January 19, 2015
Father Bruce Nieli, CSP
Editor’s note: Martin Luther King, Jr., Day is celebrated on Jan. 19.
“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!… I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.’”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave this famous “I have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial. I was about to become a senior at Wellington C. Mepham High School on Long Island, N.Y., and had already decided to become a missionary priest that very summer. When asked to write down in public speaking class who were oratorical models for me, I gave two names: Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and Dr. Martin Luther King.
The civil rights movement in general and Martin Luther King in particular had a profound influence on my decision to become a priest and preacher and on my subsequent years in formation during the lively yet often turbulent 1960s. Dr. King’s April 4, 1968, assassination occurred during my seminary ministry in inner-city Washington, D.C., and I remember vividly the resulting fires, tear gas and displacements that occurred in the aftermath. Now, more than 50 years after Dr. King’s immortal speech, I am a priest assigned to the Paulist preaching apostolate in Austin, Texas, but for almost 16 years I was based in the very Memphis neighborhood where King gave his life for his sheep. The Lorraine Motel is only a few blocks from my former Church of St. Patrick. In fact, our Paulist dining room at that time served as the gathering place for the sanitation workers, eager to form a union to combat the pitiable wages and absence of benefits that were the result of the gross racism of the day. This is why King came to Memphis. The march that ended at Mason Temple to witness his “I’ve been to the mountain top/I’ve seen the Promised Land” speech began in our St. Patrick’s parking lot, with the active participation of many of our parishioners.
The Paulists were founded by Servant of God Father Isaac Thomas Hecker to be missionaries to America, to be, in the words of Pope Francis today, “missionary disciples” of Jesus, North American evangelists. As such, Martin Luther King serves as a mentor and model for us. Preaching is such a key component of evangelization, and few come even close to the caliber of evangelistic preaching displayed by Dr. King. Pope Paul VI in his monumental apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (On Evangelization in the Modern Word), paragraph 18, and the American Catholic bishops in their powerful document Go and Make Disciples: A National Plan and Strategy for Evangelization in the United States, paragraph 10, declare that the Church evangelizes when she seeks to covert both the individual conscience and the collective conscience, both persons and society. As such, Martin Luther King would rank among the greatest evangelists. Like St. Paul the Apostle, his preaching and witness helped to convert an entire people.
America during the King years was in the throws of racism. Recent events in our country have pointed out quite dramatically that the struggle for equality and justice is still going on, on many levels and in diverse areas. Neighborhood groups continue to denounce racial profiling. The Catholic Bishops of the United States and other voices loudly call for immigration reform. Dr. King’s niece, Alveda King, carries on her uncle’s passion for justice as an interreligious leader in the contemporary pro-life movement. The spirit and mission of Martin Luther King thankfully lives on!
His “I Have a Dream” speech clearly gives testimony to Martin Luther King’s prophetic role as a unifier. His “table of brotherhood and sisterhood” was the image of an America United, a people whose founding motto of e pluribus unum, of unity amidst diversity, could be lived out. As Catholics, we offer our people the ideal welcoming and reconciling table, the Table of the Eucharist. By the work of the Holy Spirit, may all the beautiful and richly diverse groups that make up our continent become, at the Eucharistic Table, “one Body and one Spirit,” one nation all of whose members enjoy “the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
As Dr. King himself concludes: “And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, and when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every State and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!’”
On April 4th, 2012, the 45th anniversary of the King assassination, the street directly in front of St. Patrick’s Church was renamed “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Avenue.” I led a pilgrimage of children that day from the National Shrine of St. Martin de Porres in downtown Memphis to the Lorraine Motel, the site of the assassination. Did not King’s dream impact so heavily God’s precious children?! The idea was to highlight the rich tradition of Catholic social teaching by connecting the two Martins, both of whom, though centuries apart, gave their lives so that people of color could enjoy lives of dignity and respect. There at the very spot on the motel balcony where he had stood next to his martyred friend forty-five years before was Rev. Jesse Jackson. When he saw the Martin guitar in my hands, he motioned me to start playing as he intoned “We Shall Overcome,” the anthem of the civil rights movement. The assembled crowd enthusiastically joined in. This brought back vivid memories of my high school involvement with the National Conference of Christians and Jews, when we would passionately sing “We Shall Overcome” in support of Dr. King and the struggle for civil rights. This remembrance of Martin Luther King was therefore, through the Holy Spirit, movingly transformed into a renewal of my Paulist vocation.