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Day 7 Saints Novena – Dorothy Day
We offer this Saints Novena in gratitude for the ways God lives and moves and has being in the lives of all the saints who are part of this online community. We give thanks for you and for the gift of God that you are to us and to the world. It is because of people like you that there is this awesome place of hospitality and gospel community. This novena is written by the A Nun’s Life Community.
7 Saints Novena – Dorothy Day – by Bcoop
Reflection: Dorothy Day (born: November 8, 1897; died: November 29, 1980)
Dorothy Day on picket line with farm workers in Lamont, California, 1973
I wonder how Dorothy feels about being “nominated for official sainthood”? She is reputed to have said: “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.” Saints do run the danger of being “photoshopped” – all their quirks and warts smoothed away until they appear as bland as marshmallows. That might be more difficult to do with Dorothy.
Dorothy’s whole life was marked by concern for the injustices of society and the plight of destitute people. She spent her life joining charity and justice. As she said: “There was a great question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying social evils instead of avoiding them in the first place? . . . Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves but to do away with slavery?” (Long Loneliness, p. 45)
Dorothy’s first job as a journalist was with the New York Call, a socialist newspaper. Her reporter colleagues were socialists, communists, labour organizers for the American Federation of Labour and the Industrial Workers of the World and various free thinkers and anarchists opposed to conscription and the entry of the United States into World War I.
The labour movement, socialist ideas, and her own experiences of hardship had a strong influence on Dorothy’s commitment to social justice. At the same time, she was searching for some inner connection with the God who was enticing her. Brought up in a nominally Protestant home, Dorothy was drawn to the ritual of the Catholic Church.
In 1927 Dorothy’s daughter, Tamar, was born and was baptized in the Catholic Church. Dorothy said: “I did not want my child to flounder as I had often floundered. I wanted to believe, and I wanted my child to believe, and if belonging to a Church would give her so inestimable a grace as faith in God, and the companionable love of the Saints, then the thing to do was to have her baptized a Catholic.”
Dorothy’s interest in religion, as well as the birth of Tamar, led to the break-up of her common-law marriage. This freed her to be received into the Catholic Church and started her on a search to bring together her faith and her social values.
In 1932 Dorothy met Peter Maurin and the Catholic Worker was born. These communities still work to fulfil these words of Dorothy: “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?”
Prayer: Help us dear Dorothy, to overcome our fear with love, our selfishness with compassion, and our anger with peace.
Suggested Reading:
- Main website for the Catholic Worker
- Social Justice Teachings, Catholic Worker House in Oklahoma City
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Dorothy Day is one of my favorite saints – because she lived out her baptismal commitment without compromising her conscience – even when bishops disagreed with her. There’s a wonderful movie about her called “Entertaining Angels.” Martin Sheen played the part of Peter Maurin. Order it through Netflix.
I recently had to choose a saint for a paper for one of my Theology courses and I chose Dorothy Day. While it was a hard choice in some ways, it was easy in the end because I believed that Dorothy was most like what Jesus would describe as a “saint” – a very real, very human person with all her faults out there, still plowing forward to follow Christ at all cost. I admire Dorothy because I cannot imagine having the strength of character to do what she did, but she keeps me trying. I think of her often each day now that I have gotten to know more about her. She had amazing courage and perseverence…I think she is a saint I would have really liked to have known, and I feel enriched by her life and her participation in the communion of saints which watch over and aid us each day.