Good Friday has arrived early this year, revealing our national sense of betrayal, as with the Christ, our hopes for peace lay dying, hour by hour.

The difference between then and now fills us with both remorse and confusion, for the Christ was guilty of no untoward word or action to have brought him to Calvary’s hill, but not a one of us stands guiltless this day. We were a free country, we tell ourselves; yet, one by one, we allowed our liberties to be taken away, until we found ourselves goose-stepping to a Fascist drum-beat on the road to war, with another debacle so close to the horizon, we can almost see the guns and hear the exploding rockets.

And we long for silence, sufficient to get our bearings, to figure out some way off this hill of infamy. But we see no way, for we have not only lost our sense of direction, we’ve lost ourselves. How can we come home to us?

God could send a compassionate angel to lead us to our Promised Land, where grace abides, and pride and greed and ambition are held in check, to safeguard his people. First, we need to ask humbly for the grace we treasure. How? On p.16 of the Chicago Tribune, February 9th edition, at the top of the page, stretching across four columns, is a color photo of architect professor from the University of Illinois, Jeffery Poss, sitting inside the meditation hut he built in the backyard of his Urbana home, costing about $2,200 (photograph by Darrel Hhoemann, text by Melissa Meril).

Today, millions of our people are homeless, much less able to build an independent prayer room. Other millions are living in cramped conditions, with no space for even an extra closet. But we need not space to pray. Only faith. And humility. Faith to believe in God’s care and mercy; humility to beg for the light to see our way, and to trust that we will be given the strength to follow.

Our situation reminds me of another era, long before the turn of this century, and of a child named Catherine Kolyschkine, born in Nizhny-Novgorod, Russia, on August 15, 1896. Although she lived in extreme wealth, her mother, who visited the poor daily, was determined that Catherine would learn of another life beyond the grand estate and servants, ponies, and parties, and lovely dresses.
(Background: www.catherinedoherty.org/life/index.html)

At fifteen, she married her cousin, Boris de Hueck, and not long after, the two found themselves in World War I at the Russian front: he as an engineer, she as a nurse.

The Russian Revolution destroyed the lives they had known, and they were eventually forced to flee Russia, leaving behind many family members who had been killed at the hands of the Bolsheviks. Catherine knew the war rose out of injustice to the poor, and spent her entire life fighting the hypocrisy of Christians, trying to live good lives, while neglecting to help those who were destitute.

Catherine and Boris fled first to England, then to Canada, where their son George was born. As Catherine worked and sacrificed to care for her ailing husband and child, she was devastated with the realization that her marriage was falling apart. Later, the marriage was annulled by the Church, and she would marry the famous journalist from the Sun Times, Eddie Doherty, in 1943.

A talent scout from the lecture circuit discovered Catherine’s gift for public speaking, and hired her to travel across North America, telling of her life in Russia, and of the escape to a new life. Gradually, the wealth she had known as a child began to be hers once more, and it disconcerted her. On October 15, 1930, she sold all her possessions, made provisions for her son, and went to work in the slums of Toronto.

Dorothy Day, who had also begun to live and work among the poor, understood Catherine and her desire to live according to a closer following of Christ. Other men and women joined Catherine to live together in what she called Friendship House, and in 1938, she opened the first house in Harlem, which was soon hopping with service to the poor, along with prayer and hymns to nourish the people’s vibrant spirituality.

It was at Chicago’s Friendship House that I first met Catherine, working in what we called a store-front church, where most of the building was devoted to the distribution of food, clothing and hospitality to the poor. A priest would offer Mass when possible.

Today, the first advice Catherine offered us young students seems strange, indeed -- to shake hands with the adults and hold the babies. It never entered our heads not to shake hands, and holding babies was plain fun. They entertained us, and we kept them safe while their mothers sorted through the clothing and took what their families needed.

At the close of the day, we would gather around the enormous table in the middle of the room, and pile things neatly for the following day. Then, Catherine would speak of Christ and his love, tie both together with our lives, and close with a few of her favorite Psalms. In the many decades since then, I’ve never heard the Psalms prayed as she prayed them. It was as though she touched God, and God, her.

She would also speak of her childhood in Russia, and how, along the road were little huts, called Poustinias, which is the Russian word for “desert,” a place where a person meets God through solitude, prayer and fasting. From that memory, Catherine founded Madonna Houses, houses of prayer.

Today, it would be interesting if someone would make a study of couples like Barbara and Jeffrey Poss, whose 54-square-foot structure offers a quiet atmosphere for thought and prayer, a retreat, unencumbered with modern conveniences of telephones or computers. This is the second meditation room Poss has built. Some years ago, I read that a number of couples were requesting prayer rooms to be incorporated into their new homes. Most cannot afford such a special room, but everyone could have a corner, a place for a candle, perhaps a Bible, whatever would help one to pray.

Every day, we are learning of more and more service men and women, who are returning with terrible injuries. They will need help from family members, who have spent some time in prayer, to learn the wisdom and acquire the strength to help their loved ones to heal.

Wouldn’t it be something if, along our busy highways, we could erect little huts for prayer? Would we not, then, be forced to think of ways to settle our differences with other nations with diplomacy, rather than bombs; prayer rather than falsehoods; love, rather than suspicion and hatred?

We are a few minutes from midnight, not too late to give prayer a chance.

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