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<\/a>It\u2019s no secret that I love Dorothy Day. She has helped me make sense of a Church that can often seem riven by division, academic equivocation, and a strangely-conservative politics. I don\u2019t see much negative about Day, but she\u2019s long been subject to criticism<\/a>: she was a liberal (never mind her Anarchism and avowed anti-capitalism), she hated the sexual ethic of the Church, she opposed what it means to be an American.<\/p>\n Her Byzantine analogue (and who knew she had one?), Fr. David Kirk<\/a>, has largely been spared such attacks. Perhaps it\u2019s because there are fewer Byzantines; perhaps it\u2019s because he wrote less (though one has to admire the snap of a title like Quotations from Chairman Jesus<\/a><\/em>). In writing this piece to carry his legacy to more people, I might run the risk of opening him up to attack. I hope not, but his life and legacy seem so beautiful to me that it\u2019s incumbent upon me to use my meager soapbox to say a meager something.<\/p>\n So who was he? One could say a priest, an activist, even a saint. It might be best, therefore, to start with a short biography.<\/p>\n Fr. Kirk was born in Louisville, Mississippi in 1935 to Baptist parents. The racial tensions of the South of his youth would come to shape him. At the age of 12, he supposedly befriended a black man named Clint who was accused of murdering his wife. Young Fr. Kirk brought him food in the woods where he was hiding until Clint (whom I presume he thought was innocent) could escape to Louisiana.<\/p>\n This might seem a strange story with which to lead, but it begins to illustrate a major theme in Fr. Kirk\u2019s life, one could even say the thing that brought him to the Melkite Church and drove his lifelong work for the poor: radical community and hospitality (especially with regard to race). An anecdote to this point:<\/p>\n According to Dr. Albert J. Raboteau, a member of the Emmaus House Board, Father David had a life-long interest in interracial justice. As editor of his high school newspaper in Mobile, AL, he spent several weeks attending the local black high school to investigate first hand the inequities of segregation. In 1956, his junior year at the University of Alabama, Arthurine Lucy\u2019s attempt to integrate the school was met with mob violence. He joined with several other students to shield her as she moved about campus. His correspondence with William Faulkner during that same year elicited a letter\u2014later published\u2014detailing the famous author\u2019s views on segregation. (OCA.org<\/em>)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n To continue with his biography: he became a Melkite Catholic (one of the twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches<\/a>) in 1963 and was ordained to the priesthood. Fr. Kirk became active in the Civil Rights Movement<\/a> (even getting arrested with Martin Luther King Jr. once). He moved to New York City to work with Dorothy Day, who told him he was more needed in Harlem. Thus he went there and Emmaus House<\/a> was born. Over time 60 Emmaus Inns were founded\u2014apartments scattered across the City, intended to help women escape abusive, crack-infested environments.<\/p>\n What is Emmaus House?<\/p>\n The work of Emmaus has involved a traveling kitchen to feed the homeless; job training; Emmaus Inns (apartments for the homeless); legal services for the homeless; and a residence for the homeless.<\/p>\n All of those who live at Emmaus must get the counseling they need, take some responsibility for their education, and do work to help sustain the community. (Incommunion.org<\/em>)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It is much like a Catholic Worker House (on which it was modelled): it provides for the homeless in a multitude of ways, making available food, medical care, legal assistance, housing, and more. It takes seriously the corporeal and spiritual works of mercy, bringing them together by offering a place for material consolation and a spirit of hope. As one resident put it:<\/p>\n My name is Winifred Daniels. I used to smoke crack and I used to drink. Father David used to call it, the community of wounded. We all are wounded in one way or another and we\u2019re here to help one another. (NPR.org<\/em>)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Fr. Kirk\u2019s life\u2019s work clearly affected a great number of people; his dedication to the poor, the hopeless, and the marginalized (especially across racial lines\u2014we ought to remember that Emmaus House is in Harlem, a part of Manhattan notable for, at minimum, the Harlem Renaissance, a major black artistic movement) cannot be denied. If for this alone, he ought to be remember. His legacy is one of absolute service, of work for and among the forgotten. We call to mind Dorothy Day (and for good reason) to bolster our belief in the transformative power of Christian faith; we ought to recall Fr. Kirk too. He gives those of us from the Byzantine tradition hope in our tradition of justice, asking us to call to mind words like these from St. John Chrysostom:<\/p>\n Having said \u201cThe first and great commandment is \u2018You shall love the Lord your God,\u2019\u201d he added \u201cand the second \u2026 is like it. \u2018You shall love your neighbor as yourself.\u2019\u201d And see how with nearly the same excellence he also requires this. For as concerning God, he said \u201cWith all your heart\u201d: so concerning your neighbor, \u2018as yourself\u2019 is the same as \u2018with all your heart.\u201d If this commandment were duly observed there would be neither slave nor free, neither ruler nor ruled\u2026. There would be no poverty, no unbounded wealth if there were love, but only the good parts that come from each. From the one we should reap its abundance, and from the other its freedom from care and should neither have to undergo the anxieties of riches nor the dread of poverty. (Homilies on First Corinthians<\/em>)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n But there\u2019s one last chapter to this priest\u2019s story that interests me, both for the personal reaction it effects and for the larger issues it speaks to for us in 2018.<\/p>\n In 2004, Fr. Kirk joined the Orthodox Church in America. No source I can find says why. I perplexed me at first. Whatever one thinks about the Schism, these days it is (at least somewhat) easier to associate converts to Eastern Orthodoxy with conservatism. Many carry their anti-Catholicism<\/a> over from fundamentalist Protestant backgrounds; others leave the Catholic Church to get away from our supposedly-liberal bishops. Matthew Heimbach<\/a> serves as a metonym for larger problems in American Orthodoxy. The theology of re-baptism and denying the Sacraments of other Apostolic Churches<\/a> reflects poorly the spirit that animated Fr. Kirk.<\/p>\n Meanwhile the Catholicism of Pope Francis never seems to stop convincing people that the Church is sliding into an age of (depending your position) beautiful mercy or unconscionable, secular apostasy.<\/p>\n After thinking about it, though, it hit me: Fr. Kirk converted in 2004. I wonder what he\u2019d think of how these Churches look today, but back then Orthodoxy didn\u2019t have the sort of reputation it does (at least when one encounters certain converts) as it does today (and, to be clear, I love Orthodoxy. I love my brothers and sisters and their traditions, but that doesn\u2019t mean we can simply ignore the reputation created by this group of converts).\u00a0 Catholicism was still in its Culture Wars moment<\/a>, a trend only now really breaking down. It\u2019s unclear, but I can\u2019t help but speculate that these differences played some role (along with the general discomfort it\u2019s far to easy for Eastern Catholics to feel).<\/p>\n And I think there\u2019s a lesson here: times change and history obscures, but the inspirational works of our forerunners ought not be forgotten. Fr. Kirk left the Catholic Church (for reasons that don\u2019t seem to be readily available). This decision may perplex (if only because the terrain is so different now), but it cannot obscure the beauty of his soul, the reminder he brings to recall that Christ lives in us when we find Him in the least among us.<\/p>\n