Orange County Catholic Worker

Let us persist in this simple vocation: Pray for whoever enters your mind, and extend compassion to whoever stands in front of you. - The Art of Transfiguration

Therefore, the mystic's concern with the imperative of social action is not merely to improve the condition of society. It is not merely to feed the hungry, no...t merely to relieve human suffering and human misery. If this were all, in and of itself, it would be important surely. But this is not all. The basic consideration has to do with the removal of all that prevents God from coming to himself in the life of the individual. Whatever there is that blocks this, calls for action. - Howard Thurman See more

"Part of understanding the notion of Justice is to recognize the disproportions among which we live. . . . It takes an awful lot of living with the powerless to really understand what it is like to be powerless, to have your voice, thoughts, ideas and concerns count for very little. We, who have been given much, whose voices can be heard, have a great duty and responsibility to make our voices heard with absolute integrity for those who are powerless." John O'Donohue

Solidarity is more than acts of generosity, important as they are; it is the call to embrace the reality that we are bound by bonds of reciprocity. On this solid foundation we can build a better, different, human future. -Pope Francis

Happy Birthday, Dorothy Day!! What we would like to do is change the world make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.

"What we would like to do is change the worldmake it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And to a c...ertain extent, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of workers, of the poor, of the destitutethe rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other wordswe can to a certain extent change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world. .There is nothing that we can do but love, and dear Godplease enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as our friend." - Dorothy Day, June 1946

"[Kropotkin's] call to understand compassion as ‘a powerful factor of further evolution’ cleared the way for a very particular political vision: human beings co...uld overcome competitive struggle by voluntarily restructuring and decentralising society along principles of community and self-sufficiency." See more

Interior contemplation and external activity are two aspects of the same love of God. Everything the contemplative does outside of contemplation ought to refle...ct the luminous tranquility of his interior life. The contemplative looks for the same thing in his activity as he finds in his contemplationcontact and union with God...in all things, in your interior life and in your outward works for God, you desire only one thing, which is the fulfillment of His will. The saint preaches sermons by the way he walks and the way he stands and the way he sits down and the way he picks things up and holds them in his hand. Less and less conscious of themselves, they finally cease to be aware of themselves doing things, and gradually God begins to do all that they do, in them and through them... - Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation See more

If we rendered unto God all the things that belong to God, there would be nothing left for Caesar. Dorothy Day

Winter shelter guidance is now available from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the document instruc...ts providers on recommended facility usage, programmatic considerations, funding sources, & temporary shelter structures: https://files.hudexchange.info//COVID-19-Homeless-System-R See more

Fratelli Tutti in action would look a lot like what he says.

"Researchers gave 50 recently homeless people a lump sum of 7,500 Canadian dollars (nearly $5,700). They followed the cash recipients' life over 12-18 months an...d compared their outcomes to that of a control group who didn't receive the payment. The preliminary findings, which will be peer-reviewed next year, show that those who received cash were able to find stable housing faster, on average. By comparison, those who didn't receive cash lagged about 12 months behind in securing more permanent housing. People who received cash were able to access the food they needed to live faster. Nearly 70% did after one month, and maintained greater food security throughout the year. The recipients spent more on food, clothing and rent, while there was a 39% decrease in spending on goods like alcohol, cigarettes or drugs."

The heart of man [sic] can be full of so much pain, even when things are exteriorly all right. It becomes all the more difficult because today we are used to thinking that there are explanations for everything. But there is no explanation of most of what goes on in our own hearts, and we cannot account for it all. No use resorting to the kind of mental tranquilizers that even religious explanations sometimes offer. Faith must be deeper than that, rooted in the unknown and i...n the abyss of darkness that is the ground of our being. No use teasing the darkness to try to make answers grow out of it. But if we learn how to have a deep inner patience, things solve themselves, or God solves them if you prefer: but do not expect to see how. Just learn to wait, and do what you can and help other people. Often it is in helping someone else we find the best way to bear our own trouble. -- Thomas Merton from his Christmas letter, 1966 See more

My new free podcast, "The Nonviolent Life of Dorothy Day" is up and running at www.paceebene.org/peacepodcast or www.soundcloud.com//the-nonviolent-life-of-Dorothy-Day-Oct Hope you like it! God bless us everyone! -- John