Friday, November 13, 2020 (today’s lectionary)
Memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, virgin
One will be taken
Now, dear lady, let us love one another. For this is love, that we walk according to his commandments.
The buildings look so fine with their clean lines, room for thousands to live more or less in comfort, a resource for those without resources of their own, a gift from the city of Chicago to the people of Chicago. But Cabrini-Green looked very different from the street and from its hallways and usually broken elevators. Eventually crime and unemployment caught up with its residents, as Mother Cabrini every day turned over in her grave.
Twenty years after her death in 1917, the idea was born, turned into residences by 1942, expanded and then entirely demolished by 2009. Over time it “came to symbolize the failure of city governments across the nation to resolve the problems of the concentrated and isolated urban African American poor.”
Look to yourselves that you do not lose what we worked for but may receive your full reward. Stand up straight and shout because your redemption is at hand.
I had Sunday dinner there one sunny winter’s day in 1970, along with my classmates in Valpo’s Urban Studies Program. The program’s co-founders Walt Reiner and Jody Kretzmann led us in our early explorations of activism.
I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth just as we were commanded by the Father.
Walt, though very political, “never talked about elections or candidates or policies. He talked about ‘principalities’ and ‘powers’ and ‘technology,’ how they had lives of their own, and that it was foolish to think they could be brought under control. They were to be contested and resisted even though resistance was futile.” This insistence on action regardless of result went a long way toward shaping my way of life.
In Chicago we visited every kind of church. And that one particular morning we went straight from church to Jody’s friend’s apartment on the 14th floor of Cabrini Green, where we sat on the floor, ate chicken and asked questions of our gracious black host. She told us stories about her family and her friends which made us wonder how she herself was still alive. And she didn’t seem to mind that we were all white and not even sure if we should help with the dishes afterward.
Open my eyes, that I may consider the wonders of your law. Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.
Mother Cabrini filled her own living room floor on Sundays, often with orphans of poor families from Italy and the rest of Europe. They ate and prayed together, eventually in New York, Chicago, Seattle, New Orleans, Denver, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. She matched resources and needs everywhere she went. In 1917, just before Christmas in Chicago, she died of malaria, a few years before Walt Reiner was born.
Life goes on, and we eat and drink, marry and give in marriage … we buy and sell, plant and build … but it will not always be so. On that night two people will lie in one bed, and one will be taken, the other left. Two women will grind meal together, but one will be taken and one will be left. Do not return to what was left behind. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it.
(2 John, Psalm 119, Luke 21, Luke 17)
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