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344 ˜ Afterword
ples wasn’t made to be dogged around, peoples was made to be respected,” expresses
the commitment to human dignity which is foundational for the Open
Door. Further, the community’s practice of hospitality, in which homeless persons
are welcomed into the house for meals and showers, to use bathroom facilities,
and, for some, to enter the community itself, reveals a concern not only to
provide needed services, but to develop personal relationships that are mutually
transformative. As is evident from the many stories in Hospitality which tell of
these personal encounters and relationships, the community practices the personalism
urged by the Catholic Worker. Further, like the Catholic Worker, the
Open Door community finds in Matthew 25 a foundational text for its personal
relationships with those in the streets and prisons. It is the faith of the Open
Door that one meets Christ in the homeless person and in the person behind
bars.
The meeting of Christ in those the community serves and for whom the
community seeks justice is sustained through the community’s weekly celebration
of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. This third characteristic of the
Catholic Worker tradition, the centrality of the Eucharist and shared prayer, is also
frequently referenced in Hospitality. In one example of several from this collection,
Murphy Davis, in “Liturgy and Life, Sacrament and Struggle,” plainly
states the importance the Open Door places on Eucharist and shared prayer:
When we look at bread and grape juice, we see ordinary food.
But in the sacramental vision, we understand that this is a holy
feast that we share. When we look at water, we see only the ordinary
water that quenches our thirst. But when we understand
the power of water and the outpouring of God’s Spirit,
then we understand how the cleansing of baptism changes our
life. We understand that it is a holy work when we invite our
homeless friends to share food and drink and showers. There
is holiness, there is sacrament, in sharing elements that become
holy. It is the same vision that we receive when we look
into the eyes and the face of a stranger and see the presence of
God. When we look into suffering people’s lives, we understand
the Passion of Jesus Christ.
Murphy’s statement connects the “sacramental vision” with the personalism
that seeks to safeguard human dignity as grounded in God as Creator and Redeemer.
In each human person there is something of the mystery of God’s creative
and redemptive work. This dignity is not dependent on human achievement
or social status; it is entirely God’s doing. To deny this human dignity is
to deny God. Or as John writes in the New Testament, “Love, then, consists in
this: not that we have loved God but that God has loved us and has sent God’s