By Rita McInerney and Gretchen Keiser

Sing, give praise and don’t hold back, Father Richard Wise urged as he welcomed the congregation attending the Annual Catholic prayer service honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Next, Mrs. Juanita Baranco repeated this invitation as she called the people to worship at the archdiocesan service held Jan. 19 at Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Decatur.

“We are here to honor a man who led us through some very trying times,” she said. “We have come together in prayerful commitment” to carry out the task of being “drum majors for peace and justice.”

“Sing boldly, pray unabashedly and move lyrically,” she concluded. For the next two hours, the congregation followed these invitations with devotion and enthusiasm, making truth of Father Wise’s comment, “We are not frozen Catholics here.”

The prayer service honoring Dr. King is sponsored by the archdiocesan Office for Black Catholic Ministry.

In his homily, Archbishop James P. Lyke, OFM, gave thoughtful tribute to the civil rights leader he first met in Cleveland shortly after his own ordination. He stressed, for the benefit of the college and university students in the congregation, Dr. King’s great commitment to learning.

Archbishop Lyke talked about the dimensions of the “triangle of life,” as lived by Dr. King and how they could be adapted as principles of life for his followers.

The archbishop spoke of his own awe when he met Dr. King in a church basement in Cleveland. The civil rights leader was there to support the mayoral campaign of Carl Stokes, first black elected mayor of that city.

The young priest wondered then what he, also working for Stoke’s election, could say to “this giant of a man.” On Jan. 19 he talked of “the stuff” of Dr. King’s life, the length, breadth and height of his years on this earth.

Borrowing Dr. King’s own words, the archbishop quoted: “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.”

Without the three working together harmoniously, life is incomplete, Archbishop Lyke continued. He compared life to a great triangle, one angle for the individual person, the second for other persons and at the top the “supreme infinite person, God.” These three must meet in every individual life if it is to be complete.

“Martin lived this way, and I think we honor him if we study his belief, not with the aim of hero worship or adulation, but with the sincere aim of adopting his model for the sake of our own improvement.”

Archbishop Lyke recalled Dr. King as a “professional student and learner of the human experience.” Of his 39 “short years” of life, 23 were spent in school.

Traces of his own keen interest in students, nurtured during his years as Newman chaplain at Grambling State University in Louisiana, were obvious as Archbishop Lyke turned to the students in the congregation and asked them to listen closely.

“King was who he was and did what he did in great part because he was a serious student of the human experience. He observed with a keen eye, sized up what he saw, and acted decisively. He was a student of God and he studied people who loved God.”

In his youth, the archbishop said, Dr. King “recognized the bogus nature of ‘lookin’ fine and soundin’ bad’ and centered his life on learning everything he could, and turning his learning into something good for everyone. Growing up in a segregated world and treated as less than acceptable, King refused to give in to all the bigotry around him, and the shameful put-downs of the system.”

By continuing to study and to learn all the days of his life, the archbishop said, Dr. King “built that first leg of the triangle,” what he called the length of life, “the push of a life forward to achieve its personal ends and ambitions. It is the inward concern for one’s own welfare.”

Dr. King also was concerned with other people, Archbishop Lyke said, moving on to the second leg of the triangle, the breadth of life. He was no uninvolved thinker, living alone in a “tower of his own thought and conjecture. As sure as the ‘Word became flesh,’ he took his knowledge to the streets and turned it into power – not the power to rule, but the power to lead, not the power to destroy, but the power to create hope.”

All the hours he had spent studying came to his aid when he had to stand up and talk to the world,” Archbishop Lyke said. “When Martin Luther King spoke, the world sat up and listened like it hadn’t listened in a long, long time. His words commanded attention and they yielded change. His words made people determined to make life better.”

Dr. King turned everything he said and did “into a great act of loving. From learning to loving is the flow of his life. He gave his knowledge generously and people loved him for that. He embraced the world-wide human family.”

The completion of King’s triangle of life is found in his “profound and lasting faith in God,” not a passive God, but the God who inspires, sustains, satisfies “our restless natures by giving us the ability to change – to become better and to become whole.”

Quoting Dr. King the archbishop said, “Seek God and discover Him and make Him a power in your life. 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.”

Archbishop Lyke led the congregation in well-earned applause for the musicians as the service ended. Alphonso Nuckles, choir director at St. Paul of the Cross parish, Atlanta, led the 75-voice archdiocesan choir, soloists and instrumentalists.

Taking part in the service were members of the children’s choir from Sts. Peter and Paul School.

Father Melvin Shorter, pastor of St. Paul of the Cross, gave the opening prayer. Readings were given by Mrs. Lorraine Mencer, Sister Loretta McCarthy, and George Derricotte.

Mrs. Josie Mitchell of Sts. Peter and Paul was in charge of the ample buffet at the reception following the service.

The annual prayer service was planned by the archdiocesan Office for Black Catholic Ministry led by Mrs. Rhonwyn Rogers.

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National speakers at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the late Dr. King’s church and springboard for the civil rights movement, struck a theme of “realistic hope” as they addressed the 23rd annual ecumenical prayer service making King’s birthday, Jan. 20.

Whether from political or faith perspectives, leaders acknowledged the problems facing the United States and the air of public pessimism, but challenged the audience to take up the task of non-violent social change.

Mayor Maynard Jackson of Atlanta spoke up for gun control, noting that 63 percent of violence in the city now is between strangers and is “dope driven.”

“We’ve got to stop the guns. We’ve got to stop the drugs, and time has run out,” Jackson said. “College students are starting to think it is hip to go to parities and flash their guns. We’ve got to stop the guns now, if we’re serious about non-violence.”

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan evoked Dr. King’s call for people someday to be judged “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Citing black on black homicides, drive-by shootings and gang turf battles “ravaging our neighborhoods,” Sullivan also spoke of “evils that stem from our own behavior,” including drug abuse and alcoholism.

“We did not march for freedom to be enslaved by nicotine, by alcohol, by drugs” the secretary said.

He urged not only a recommitment to the civil rights movement, but a revival of “a sense of personal responsibility.”

One thousand people attended the ecumenical service, which capped the week-long commemoration of Dr. King’s birthday hosted by the King Center, and was followed by a march of celebration with African National Congress leader Winnie Mandela of South Africa as grand marshal.

Mrs. Mandela, who seemed overcome with emotion when she addressed the ecumenical service, called Dr. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, her “sister,” and said she and the ANC delegation came to King Week to “claim as our own’ the principles embodied by the work of the slain civil rights leader. She acknowledged that over the course of its history the ANC had resorted to violence after it was banned by South Africa. Mrs. Mandela said the movement recommitted itself to non-violence in 1990 when it was again permitted to take part in political life.

Traditional anthems such as “We Shall Overcome” and “Come By Here (Kum Ba Yah)” were interspersed in the program as world leaders and celebrities crowded into rows with veterans of 1950s lunch counter sit-ins and people too young to have witnessed those events who continue to be inspired by Dr. King. Heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield, and singer Kris Kristofferson were among the celebrities.

A brief videotape of the 1967 Ebenezer sermon was shown in which Dr. King defended his opposition to the Vietnam war and said, “I don’t know about you, but I ‘ain’t gonna study war no more.”

The service culminated in a sermon preached by Dr. James Alexander Forbes, Jr., senior minister of The Riverside Church in New York City, who used the prophet Jeremiah to prod 1992 people of faith out of a “withholding spirit.”

Taking his inspiration from a passage in which Jeremiah, after prophesying that Jerusalem would fall to Babylon, purchases a piece of land there, Forbes said he too urges people “even in these times, invest in the new order now.”

Jeremiah’s purchase of land was inspired by God to show Jerusalem that despite present troubles and even the downfall of the city, “people will again buy fields” and God’s promise will prevail.

“A prophet waits and waits until he discerns the will of the Lord,” Forbes said, and once he discerns it, he tries to find a means to communicate that vision to the people. Jeremiah’s ceremonial purchase of land in the midst of disaster communicated his confidence in God’s promise of redemption would come about. “King talked about a beloved community,” Forbes aid, “he talked about a kingdom of God and about sitting at a table of brotherhood. King knew it and tried to tell it. Jeremiah knew it and tried to tell it. It’s insider information and you’re insiders. You need to invest in the new order now.”

People of faith need to invest their time, their talent and their resources in God’s way, he said, obviously touching a nerve when he challenged the audience, despite “hard times” to “live up to tithing standard” and even to “double tithers,” giving 10 percent of their income to their own church and 10 percent to charitable organizations that are “building up the new order.”

“Even though these are hard times, it may be the best time to live up to the tithing standard,” he said.

Forbes also said people of faith need to “invest in our children.”