SOWING SEEDS, Finding Christ Among the Poor The Catholic Worker Presence in Las Vegas

Julia Occhiogrosso • Sep 26, 2023

by Julia Occhiogrosso


From my kitchen window I see him. When washing dishes or preparing the evening meal, there he is. Sitting outside our side gate, underneath the olive trees, catching a reprieve from the summer sun. He approaches and offers to sweep up the debris as a gesture of his appreciation for allowing him to sit in our shade. With limits on the rooms in our Hospitality Houses, this is the best we can offer him.


My husband says that living in a neighborhood plagued with poverty, he often feels like he is an awkward spectator into people’s vulnerability and pain. While the Catholic Worker practice of opening Hospitality Houses in poorer neighborhoods may have its origins in simple affordability, certainly Dorothy and Peter were deeply attuned to the spiritual importance of heeding the Gospel invitation to  see and be Christ among the poor and vulnerable in our communities. For the Catholic Worker, this has meant living among them.

“From its beginnings the Catholic Worker has been a place of refuge for the most desperate, for the outcast of outcasts. For people of privilege, it has offered a unique opportunity to move, sometimes awkwardly, into the world of the poor. Not for the novelty of the experience but as Dorothy seemed to know, that by seeking the Christ in the outcast we would also contact the Christ within us.”

In Las Vegas, the Catholic Worker started in 1986 by serving ice water in the heat of summer out of the back of a VW station wagon. Soon our water recipients suggested a location to serve coffee and donuts to day laborers lining the street by the freeway. The “coffee line” evolved into a hearty morning meal still served today three mornings a week in the same general area.

While the food line meals are prepared in the kitchen of our Hospitality House, we set up and serve outside on the street a few blocks away from the house. We have never been able to acquire a building in the neighborhood for inside serving.  Being “buildingless” and serving outside forces us to at least briefly be exposed to the precarity of being homeless. As we approach with our vehicles full of food, we cannot help seeing the way homeless people attempt to negotiate a place of refuge. Tarps and boards attached to chain link fences make for flimsy shelter.  The absence of bathrooms or trash service forces people to sleep in the squalor of debris.  These harsh circumstances are worsened by the extreme weather conditions: cold, wind, heat, and even rain.

Most mornings, despite the challenges, they wait patiently in line for the Catholic Worker volunteers to arrive. In contrast to their dreary and difficult circumstances, we are met by resilience and grace. We are humbled by the smiles and expressions of gratitude that greet us as we hand out simple meal bags.

While I only endure these conditions for the brief time we are serving, there are days when a particular image haunts me. In the chill of winter mornings, the cold can linger in my bones even after being indoors for a while. As witnesses to the scene, our hearts cannot avoid being awakened to the human cost of disparity and injustice. If new volunteers have any judgment or hardness of heart it is softened by the morning’s end.

I remember hearing Dorothy speak during an interview with Bill Moyers recorded in the 1970s. She spoke in essence about the tragic irony of New York, one of the wealthiest cities in the world, lacking in its capacity to care for the poorest of its citizens. Desperate individuals, suffering with extreme cases of mental and medical distress would often be brought by the authorities to the door of the New York Catholic Worker.

From its beginnings the Catholic Worker has been a place of refuge for the most desperate, for the outcast of outcasts. For people of privilege, it has offered a unique opportunity to move, sometimes awkwardly, into the world of the poor. Not for the novelty of the experience but as Dorothy seemed to know, that by seeking the Christ in the outcast we would also contact the Christ within us. This contact was essential in cultivating our capacity to work towards the promise of a beloved community. We would find the source of the great love we had to share with a broken world.

In Las Vegas this sharing happens in our Houses of Hospitality, food serving and mobile shower project. People come to us, vulnerable and in need. With the model of the Gospel, we are given a way to respond. We give food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless and clean clothing to those without.

Meeting vulnerability and struggle with mercy and compassion is prompted by a faith in the power of Christ’s love. And while it is easy to grow weary and want to avoid the reality of suffering just outside my front gate, this reality ultimately takes hold of my heart, informs my decisions and actions. It motivates a desire to create a just and compassionate world. I am convinced that my desire to do so would be weak and forgotten without the gift of solidarity formed from a sustained connection to the marginalized present in my life at the Catholic Worker.

-

Our deep thanks to Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB, for the use of his iconic images (preceding columns for “Good Talk,” “Breaking Bread,” “Sowing Seeds,” “Signs of Holiness”)

- 

Share this post

SOWING SEEDS, What it takes to be a lifelong Catholic Worker

By Claire Schaeffer-Duffy and Scott Schaeffer-Duffy • 26 Apr, 2024
A desire to know God in the poor rather than any specific quest for community led the two of us to the Mary Harris and St. Benedict Catholic Worker houses in Washington, DC in the summer and autumn of 1982. Michael Kirwan, a graduate student in sociology at George Washington University, founded both a couple years earlier. We arrived shortly after graduating from college, coming by separate paths. Claire had just finished a senior thesis on the enduring, revolutionary value of the Catholic Worker movement. And Scott was reassessing his vocation after spending most of a year as a novice with the Capuchin-Franciscans. In those days, the talk between us was all about radical poverty and solidarity with the poor. The two small row houses Michael purchased were located on Fourth Street NW in a squalid neighborhood under the thumb of several drug-dealing families. Mary Harris house served women while St. Benedict house served men. Both were crammed with people who were mentally ill, addicted, or utterly alone in the world. Inspired by Michael, we saw the Catholic Worker as a place where Christianity could be taken literally. Fourth Street provided ample opportunity. There, the Gospel invocations of “whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me,” “take nothing for the journey,” “take the lowest place,” “forgive not seven times, but seventy-seven times,” and “pray unceasingly” were translated into unlimited hospitality and incredible precarity. We slept on the floor, prayed the Liturgy of the Hours, and went to daily Mass in the midst of the chaos. In early 1983, Carl Siciliano, an eighteen year old contemplative came to volunteer at St. Benedict’s. He too was eager for the radical path, and the three of us immersed ourselves in the tumult of life on Fourth Street with enthusiasm. As Claire would say, “we’re like the three musketeers.” This was the era of Reaganomics, a time when thousands of unhoused Americans lived on the streets of the Capitol. The United States was arming wars in Central America and ramping up its nuclear arsenal to build weapons of incalculable destruction. Washington, DC was abuzz with protests. Despite the enormity of our daily tasks, we joined numerous anti-war demonstrations and went to jail on several occasions for acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. In the autumn of 1983, we went on a peace mission to Nicaragua with Teresa Grady, who is now part of the Ithaca, NY Catholic Worker, and Carl. Following Michael’s advice, we left the care of the houses on Fourth Street in the hands of Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day while we were away. The responsibility of maintaining two small houses of hospitality often conflicted with our desire to participate in a nonviolent action. The one who went off to jail or a peace campaign could only do so if someone stayed back at the house to cook the soup and break up the fights. Deciding who did what was an occasional source of tension. New community members came, but did not remain long.

SAVED BY BEAUTY, Artists of Hope

By Carolyn Zablotny • 26 Apr, 2024
Bro. Martin Erspamer, OSB and Bro. Michael (Mickey) McGrath, OSFS are both liturgical artists, widely recognized for their creative work. Meeting in the pages of the Guild’s newsletter, they bring an artistry and open-heartedness long associated with Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker. From its very beginning, the Catholic Worker has been blessed by grace-filled encounters, their number suggesting more providence than coincidence. How else can the meeting between Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day be understood? He lit the match that set the new convert on fire to see what the Gospel, if lived, would look like, a match that led to a movement and even to a cause for canonization. Both still kindle our imagination with the possibility of new life, new hope. Beauty is an entryway to our imagination. Even as a young girl, Dorothy found deep inspiration and joy in literature, nature, and music. She must have felt a kindred spirit when she met nineteen-year-old art student, Ade Bethune, in 1933. Ade had come to the Catholic Worker on East Fifteenth Street. While she was moved by the hospitality offered to the poor, she felt the fledgling Catholic Worker newspaper wasn’t sufficiently conveying the spirit behind the work. She offered her artwork. To this day, her bold images continue to animate the paper.

GOOD TALK, Charles E. Moore on How to Live in Community

By Gabriella Wilke • 26 Apr, 2024
Charles E. Moore is a member, teacher, and pastor of the Bruderhof, an international Christian movement of intentional communities founded by Eberhard Arnold in 1920. A contributing editor and author for Plough , his published works include Called to Community: The Life Jesus Wants for His People, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard , and Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together. Drawing on his expertise and experience, he spoke with one of In Our Time’s editors, Gabriella Wilke, on how to go about life together. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
More Posts
Share by: