As I ponder questions of violence, nonviolence, peace, and the Peace of Christ, I found these reflections from Benedictine Abbot Philip at Christ in the Desert Monastery in New Mexico helpful grist:

“Daily spirituality in a monastery is more about how we relate to one another and to God than it is about how much time we spend in common prayer or even in private prayer. We monks learn from the Rule of Saint Benedict that the way we relate to one another is the way to evaluate the effects of the praying that we do each day. If we are praying regularly and treating our brothers badly, there is something that is not right in our spirituality. If we are praying regularly and yet are not aware of the presence of God in our normal living every day, there is also something amiss.

Living in a community day in and day out for years does not mean that we monks have become saints. It does mean, however, that we are challenged every day to find ways to live in peace and true Christian love with our brothers. Monastic life insists on us living together as a community, not just living together as in an apartment house! Sometimes it is an enormous challenge not to withdraw into oneself and ignore all of the brothers who are offensive to me.

Sometimes I find in the younger brothers a lack of a sense of the spiritual combat. Rather than see our brokenness as something that is simply part of us and against which we must struggle, they see our brokenness almost as an affront to them and they get discouraged because the struggle must go one day after day for a whole life time. Part of this, I think, comes from a modern sense that we can change everything and we can overcome every obstacle almost immediately. Young people seem not prepared for a struggle, a spiritual fight that will go on until we die.”–Abbot Philip

Read the whole post here.

Just a quick note to say that the Jesuit magazine America is hosting a  livestream of Fr. Daniel Berrigan’s funeral events. Please share this widely.

http://americamedia.org/content/all-things/livestream-daniel-berrigan-sj-funeral-mass

Fr. Dan Berrigan is lovingly remembered by his family, including his Jesuit brothers, and his huge family of friends. His niece Frida Berrigan posted these plans for Thursday and Friday:

Wake and funeral arrangements for Father Dan Berrigan
Thursday, May 5:
2-5pm and 7-9pm, Wake
Church of St Francis Xavier
46 W 16th St, New York, NY

Friday, May 6:
7:30am, Peace Witness and March to Xavier (gather at Mary House, 55 E. 3rd street ( between 1st and 2nd avenues). Bring beautiful signs and banners to celebrate Dan’s life.

Mass at 10am
Church of St Francis Xavier, 46 W 16th St, New York
Reception to follow.

There will be no public burial service. Practice Resurrection!

Fr. Daniel J. Berrigan (1921-2016) : ‘A Priest of Uncommon Conscience’
by Rose Marie Berger

Daniel J. Berrigan–priest, prophet, poet–died today in New York City. He was 94.

In the coming days there will be joyful celebrations of Fr. Dan and gatherings to tell his mighty story. He was one of the great Christian witnesses of our time; a giant of the 20th century in America, along with Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Martin King, Fannie Lour Hamer, and Cesar Chavez.

He leaves an extended family of Berrigans, O’Gradys, and McAlisters, and an even larger community who called him “Uncle Dan.” But now, at last, he is pain-free and dancing with the angels and his beloved co-conspirator, brother Phil, who preceded him in death in 2002.

For me, I will remember a few small things: First, that my father kept above his desk a photo of Dan Berrigan’s arrest in 1968 at a Catonsville (Md) army draft board and recruitment center, where Dan and 8 others poured their own blood and homemade napalm on 378 draft files and burned them in the parking lot. Years later, Dan told me that he’d once been flying on a commercial airline and the pilot overheard his name from the ticket desk. The pilot walked up to Dan and asked if he could shake his hand. “You don’t know me,” he said, “but I owe you my life. My draft record was one of the one’s you burned that day. Because of all the mix up, I was never called up. Thank you for saving my life.”

Second, that I was able to study Isaiah with him on a Sojourners community retreat in the early 1990s (see photo at right I took on that retreat in rural Maryland). And I heard him read his Advent poetry one year–wild, frightening, unpredictable, incarnate–when he was visiting Dorothy Day house in Washington, D.C. (I also asked him to dance once at his 75th birthday celebration, but his back pained him too much to accept.)

Third, I was able to spend a time at Dan Berrigan’s summer house on Block Island, Rhode Island, given over to him by the radical Episcopalian lawyer and theologian William Stringfellow and his partner Methodist poet Anthony Towne. The tiny house teeters on an eroding cliff over the Atlantic. It’s a place where the primal forces of God are not obscured by human hubris. But it was here that Bill and Anthony “harbored” Dan there when he was a fugitive from the FBI after being convicted of felonies “by reason of the illegal activation of their opposition to the Vietnam war,” said the trial document. Framed on the wall of the house is a calligraphy with an excerpt of Bill and Anthony’s letter in defense of their actions of “harboring a fugitive.”

It says:

A Christian does what he must do as a Christian
Daniel Berrigan is our FRIEND
And is always welcome
in our home
any visit from him is an
honor for us
because he is a priest of
uncommon conscience
he his a citizen of
urgent moral purpose
and he is a human being of
exemplary courage ….

Dan always was one to turn questions upside down. On his own death I suspect his mischievous grin has finally returned: “Death? What death? I’m only just getting started.”[]

Here’s an excerpt from one of the tributes in Sojourners magazine to Dan Berrigan from the 1990s. It’s taken from a court case:

Judge: “Father Berrigan, regardless of the outcome of these hearings, will you promise the court that you will refrain from such acts in the future?”

Dan: “Your honor, it seems to me that you are asking the wrong question.”

Judge: “OK, Father Berrigan, what do you think is the proper question?”

Dan: “Well, your honor, it appears to me that you should ask President Bush if he’ll stop making missiles; and, if he’ll stop making them, then I’ll stop banging on them and you and I can go fishing.”

-From testimony at the Plowshares Eight resentencing, 1990.

For more about Fr. Berrigan, read Looking Back in Gratitude and his own autobiography To Dwell in Peace (1988). And every American should read The Trial of the Catonsville Nine by Daniel Berrigan. It is a classic of American resistance literature.