And they strove to make this presence known to the 20th century world. In so doing they were fully cognizant that the world was no more disposed to be open to this message than it was in Judea during Christ’s human sojourn on earth. And all their struggles, sufferings and prayer were intimately connected to their life in Christ.

The ethos of American society was deeply Protestant. So Dorothy Day, who had emerged from this Protestant world, had in her person a familiar respectability for those to whom she was addressing the radical message of “reconstructing the world in accordance with the mind of Christ.”

Catherine, by contrast, was the emigré, the stranger within our gates. Plus, in her witness and preaching of the Word, she focused on the deepest, most decisive human element in our society—race.

She was telling white Americans that in their segregation and degradation of their black fellow citizens, they were “crucifying Christ.” And she was telling white American Catholics that their denial of social justice for black citizens was a denial of the Mystical Body of Christ.

[In the racist society of the 1940s and ’50s] Catherine’s message was like an exploding bomb. And she was unswerving in her insistence that it was Christ and Christ’s Word that demanded they change.

Never was a prophet, a missionary of the Word, more alone than Catherine was in Harlem. She was humanly, spiritually, and emotionally on the cross, too many times to count.

Obedience to her bishops and spiritual directors was the only overt social/cultural support Catherine had in this apostolate. And, not infrequently, it was she who was leading them spiritually and illuminating the social reality for them.

But some people responded to her positively and did so in countless ways. She, in turn, responded to them.

For example, to the southern Catholic who could not cope with feelings of distress in kneeling next to a black person at the Communion rail and to the southern Protestant clergyman who begged her to help him, she responded with gentle, Gospel-centered words of encouragement and understanding.

It was unbelievable! A Russian messenger of the Lord, sent to awaken the United States to its most deep-rooted human distortion and wound!

Pre-eminently, Catherine and Dorothy Day “opened the windows of the Church to the world” a quarter of a century before Vatican II. For the laity who were touched by her witness and apostolate, this was the revelation. But the real leader, the real catalyst of their revelation, as in the work of the Council, was the unpredictable Holy Spirit.

I sure got an education working with Catherine, an education which no institution could ever have given me.

I could not have succeeded in my job at the United Nations had it not been for all that I absorbed of Catherine’s approach to community. I used to meet all the Soviet bureaucrats when they arrived at the UN, and I always knew instinctively which ones were KGB.

I was sometimes tough as nails with them, but they all knew that I was treating them (with respect) as members of the UN community. Where else could I have learned this except from Catherine in Harlem, Catherine whose grasp of community was ever all-embracing?

When I finally visited Madonna House Combermere in the early 1970s, it was as though all the years between 1942 and 1974 had miraculously been erased. Catherine, Eddie, and Flewy had “reestablished” Friendship House Harlem in the midst of the Canadian bush!

There was nothing strange; all was familiar. There was just more space and more buildings. Spiritually and humanly, it was Friendship House Harlem, even in its physical arrangements for various activities.

Catherine really epitomized the history of the 20th century in her person. She was identified with so many aspects of life in that century. It’s wonderful that Combermere became her Nazareth when the Church needed Nazareth. Just as she had been present in Harlem when the Church needed to be awakened to the scandal of racism.

And just as the world beat a path to Catherine’s desk in the library at 135th St. in Harlem, so it beat a path to her in Madonna House Combermere.