it, and the reason you have been privileged before so many others. You are, in fact, the steward of a good God, the household manager for your fellow servants. Do not think that all of this has been prepared simply for your belly. Make plans about what you hold in your hands, as if it belonged to others. You may enjoy yourself for a little while, but then it will melt and vanish, and you will be asked to give an exact accounting for all of this. Landowners and grain merchants should take as their model the earth itself, which bears fruit not for its own benefit, but for ours. Or a river in flood whose rich abundance of water overflows its banks to nourish the surrounding fields and supply smaller springs for later use, unquote. What a verdant, boundless image of abundance overflowing, given gratuitously to be shared. And what a prophetic call to action. Basil used the occasion of the Eucharistic Liturgy to call his own people to extend the abundance of the Eucharistic table to the soup kitchen table. Eucharistic abundance writ large in God's creation is just what drew Dorothy Day. This was, from an address she gave that I'll return to a little bit later at the Eucharistic Congress of 1976 in Philadelphia. And she starts off by reflecting on her own conversion process. My conversion began many years ago at a time when the material world around me began to speak in my heart of the love of God. ThinkND. com There's a beautiful passage in St. Augustine whose confessions I read at this time. What is it I love when I love thee, it begins, and it goes on to list all the material beauty and enjoyment to be found in the life of the senses. The sea which surrounded us, rather it was a bay leading out to the sea, provided food, fish, and shellfish in abundance. Even the seaweeds, which a Japanese friend told me were part of the food of her people, Our garden grew vegetables, the fields berries, the trees fruits. Everything spoke to me of a creator who satisfied all our hungers. It was also the physical aspect of the church which attracted me. Bread and wine, water, incense, the sound of waves and wind. All nature cried out to me. I wanted to share that because I, much like John said at the beginning, For Dorothy, as she was a daily communicant, her experience of the abundance of material creation was all part of that Eucharistic abundance. Like St. Basil, for her too, the relationship between the Eucharistic table and the soup kitchen table flowed naturally and necessarily. If we understand the gift being offered in the Incarnation, the Eucharistic liturgy not only can but must stoke social regeneration. Eucharistic abundance overflows into daily life where needs find satisfaction through the abundance of God's creation. Understanding the distress of the Great Depression, Benedictine monk Virgil Michael drew on Quadragesimo Anno, encyclical, to urge social reconstruction of society rooted liturgically. In the face of greedy individualism, Eucharistic abundance shapes Jesus followers to share goods given by God for the flourishing of each and every person. This is what the common good means. And the ultimate talos of the common good is the fullness of life in God. Michael writes, quote, Just insofar as we participate in the liturgy after the mind of Christ, do we also live and breathe the supernatural social unity of all members in Christ? This is why the liturgy is so truly the primary and indispensable source of the true Christian spirit. It not only teaches us what this spirit is, but also Has us live the spirit in all its enactments. In the liturgy, the teaching is inseparable from the putting into practice, unquote. Michael recalls the long tradition dating back to the first Christians of each person participating in the offertory of the mass by bringing gifts, often food or other necessary goods, however small in quantity. Michael recounts, quote, Of the gifts offered, some bread and wine were laid on the altar to be the essential elements of the sacrifice of the mass, and all the rest of the one common offering was laid aside on tables to be used for the poor and needy. Thus the common offering made by them to God became, at the same time, a common act of love and charity to the poor and the needy, so that in one and the same collective but unitary action, it They worshipped God directly, and served him indirectly in their fellow people. Such was the sublime lesson of Christian solidarity that was brought home to the early Christians, increasingly by their active participation in the liturgy. It was brought home to them not only as a truth learned, but as a principle put into regular practice, which by repetition formed a permanent attitude and habit of mind. I think this sounds like virtue ethics. A Eucharistic people take shape and as one body in Christ, this people of God incarnates the limitless superabundance of God's love. I think sometimes we can find the most compelling invitations to trust in God's love precisely when we're tempted to succumb to the lie of scarcity. And here I'd like to consider the case of Oscar Romero and the Salvadoran church, because I think they offer a powerful witness of holding fast to the truth of God's limitless love of Eucharistic abundance in the face of death. Romero used the Feast of the Transfiguration, which is the patronal feast day of El Salvador To call the Salvadoran Church to the liturgical asceticism of continual metanoia, which entailed a deepening preferential option for the poor, as a necessary ethical response to the Spirit's urging, listen to Him, that central message of the Transfiguration Theophany, that we'll soon hear on the second Sunday of Lent. In so doing, Romero drew upon a rich ecclesial history of interpreting this feast as an ascetical symbol that functions prophetically to convey eschatological hope. John Chrysostom, for example, found in the Methaean account of the Transfiguration a glimpse of the coming glory of the Parousia. But that uncreated light starkly revealed a harsh historical reality requiring concrete ethical response. Thus, Chrysostom decried the practice of interest taking, even if all the proceeds were to benefit the poor. Chrysostom, Frederick Norris notes, quote, Read from deep within a worshiping Christian community that finds events such as the Transfiguration not merely enlightening, but lightning like, frightening yet comforting, lighting the trail towards the poor and firing the soul for eternal life, unquote. The brilliant, uncreated light of glory's promise radiating from the transfigured Jesus reveals to those who would follow him all that must be cleansed and purified within and around them in order to become fully alive, capable of mediating the light of Jesus love as his disciples. For Romero, liturgical contemplation of the terrible luminosity of transfiguration Exposed every persecution to the light of God's love and revealed a path of solidarity with the socio economically poor majority of Salvadorans. Coming under the severe and often uncharitable scrutiny of some of his fellow Salvadoran bishops and curial officials, he became convinced that the bitter Episcopate stemmed from insufficient commitment to those on the margins of their society. Quote, the road out of the crisis, according to the church, is to convert and to meet Christ there where he says, all that you do to these little ones, you do to me. The conversion of the poor will also be the solution to our intra ecclesial divisions. Unquote. Reflecting upon a broader societal context rife with ideological conflict, Romero provocatively asserted that, quote, the best way to defeat Marxism is to take seriously the preferential option for the poor, unquote. Drawing upon Lumen Gentium and the texts of Medellin, the Latin American bishops 1968 Medellin and Columbia, he located the preferential option for the poor at the heart of the church's mission as a sacramental sign in the world. Quote, The church is in the world so as to signify and bring into being the liberating love of God manifested in Christ. It therefore understands Christ's preference for the poor because the poor are, as Medine explains, those who place before the Latin American church a challenge and a mission that it cannot sidestep and to which it must respond with a speed and boldness adequate to the urgency of the times. As Jesus led the way from Mount Tabor to Jerusalem and then to Calvary, so too for Romero, those most vulnerable revealed the way of the cross as the way to God. In the incarnation, God's glory and the human being fully alive become one. Gloria enem Dei, vivens omo. Modifying Irenaeus well known phrase, Romero proclaimed, Gloria Dei, vivens pauper. The glory of God is the poor person alive. The path leading from Tabor to the cross and on to resurrected life provided the ethical horizon for Romero to imagine with his people a dignified life for all, especially for those most vulnerable as the path of salvation. In his last Transfiguration homily on the second Sunday of Lent, 1980, so shortly before he was assassinated, Romero used his understanding of eschatology, ecclesiology, and ethics emerging from the Transfiguration narrative. To invite his people into the practice of liturgical asceticism, the sort of focused contemplation of Jesus on his way from Tabor to Calvary and resurrected life that Romero himself was undertaking as part of his own continual metanoia. He led his people to face the truth of their persecution, the suffering imposed on them and justified by their oppressors as a political necessity. As members of the body of Christ in history, They could choose the path of their own integral liberation by practicing the liturgical asceticism of returning love for hate, strengthened by the eschatological hope of salvation history. In Luke's account of the Transfiguration, Romero reminded his people, Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah of the cross and death, but also of resurrection and glory. The luminous hope of Jesus's transfigured body shines forth precisely in the crucified body of Christ in history, in the Salvadoran people's own bloodied testament to the truth of God's glory in the poor person, fully alive. The glory and power of God in Jesus Christ is found precisely in the midst of the Salvadoran national process, he insisted, and quote, The scandal of the cross and of pain will not make us flee from Christ, reject suffering, but rather embrace it. In two Sundays, we're going to hear the Transfiguration Gospel once again, and I'd invite you to remember Romero's invitation to the liturgical asceticism of incarnating Jesus love. In our own context, we can ask, in whom is God's glory shining forth, proclaiming the fullness of their human dignity, notwithstanding others efforts to desecrate their bodies made imago dei? Amen. There, Jesus's life, crucifixion, and resurrection become incarnate. When you did it to the least of these, you did it to me. I wanted to share the special significance of that, that the Transfiguration represents for the Salvadoran Church as another model of Eucharistic abundance, and also because the Transfiguration holds an important place in the U. S. American context. So just an aside here, in addition to being the Feast of the Transfiguration, does anyone know the significance of this date, August 6th? And, professors are not allowed to respond to this. Anybody? August 6th is significant in the U. S. context? Besides the Transfiguration? Okay. that's usually the response I get. this is exactly what Dorothy Day was addressing when she called attention to the Feast of the Transfiguration at the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia in 1976 on August 6th. She began her talk by remembering Eucharistic abundance in celebration of the Corpus Christi Feast in the New York City Italian community. And she writes, and this is from her talk at the Eucharistic Congress, On Corpus Christi Day every year, the Italians had processions on the Lower East Side. Streets were decorated as for festa, altars were set up every few blocks. Benediction was given after holding up the blessed sacrament to the people. Instead of banners, colorful bread spreads of every color, red, cerise, blue, green, purple, and gold, hung from the windows of crowded tenements. The streets teemed with people. Push carts sold delicacies. There was an abundance of food for body and soul. The Catholic Worker Daily soup line is also a celebration of a kind. Our storefronts are home like places. Banners and pictures abound. ThinkND. And this is a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe from Our Lady of the Road. she's speaking about the New York Catholic Worker. pictures abound of St. Joseph and Our Lady of Guadalupe, protectress of Cesar Chavez and the farm workers, who though harvesters of food, do not earn enough to feed their families adequately. Two blocks away from St. Joseph House is the municipal lodging where about a thousand men three times a day are fed. Many of those same men come to us in their hungers which bread alone or even the best meal does not satisfy. They come to us for human warmth to satisfy another kind of hunger. Unquote. Before receiving the Eucharist, we must do penance, she told her audience. How is it that no one at the Eucharistic Congress remembered the significance of August 6th? How could there be a mass for the military that day with no acknowledgement or repentance for dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on that date, and later another on Nagasaki? Our creator gave us life, she said, and the Eucharist to sustain life, but we have given the world instruments of death of inconceivable magnitude. I plead that we will regard that military mass and all our masses today as an act of penance Begging God to forgive us. I must not forget Ammon Hennessy, who died in 1970, who since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fasted from all food, solid or liquid, allowing himself only water, giving a day of this penance for every year since the bombs were dropped. If he were with us today, he would be fasting over 30 days. And if Ammon were alive today, he'd be fasting 79 days when we mark August 6th, this year. The Feast of the Transfiguration, as well as the anniversary of the bombing, the U. S. bombing of Hiroshima. here we are on Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day. Can this Lent be a journey into the true and abundant love of Jesus life, death, and resurrection? The only solution is love, Dorothy Day discovered, and love comes with community. A community nourished at the Eucharistic table that continues the banquet, even with a crest, at the soup kitchen table. may this Lent be one of surrender to God, who never ceases to love us lavishly and abundantly in and through the community of God's creation. Eucharistic abundance nourishes us and invites us, draws us to live into social regeneration, Starting where Jesus did, where his love is most needed, and where life is most vulnerable. thank you.