From Archbishop Donoghue

Prayer Service Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 15, 2000
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
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Dear Friends in Christ,

Anyone who lives in the aftermath of a great man or woman, soon realizes that no matter what the circumstances, to some this great person will be a saint, and to some, a sinner.

Certainly, this lesson is taught best by the life of our Lord – after He died, it was no small amount of opposition that the Apostles and the early members of our Church had to face – in fact, it was the sum concentrate of all the opposition that an existing order could use to protect itself, and to bring about the early and hopefully permanent demise of its opponent – in that case, and only that case, the unconquerable Son of God defeated His opponents by overcoming the death they brought to Him, and by rising, in everlasting witness to the fact that His is the only trustworthy Word, the only saving Thought, and that all other words, if they are to have true legitimacy, must flow from His.

In the centuries since the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the birth of our Church, many heroic men and women have traversed the myriad walks of life - in His name and for the sake of all those values - all those virtues which the Gospel of Christ contains, and which the Church faithfully teaches.

And yet, I would estimate, that the greater part of these men and women – saints to our minds – and their reputations, faced immediate and sometimes virulent opposition after their deaths. In this modern world, and no doubt even in the worlds of antiquity, people have always liked to pick apart the public figure, to bring down a religious icon, and to show, for everyone to see, that men and women are really all hypocrites, and that heroic virtue, and heroic lives are a sham – fabrications all – a ploy, either to make money, or to grab power.

For many of us - most of us I would hope - the late Dr. King was a man of great virtue, and one who put his virtue, his strength, into action for the sake of others. We have no problem remembering him for this summation of his character – we also have no problem in accepting the human side of his character – for he was human, and according to some who knew him, he was not without sin, nor without certain flaws which characterize even the best of men and women, heroic though their virtue might be.

Those who wish to destroy Dr. King’s memory, and weaken his impact on subsequent generations, will dwell on these faults, these stumblings, and they will never let go of using a part of the truth, to destroy the whole truth.

But we know, because of our Catholic Faith, what a saint is – and we know how hard saints must fight - not just extrinsic evil, the evil that walks about us in the world – but how hard they must fight to conquer inner evil – the evil that is born in doubt, and which can compromise every fiber of our being till the point where our every act carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Saints have succumbed to sin – some of them have even left us vivid accounts of how they struggled with sin. But their victory, and their ultimate sanctity, their sainthood, is not proven by the sins they committed, but by how they called on the Lord, and how they grabbed on to His Holy Spirit, and how they let themselves be lifted up out of sin, by the power of Christ’s superlative and heroic love.

We count the deeds of the saints as so many great and noble works – but it is more for their faith that they have been elevated – more for the Word as It lived in them – the deeds and the works were wonderful, but they were but the natural products, the natural children of a faith conceived by God’s gift, and His gift alone. It is Faith where all those works and deeds are born – it is the presence of the love of Christ which has made them possible, and the works of saints are only found worthy, if by the saints themselves, they are offered to God for His glory, and offered with a constant admission, that nothing good– nothing good is possible without the love of Jesus Christ bringing it about.

I truly believe that if we are to move beyond all that would compromise the memory of Dr. King – the political uses to which his rhetoric is put, the monetary uses to which his spoken and written legacy are being subjected, and the falsifications of what was most important in his life – if we are to get beyond this, and to bring everyone – everyone - into a grateful and valid appreciation of Dr. King’s life, then we must begin to examine again what he said he believed, so that we may learn from what he believed, and attain for ourselves a portion of the spirit which he possessed.

Today, let us recall some of his words, listening not to what someone has said of what he said – but listening to the man himself. To begin, here is his definition of an individual human life – my life or your life:

There are three dimensions of any complete life: . . . length, breadth, and height. The length of life as we shall think of it here is not its duration or its longevity, but it is the push of a life forward to achieve its personal ends and ambitions. It is the inward concern for one’s own welfare. The breadth of life is the outward concern for the welfare of others. The height of life is the upward reach for God.

These are the three dimensions of life, and without the three being correlated, working harmoniously together, life is incomplete. Life is something of a great triangle. At one angle stands the individual person, at the other angle stand other persons, and at the top stands the Supreme, Infinite Person, God. These three must meet in every individual life if that life is to be complete.

Dr. King took care of his inner self – of the inner man – he studied, he wrote, he preached, and he became a scholar. Because of his great purposefulness, we forget sometimes that the man was blessed with an incredible mind. He was never hesitant to say, be the best you can be. This from an essay:

. . . if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets as Raphael painted pictures, sweep streets as Michelangelo carved marble, sweep streets as Beethoven composed music, sweep streets as Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”

Dr. King took this great wisdom about the reality of life, and made it the first leg of the triangle of life, and with the power it gave him, turned everything he subsequently said and did, as near as possible, into one great act of Christian love. He gave his fatherhood generously, and his family, his parents and wife and children loved him, and still love him. He gave his knowledge generously – those who listened to him, especially those who heard him live, still feel the impact of his words, his gestures, his way of putting things – and the charisma of his personality is given as the best example of leadership that we have seen in modern times. Of these two loves, for his family, and for the people who looked to him for leadership and inspiration, is made the second leg of the triangle, the breadth of Dr. King’s life. For his life became one long embrace of the human family. Many times, in speeches and articles and interviews, to old, middle-aged, and to very young people, he said:

If I can help somebody, then my living will not be in vain!

The completion of the design within which he strove to frame his life, is found in Martin Luther King’s profound and lasting faith in God. This is what he called the “height” of life. Dr. King did not believe in a God-removed, a God who sits back and tolerates whatever men and women wish to do. His faith was not in a passive, but in an active God, one who intervenes, and one who tests the words of men and women. He believed that the Creator of man endows every human being with a mission, and, in the end, asks each of us for an account of what we have done with our lives. Dr. King also believed that God helps us – reaches down to inspire us, to sustain us, to satisfy our restless natures by giving us the power to change - to become better and to become whole. In one of his sermons, he wrote:

At the center of the Christian faith is the conviction that in the universe there is a God of power who is able to do exceedingly abundant things in nature and history. This conviction is stressed over and over in the Old and New Testaments. . . The God whom we worship is not a weak and incompetent God. He is able to beat back gigantic waves of opposition and to bring low prodigious mountains of evil. The ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able.

Dear friends, by combining a life of study and work and service to human beings, and by submitting all to the watchful eye of a strong and active God - by doing these things religiously, Martin Luther King completed the triangle of his life, the just construct, based so perfectly on the triple commandment that is at the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ:

Love God first and above all else; and second, love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Martin Luther King challenges us to meditate on and to accept these three dimensions of life. We must know ourselves, we must live for others, and we must lift our souls to a keen awareness of God on high. To accomplish this, Dr. King consciously became an imitator of Christ. And if there is an ultimate value to his life, or to the life of any saintly person, it is that through their lives and words, we can come to know Christ with greater clarity and depth, and we can come to the point of letting Christ truly rule in our own lives. If Dr. King is read and studied and appreciated, not for his fame, but for what he believed and preached, then, we – black, white, European, African or anything else – we can discover anew a sense of direction for our times, and a knowledge of the purpose and meaning of life - of community, of truth, of good conscience, and of the holiness of God watching and guiding it all.

This was truly Dr. King’s vision, and the dream that lived in his heart, and his expression of it, the most endearing and enduring of his gifts. To close, let us listen one last time to what might have been his own final words, were he able to speak to us himself, to let us go on a high and hopeful note:

So I say to you, seek God and discover Him and make Him a power in your life. Without Him all of our efforts turn to ashes and our sunrises into darkest nights. Without Him, life is a meaningless drama with the decisive scenes missing. But with Him we are able to rise from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope. With Him we are able to rise from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of joy . . .

Love yourself, if that means rational, healthy, and moral self-interest. You are commanded to do that. That is the length of life. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. You are commanded to do that. That is the breadth of life. But never forget that there is a first and even greater commandment, “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind.” This is the height of life. And when you do this you live the complete life.

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