This day is a day on which workers are especially supported and encouraged. Today in particular the common dream of bettering ourselves comes to the fore in a way it does not on other days.
Today, the first day of May, has been known to many as May Day. In 1886 workers organized in efforts to lead to a shorter work day. In the course of those rallies and demonstrations, violence erupted between police and workers in an unfolding of events which has come to be known as the Haymarket Massacre. In the outcry against that violence, workers became galvanized in solidarity with each other, such union still being expressed each year on May 1 in support of workers everywhere.
Today is also the Feast Day of Saint Joseph the Worker. In honor of Saint Joseph, the foster father of Jesus, Pope Pius XII established today as the Feast Day of Saint Joseph who worked as a carpenter as Jesus did.
Saint Joseph is the patron saint of workers. Thus workers pray and ask him to intercede with God for them.
All workers may look to Saint Joseph for his assistance. All workers are engaged in a universal struggle, despite their being individual workers. Regardless of their individual identity, all workers have common aspirations. All workers are involved in a shared endeavor. Thus employees often join together in solidarity with each other.
Thus workers have the right to form unions. Pope Leo XIII affirmed this right in his papal encyclical entitled "Rerum Novarum," or "Of The New Things."
Workers share a common dream. They are aspiring toward the same goal.
As human beings generally as well we have much in common with each other in our deepest longings. We resonate in our hearts with each other.
We find this similarity in general amongst each other's aspirations. We also see this basic sameness and congruence of yearnings in how people feel about their homeland.
I have seen this theme of the universality of love of one's country in the hymn entitled "This Is My Song." In this hymn, I have also found the idea that the love of country that one person has can peacefully coexist with the love of country that another person has for a different country.
In "This Is My Song," we hear
This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is,
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine.
But other hearts in other lands are beating,
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.
The lyrics of "This Is My Song" are set to the tune of the musical piece entitled "Finlandia," which was written by the composer Jan Sibelius. Sibelius wrote Finlandia in the midst of the Finnish people feeling oppressed by the Russians. The piece is evocative of the national struggle of the Finns for freedom. Finlandia is electrically charged with a pent up sense of frustration and ardent craving to be liberated.
I found the universality of this longing for personal freedom illustrated this evening in an unexpected way. By my side was someone with whom I share a fundamental longing, despite the vastly different circumstances in which we have lived up until now.
I am speaking of Samah, the Saudi Arabian guest we have been hosting for months here at the Catholic Worker House. Tonight she too was at the performance of Finlandia which was being performed by my fellow Catholic Worker Susan and the rest of her musical band.
However, I did not know that Samah was there at the performance tonight. During intermission, an event organizer made an announcement that someone had left sunglasses in the lobby. Next I saw someone raising her hand. I did not recognize the person raising her hand and waving, even though it was Samah.
I thought she was someone responding to the news of the lost glasses. I thought she was saying she was the one who had lost her glasses. I perceived her wave as responding to a call that perhaps she didn't even realize was being made.
Later, in considering that moment of raising one's hand to get someone else's attention, and being mistakenly perceived as responding to a call, I recalled that pivotal scene in the film "North By Northwest." Cary Grant's character happens to raise his hand to get someone's attention precisely at the moment when someone else's name is being called. He gets confused with someone else, and from then on the rest of the film depicts the maelstrom of misfortune through which he is dragged, all because people think he is someone he is not.
However, here, Samah has already been gravely mistaken for being someone she is not. Someone has already tried to foist a false identity upon her.
You see, she has been expected to marry a man she does not want to marry. Others have their expectations of her, conceptions of her which, if followed, would subject her to a life of miserable slavery, trampling down who she has always been meant to be.
In so doing, others have been turning her world upside down. She has been subjected to a cyclone of trouble, all because others have tried to force her to be someone she is not. She has been put through this hardship because they do not see her for who she is.
And yet I too did not recognize her. As she waved, she made a gesture as if to say, "Do you recognize me? Do you see that our dreams are not so different?"
We all seek to grow into that space that God has prepared for us. Our work now, in this moment, is to live to our fullest potential in this life.
We are to live out our lives as ourselves so that we may go to dwell in that space in Heaven that God has prepared for us. Jesus told His disciples just as He tells us, "I go to prepare a place for you."*
We all aim to throw off the societal shackles which bind us and keep us in the horrible prison which is created when we do not live as our true selves. Although we may not consciously realize or acknowledge this truth, we all long to discard the false self which society has tricked us into believing is us.
The Trappist monk Thomas Merton unmasked the cruel tendency of society to convince us into believing that each of us is to live as the false self that society expects us to be. We are to believe that we need to buy unnecessary items, that we must listen to advertisements, that we must wear certain clothes. In all this we are led to put on false personas. Yet we all desire to be our true selves. Each of us deeply craves to live out our lives as the true self we have always been meant to be.
We all hunger to be ourselves. We all thirst to live the life of love toward ourselves and toward others and toward God that we have always been meant to live.
On our way, we are hungry because we are suffering from the malnourishment that results from not living as ourselves. We suffer from the delusion that we are people other than ourselves. We misperceive others to be people they are not. When we pick up on these errors, then we are empowered to move past our incorrect assumptions about people and see them for who they are.
Once I finally realized it was Samah who was waving, that she was waving at me to get my attention, and that she was inviting me over to her, I joined her. I went and sat next to her.
During intermission, we laughed at the failure to connect with each other during that moment when she was waving and I was oblivious. As humans often we miss the message, even when we clearly see it right in front of us.
Later, when the part of Finlandia was being played which serves as the tune of the hymn entitled "This Is My Song," my tear ducts opened. As that part of Finlandia was being played, I began to weep.
It was at that point that I realized that this is my song. I saw that this song, which speaks of the irrepressible desire to live in true freedom, and thus grow into our true selves, is my song. And in the very next instant, I thought of Samah. I saw that this is her song too, that this is the song of the Saudi Arabian woman sitting next to me, even though she has lived a drastically different life from mine.
This is the song of every human being. Do we realize it? Do we hear it? Do we listen to it? Do we follow it?
Even when society tries to squelch this burning desire in our hearts to be free, it is an indefatigable longing in our hearts. It cannot be repressed forever. It yearns to burst forth, to get out and be free.
It is this irrepressible bottled up vitality, of our true life within us, screaming to be fully released and honestly expressed, which is gradually boiling up within us, threatening to burst forth. Here is an energy which is revolutionary. This desire revolts against repressive societal expectations which make unreasonable demands upon it, ridiculously expecting it to be untrue to itself. This pent up life force is volatile; it will not stand for being bottled up. It is incendiary, threatening to explode if it is not released. This energy of the true life within us is easily powerful enough to obliterate the false conceptions of ourselves that society has foisted upon us.
This truth of who we truly are is so charged that it is far more than powerful enough to set us free. We do indeed share this common desire to better ourselves, to join together, to express ourselves constructively through our work, so may become what we have always been meant to be. It is this deep yearning that is part of what forges a common bond among people from vastly different backgrounds.
This is your dream. This is my dream too.
Let us support each other in our dreams to be ourselves. In how we follow our dreams, through being our truest selves, we implicitly encourage others to do likewise.
This way we can truly love ourselves. This way we can be empowered to truly love each other as we love ourselves.**
This way, by being ourselves, by being who we have always been meant to be, by being who God created us to be, by consenting to God's will for us, we are pleasing to God. Through this way we can enter into the place He has prepared for us. Amen.
* John 14:2
** Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14
