St. Joseph the Worker, Pray for Us

Today is May Day and in the Catholic calendar the memorial of St. Joseph the Worker.
On this day, I remember with gratitude my former pastor, Fr. Donald McDonnell of Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in San Francisco and the life and work of Cesar Chavez (1927-1993), who Fr. McDonnell helped inspire Chavez to found the United Farm Worker's union.

Fr. Donald McDonnell

It was Fr. McDonnell , while pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in San Jose, who introduced Chavez to Catholic social teaching and who encouraged him to get involved in labor organizing.  Fr. McDonnell, as one of the "Mission Band" of priests who ministered during the 1950's to the largely Hispanic and Filipino migrant workers in California's Central Valley, had been exposed to the low wages, back-breaking labor and dehumanizing working conditions that were the day-to-day experience of farm workers.

Cesar Chavez

Chavez went on (with fellow labor organizer Dolores Huerta) to found the United Farm Workers union, which eventually, after years of struggle with growers that involved non-violent civil disobedience, fasts and hunger strikes and national boycotts of agricultural products such as grapes and lettuce, was able to organize and represent agricultural workers.

The feast today of St. Joseph the Worker is a needed reminder of both the dignity of work and the human dignity and rights of workers.

As Pope St. John Paul II, stated forcefully in 1984 :
"The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich; the rights of workers over the maximization of profits; the preservation of the environment over uncontrolled industrial expansion;
and production to meet social needs over production for military purposes."

Catholic social teaching, which Fr. McDonnell introduced a young Cesar Chavez to over sixty years ago, upholds the right of workers to organize, to be represented by trade unions, to safe and decent working conditions and to a fair and living wage.  The US Catholic bishops, in their 1983 pastoral letter, "Economic Justice for All" articulated ten principles related to economic justice and the rights of workers.  http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/economic-justice-economy/catholic-framework-for-economic-life.cfm  They are as valid and imperative today as they were almost thirty-five years ago.

On this day on which we commemorate workers and St. Joseph the Worker, may we find inspiration and hope in the United Farmworker's Prayer which Chavez wrote:

Show me the sufferings of the most miserable, so I may know my people's plight.
Free me to pray for others, for you are present in every person.
Help me to take responsibility for my own life, so that I can be free at last.
Grant me courage to serve others, for in service there is true life.
Give me honesty and patience, so that I can work with other workers.
Bring forth song and celebration, so that the Spirit will be alive among us.
Let us remember those who have died for justice, for they have given us life.
Help us love even those who hate us, so we can change the world.
Amen.

They Shall Not Pass!

I try not to listen to the radio when I'm in the studio painting icons but on Friday afternoon I had taken a break to run some errands in the car, so I was listening to the radio when the first reports of the terrorist attacks in Paris were being reported live on the air. Events were still unfolding but it was evident that many innocent people had been killed and wounded by gunmen all over the city.  Like everyone else, I'm in shock -- horrified, angry, very, very sad.  

This morning, predictably, the Daesh (who call themselves the Islamic State) claimed responsibility and declared that Paris had been targeted because it is a center of "prositution and obscenity".  Which is absurd, given that  the Daesh label as prostitutes any women who aren't wearing burkas, force Yazidi and Christian women into sexual slavery and  jubilantly celebrate the truly obscene violence they routinely inflict on helpless, innocent people.

But it doesn't surprise me that they would have a particular contempt and hatred for the French and for Paris, which they rightfully understand has been a major center for Western art for centuries and is the city where French artists and artists from around the world have lived and produced masterpiece after masterpiece.  

The Daesh have denounced as idolatrous any depiction of human or animal forms, and they have demolished with fury the great monuments of Assyrian and Hellenistic art that have fallen into their hands in Mosul and Palmyra.  

The museums of Paris feature not only images of human beings and animals, but are filled with sculptures and paintings of the nude (mostly, but not exclusively female) figure. Which is not surprising: since  the Renaissance, the great masters of French (and European art) have celebrated the human figure.  Certainly, painters such as Chardan, Corot, Pissaro and Cezanne primarily painted landscapes and still life, but in a humanist culture such as France's, the figure, which is to say, the human body, has pride of place. 

A humanist culture that is, as in any human enterprise, not without faults, false directions, contradictions and of course, sin, yet a  culture, deeply rooted not only in classicism but in the Christian faith and in Catholic culture.   That is to say, it is a culture engaged in a profound search for beauty, goodness and truth in human life and human relations, which are an intimation and reflection of God, who is ultimate Truth, ultimate Goodness and ultimate Beauty.  

Christian art is an intense reflection on the mystery of Incarnation, on how the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.  which means that at its heart, Christian art is iconic: depicting the work of grace in human history and in human beings.  For in the person of Jesus, who is at once divine and human, the human person is fully realized and revealed to us.

In their own search for ideal form and beauty in the human form, French and other artists pay tribute in their own way, to the breathtaking beauty and grace of men and women made in God's image, a beauty which is at once something we all hold in common and yet is unique to each person.  

Every person is the supreme work of the Divine Artist, made for eternal life and infinitely loved by God, and thus, of infinite value and dignity.  Our works of art, however irreplaceably beautiful  and valuable, are but a  reflection of  the infinitely greater worth of every human person, even those who degrade themselves with these evil acts which we witnessed on Friday. 

As I pondered these shocking events in Paris, what came to mind was this sweetly delicate drawing by Henri Matisse, a reminder of both the beauty and vulnerability of each of us, the "soft targets" of these new barbarians, these savage neo-iconoclasts. 

They shall not pass!