Mustard Seed marks 50 years of serving community

By Michael Boover
A founder and core community member of the Mustard Seed
Special to The Catholic Free Press

WORCESTER - The Mustard Seed Catholic Worker community, named for the  parable of the mustard seed (Mk 4:30-32), turned 50 years old this month. Its official birthday was Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis, the “little poor man of Assisi.”
The “Seed” community that has fed and cared for the city’s poor, especially through its free suppers at 93 Piedmont St., is celebrating.
Among events were a meal in the spring to thank volunteers, and a block party in July for Piedmont Street neighbors and those served by the Seed. Leaders are also working with College of the Holy Cross students who are in classes which include studying the Catholic Worker movement and serving meals at the Mustard Seed.
The largest anniversary celebration is a national/international Catholic Worker gathering Oct. 21-23 at Holy Cross. About 16 Holy Cross alumni have founded, or are living in, Catholic Worker and allied houses and farms.
The Mustard Seed and its sister house, SS. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker, are hosting these days of talks and workshops to reflect on how Catholic Worker charisms have been lived out and on improvements that can be made. A talent show and dance party are also planned for the gathering. Expected to attend are Catholic Workers from houses of hospitality, where immediate relief is given to the needy, and from farming communes, where a Catholic life on the land is pursued to demonstrate a just and peaceful existence in a world of economic disparity, war, and climate crisis. Other people are also coming. For more information see mustardseedcw.org and the Facebook page at facebook.com/mustardseedcw/.
Worcester Catholic Worker communities have previously hosted movement-wide gatherings, including one for the movement’s 75th anniversary in 2008, which drew 500 people from around the world.
The movement was founded by Dorothy Day, a radical journalist turned Catholic convert, and her spiritual mentor Peter Maurin, former Christian Brother turned peasant scholar. The venture began in 1933 in New York City as a penny-a-copy newspaper (still only a penny) that advocated the performance of the works of mercy as a response to Depression-era poverty and war. They soon found themselves unexpectedly leading a nationwide movement that attempted to live out Catholic social teaching, as readers decided to give flesh to what they read, in support of the poor and workers. There are now about 200 Catholic Worker houses and farms in the world.
The Mustard Seed began as a “storefront community living room” in 1972, when Holy Cross students and peace activists Frank Kartheiser and Shawn Donovan decided to undertake a local “experiment” in Catholic Worker hospitality at 195 Pleasant St. Geri DiNardo and I soon joined them. In 1974 we opened a full-service hospitality house at 93 Piedmont St. With support from many friends, some of whom lived there, we provided a place to live and eat for some of Worcester’s lonely, homeless and hungry.
While Dorothy Day never visited the Mustard Seed, she said our community reminded her of St. Francis’ “Little Portion,” the Portiuncula, the small church where the early Franciscans gathered.
Clergy were among early Mustard Seed supporters. Msgr. Francis J. Scollen, pastor of St. Peter Parish, is still a friend of our work. Others, now deceased, included Fathers Bernard E. Gilgun and John Burke, and Jesuit Father Joseph LaBran.
More recent priest supporters have been Fathers John F. Madden, pastor of St. John Parish; Richard F. Trainor, minister to priests; Paul T. O’Connell, senior priest at St. Anne Parish in Shrewsbury, and John J. Foley, retired. Father Enoch K. Kyeremateng, African Ministry chaplain, was also involved before the pandemic.
Professors Michael True from Assumption College, now deceased, and David J. O’Brien, retired from Holy Cross, were also helpful.
In the early 1980s the Mustard Seed’s house burned down. The cause of the fire was never determined. A state-of-the-art soup kitchen was built on the same site through the efforts of Father Gilgun, Mustard Seed chaplain, Bishop Timothy J. Harrington, and many people in the Christian and the broader community.
Lucky Clarke served the hungry at St. Paul Cathedral while the new house was being built. She was succeeded by Donna Domiziano, director of the Mustard Seed for three decades, who was assisted by co-worker Mary Leary, and Joe Devoe, Bobby Guthro, “Little Cheryl” and other volunteers, many from local colleges and faith communities.
The Mustard Seed offered a meal to the city’s hungry daily for many years and now does so each weekday. Its food pantry, open every Tuesday, provides food, clothes, bedding and toiletries. A mobile animal pantry provides pet food. A weekly medical clinic is offered in collaboration with the Homeless Outreach & Advocacy Project, an effort of UMass Memorial Health Care’s Community Healthlink.
The Mustard Seed has also worked on behalf of peace and environmental, social, and economic justice. An especially prominent Seed member was Tom Lewis, a local artist and one of the “Catonsville Nine” activists who brought a radical peace message to the world in 1968 by burning draft files to protest the Vietnam war. He joined the local Catholic Worker community and led opposition to work on the MX missile system at GTE in Westborough.
Monks at St. Joseph Abbey in Spencer have helped with spiritual life and provided food from a monastery garden. Catholic and Protestant churches, a Hindu community in Shrewsbury, Muslim families, Jewish youth, and corporate and civic groups have also helped the Mustard Seed. Members of Tufts Veterinary School have provided animal care clinics.
Mass is celebrated at 7 p.m. monthly, on different Fridays, in the Mustard Seed chapel. (For dates, see the Seed’s Facebook page.) In addition, lay people lead Liturgy of the Hours after supper, around 6:15 p.m., every Monday and Friday.
In 2015, the Mustard Seed became a non-profit entity guided by a core community, including founders and new workers, who hold the assets in common. Richard “Koz” Kozlowski, a member of the movement who lived at the House of Ammon Catholic Worker farm in Hubbardston for many years, joined the efforts, as Catholic Workers worked for five years to put the house on a more secure footing.
The Mustard Seed core community now addresses many challenges, including family troubles, economic inequality, drug addictions and untreated mental and physical health problems. Worcester has homeless encampments and beggars on street corners. The Mustard Seed community feels called to grapple with these local concerns, along with global issues of war and climate change.
As in the mustard seed parable, the community pins its hopes on being like that tiny seed that wondrously grows into a big tree in whose branches the birds may take their rest.
So the community still aspires to be an example of a kindly and peaceful life marked by prayer, personal and communal conversion, and clarification of thought (lifelong learning), hoping with God’s help to better contribute to “the building of a society where it is easier for people to be good,” as Peter Maurin envisioned.

– Michael Boover’s book, “The Mustard Seed Catholic Worker in Worcester, Massachusetts: A Tentative, Personal, and Somewhat Poetic Folk History,” is available by contacting mbhoundofheaven@gmail.com. The book is free, but contributions to the Mustard Seed, P.O. Box 2592, Worcester, MA 01613 are welcome.