Courier Angels
by Rev. Brooks Smith

In one of the scenes from the movie `Entertaining Angels’, a bishop confronts Dorothy Day. The bishop tells her that she has gained such notoriety that he doesn’t know what to do with her. Some people say that you are a saint Dorothy Day and some people say you are a communist.’ `We are neither saints nor communists,’ she replies. `We are Christians seeking to be obedient to the Lord.’

Dorothy Day was no plastic saint. One failed love relationship led to pregnancy and an abortion. Pregnant again, by a man who loved her but was unwilling to commit to a family, Dorothy chose to have her child, who became the joy of her life in many ways. She became a Catholic, being baptized at the same time her daughter was baptized. Working as a journalist in New York City, she met Peter Maurin, a peasant, Christian philosopher/mystic. From those encounters and through incredible turmoil, she began the Catholic Worker newspaper and movement.

For Dorothy Day, the gospel was to be lived out, on the streets, with the poor and the not so poor and the wealthy. It was about walking with Jesus to the demonstration against the war—it was about building acommunity of commited writers to wage the struggle for consciousness. The Catholic Worker movement, then and now, was also about giving out bread and soup to hungry people. Dorothy Day had an extremely challenging, holistic plan for mission and ministry in the name of Jesus. Jesus would have liked that and smiles approvingly.

But now here is the problem. After the movie was released on video, I looked for it in various stores. Finally, several months ago I found that the local video store carried it, but it had been rented out the day I was there. Three or four weeks later I returned and looked for it again. Not there any more. Apparently, there was so little demand, so little interest that it wasn’t economical to stock even one copy. But if you wanted something with Steven Segal killing the bad guys or Sylvester Stallone blowing up New York City, well, we have dozens of copies of all that.

I went out and bought a copy of Entertaining Angels for $20, so I can use it with young people especially in our church. But there is something spiritually wrong here. People can readily disagree with Dorothy Day’s politics and with her spirituality. But her story is inspiring, true, down to earth, gritty and hopeful. What is it about our culture that we don’t make much of an effort to tell those kinds of stories to ourselves and especially to our children? What is it in ourselves and our culture that apparently craves images of violence and destruction instead?

Toward the end of his life Moses said to the people of Israel,`I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse: therefore, choose life.’ Life. Blessing. Hope. Love. Faith. Hospitality to strangers. Entertaining Angels. Dorothy Day. Choices. Video stores.