Fire, Rain and Repentance at Catonsville
By Alan Smigielski
On this Sunday that our church celebrates the Holy Trinity, I had the great honor of gathering in Catonsville, Maryland with many long distance runners for peace and justice from across our region and country to reflect on our own trinity of fire, rain and repentance. We were there to celebrate and reflect upon the prophetic action of the Catonsville 9, forty years ago during the height of the Vietnam War. On May 17, 1968, nine courageous and faithful Catholics (including the priest brothers Daniel and Phil Berrigan) entered the Selective Service office in Catonsville, removed several hundred A-1 draft records, and burned them outside with homemade napalm. This act of outrageous faithfulness to the nonviolent Jesus touched millions of people of faith and solidified faith-based opposition to the slaughter in Vietnam. All nine were arrested, and after a highly publicized trial, sentenced to jail.
The Catonsville 9 statement of opposition to that war forty years ago still rings prophetic and faithful today, as our nation is mired in yet another horrible war of conquest and occupation:
“Our apologies good friends for the fracture of good order
the burning of paper instead of children;
the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house.
We could not so help us God do otherwise, For we are sick at heart
our hearts give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children…”
Today, as we stood in a drenching rain, we remembered that we have made Iraq another “Land of the Burning Children” and asked God for forgiveness. Passing motorists waved, tooted horns or shouted obscenities. No one, it seemed, was unaffected by the our act of public repentance and remembrance. As the rain continued to cascade like tears from heaven, we were reminded of Jesus’ revelation of God’s true nature of love and our calling to nonviolence: “But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly God, for God makes God’s sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” (Matthew 5:44-45)
As Jesus revealed, God is mercy upon mercy, forgiveness and peace beyond all understanding. Yet, we recalled as we read from the Book of Isaiah, that we must name and resist evil when we see it. Isaiah’s searing indictment of the powers of his day are equally applicable to the current rulers of our own country: “Their works are evil works, and deeds of violence come from their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they are quick to shed innocent blood; Their thoughts are destructive thoughts, plunder and ruin are on their highways. The way of peace they know not, and there is nothing that is right in their paths; Their ways they have made crooked, whoever treads them knows no peace.” (Isaiah 59:6-8)
To know true peace is to know the nonviolent Jesus, the perfect revelation of God. But what do we know about Jesus? Simply put, we know he taught us how to live as God lives, to be “perfect as your heavenly God,” to love one another as God loves us. Jesus’ entire life was one of perfect nonviolence. The Gospels unfold with wave upon wave of God’s perfect love and our calling to emulate Jesus as His followers: “Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be called the children of God,” “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” And at the hour when violence and killing could perhaps be most justified, when Jesus was being led away to be arrested, tortured and executed, He told Peter to “put back your sword.” God’s way is the way of love. Jesus even forgave his torturers and executioners with perfect nonviolence: “Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.”
When our service of repentance and remembrance of fire ended we embraced and connected with one another; some meeting for the first time, others rekindling old or lost friendships. Then suddenly the sun appeared from behind the clouds. God had made creation anew. Once again God’s sun shone on the bad and the good and we parted knowing that we were God’s children, called by Jesus to love our very enemies, like the brave and faithful Catonsville 9.
