Reflecting on the nexus between history and our own lives

by Johnny Zokovitch

There is a distinct pleasure in reading a book written by someone you know well. Add gratitude to that pleasure when the book is written by someone who has mentored and shaped you and is, in large part, responsible for how you see, interpret and understand the world. Such has been my experience in reading Falling into God, by author and activist Tom Cordaro, who is also one of Pax Christi USA’s Ambassadors of Peace.

Let me get the full disclosure out of the way. I first worked with Tom when I was a young campus minister at the University of Miami in the early 1990s. I was in that highly impressionable part of life, my early 20s, and I had been primed for my encounter with Tom by having read Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton and Gustavo Gutierrez in college, just completing a year of volunteer service with the Catholic Volunteers of Florida, and having recently attended my first retreat with Pax Christi Florida (a retreat led by Dan Berrigan!) I had run across a short article about Tom in Sojourners magazine and I knew that he had just left the Pax Christi USA staff to move to take this position in Miami.

Seeking out mentors was an intentional choice for me, and Tom became one of the most significant mentors – and friends – that I have ever had. From turning me on to biblical scholar Ched Myers and German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer to a long education on the Catholic Worker movement to my formation as a community organizer, so much of who I am and what I have done can trace the roots back to Tom.

The lengthy subtitle of the book, “My lay Catholic journey in spirituality and ministry from family and home to Vatican II and the Holy Spirit to prophetic work for justice and peace,” as well as the hefty size – more than 500 pages – warns you that what you’re getting into here will be an exercise in breadth and depth. Equal parts memoir, historical narrative, political treatise and theological exploration, Tom uses his own life as the backbone to spin a tale that anyone alive over the past 75 years and active within the Catholic world will find something of their experience captured, their own memories crisscrossing with many of the moments that Tom touches on throughout. 

There is an earthiness or tactility in the choice to anchor so many big ideas, theological concepts and social analysis in one’s own personal story, and Tom references Howard Zinn and Ken Burns as inspirations for how “history is more than a dry collection of important dates and events; it is also the stories of ordinary people and their response to the events that shaped their times.” And all of the big events are here – from John F. Kennedy’s assassination to September 11, 2001, to the murder of George Floyd – whether as background or the instigating factor for the questions and insights that Tom wrestles with from the opening pages, starting with his family life to his pondering on identity when faced with retirement that closes the book.

While the personal revelations of Tom’s family life offer a chance to appreciate just how influential those early and lifelong relationships shape and form all of us, I think most poignant for likely readers of this book will be the sections that highlight the challenges and impact of Catholic peace and justice work over the past half-century. Tom’s own experiences in the 1970s and 80s find him riding the waves of the faith and resistance movement in response to the threat of nuclear war, and his recounting of those pivotal events conjures the feeling of being on the front lines of those actions of nonviolent protest – or has you recalling your own similar experiences. Tom’s adult years mirror closely the 50+ years of Pax Christi USA’s existence, and he captures all of the excitement and messiness of Catholic peacemaking from both the perspective of a young outsider running up against the established authority figures of the movement and later as an elder figure, influential in his own right in steering the organization from the inside, most notably in its commitment to confronting white privilege and dismantling racism within its own structures, policies and practices. 

For local organizers and lay ministers working within the institutional Catholic church, particularly at the parish level, Tom’s reflections on his lifelong professional lay ministry – first in campus ministry in Iowa in the 1970s and culminating in 20+ years as a social justice minister in a wealthy parish in Naperville, Illinois – offers practical advice as well as encouragement to experiment in ways that might (or might not, he concedes) open up wholly new ways of being church.

The title of Tom’s book, Falling into God, ultimately functions as a metaphor for the entirety of Tom’s journey – politically, theologically, and spiritually. His meditation on his personal discipleship journey as a constant and deepening call to “fall into God” frames every aspect of his life, from the macro – like how to follow Jesus in an age of corporate globalization – to the micro – his touching struggles on how to be a good father to his daughter Angela. 

The explicit purpose of a book like this serves as an invitation to readers to mine the fertile ground of our own memories, experiences, and lives. 

“If there ever was such a thing, the answer to the meaning of life is not in some ideology or theology; it is in our story. And it is in the telling of our story that we are saved,” Tom writes. “So take your story seriously before it is over. As poet and author Margaret Atwood once wrote, ‘In the end, we’ll all become stories.’”

In reading Tom’s, I’m grateful that he took up the invitation with all the contemplation and clarity that those who know him have come to expect.

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Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of the Pax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership at St. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis. Read more from Johnny at https://johnnyzokovitch.substack.com/ and sign up there to receive his articles directly to your email inbox.