From the Pastor&
     On Thursday evening I am giving a reflection about Dorothy Day (1897-1980) for the Twilight Retreat series.  Who was this American woman that some believe will be canonized a saint someday?  Even the late Cardinal O' Connor of New York thought of her as a saint.  During her life many people called her a saint, but she didn't want to be called a saint.  "When they call you a saint," she often said, "it means basically that you're not to be taken seriously."
     She was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1897.  Although she was baptized as an Episcopalian Christian she had little exposure to religion.  By the time she was in college she had rejected Christianity in favor of the radical cause.  Her friends were communists, anarchists, and an assortment of New York artists and intellectuals, most of the opinion that religion was the "opium of the people."
     A turning point in her happened in 1926 when she became pregnant& at the time she was in a "common law" marriage.  A mysterious conversion took place.  She felt her life was aimless and so she turned to God.  She decided to have her infant daughter baptized a Roman Catholic, and she joined the Catholic Church after her daughter's baptism.  Because of this decision, the man she deeply loved left her because he did not believe in marriage.   The next years were lonely, raising her child alone, and praying for a way to reconcile her faith and her commitment to social justice.  She felt that the church identified with the status quo when it came to the cause of the poor.
     In 1932 she found the answer for reconciling her faith with justice.  She met Peter Maurin who encouraged her to begin a newspaper that would offer solidarity with workers and a critique of the social system from the radical perspective of the Gospels.  Together with Maurin she launched the Catholic Worker movement.  It is an effort to show that the radical gospel commandment of love could be lived.  She understood this challenge not just in charity but in a political form as well, confronting and resisting the social forces which gave rise to such a need for charity.
     As a result she was called a communist.  She wasn't disturbed by the criticism.  "The servant is not greater than the master," she like to quote.  She was also a pacifist and involved in civil rights and the United Farm Workers movement.  She was a witness for the gospel at all costs, even when she was jailed, shot at, and investigated repeatedly by the FBI.  She rooted her life by living with the poor and sustained by the discipline of liturgy and prayer.  Her spiritual life gave her credibility and made her a challenge to both religions and civil authorities.  She called on the church to recover its identity as an offense and mystery in the eyes of the world.
     From her writings:

• To be a saint is to be a lover, ready to leave, to give all.  Dostoevsky said that love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams, but if 'we see only Jesus' in all who come to us...then it is easier.
  
• Fr. John Hugo used to remind us that "he who says he has done enough has already perished..." and "you love God as much as the one you love the least."
  
• A New Testament and a pair of knees are all one needs in jail.
  
• God takes us at our word.
  

Fr. Bill