Servant of God Dorothy Day
On the Grapevine 25
Dorothy Day was a chain smoker. Each year, she gave up smoking for Lent, and each year she was so difficult to deal with that the staff of the Catholic Worker prayed for her to fail. Finally, her spiritual confessor told her that she was not to give up smoking anymore, but rather to pray," Dear God, help me stop smoking." She adopted this prayer not only during Lent, but every day of the rest of the year, and finally one day, the desire to smoke was completely gone. She never smoked again.
Although her father was passionately anti-Catholic, Dorothy had a special fondness for the Catholic spiritual discipline and Catholic worship. While she was young and living in Chicago she occasionally attended Catholic Mass. Dorothy Day's concern for the poor and the social order led her to become a radical social activist early on. She tried to find the best way to solve the problem, fighting alongside various groups and becoming disillusioned with many. She had two especially heartbreaking relationships, one of which resulted in an abortion, and the other in the birth of her little girl, Tamar.
In gratitude to God and wanting Tamar to have all the graces she could, she decided to baptize and raise Tamar Catholic. This decision paved the way for her own reception into the Catholic Church that December. Sacramental life became the core of her existence - she attended daily mass, weekly confessions, and frequent adoration.
Dorothy Day was still very concerned with the plight of the poor, but didn't know how to go about helping them. She prayed to Mary for guidance on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and Peter Maurin showed up at her door the next day. Together they founded the Catholic Worker, a penny newspaper publicizing Catholic social teaching and encouraging Christian hospitality towards all, but most especially the needy. It quickly became not only a newspaper, but a movement serving the poor. Dorothy said of her movement, "We feed the hungry, yes. We try to shelter the homeless and give them clothes, but there is strong faith at work; we pray. If an outsider who comes to visit us doesn’t pay attention to our prayings and what that means, then he’ll miss the whole point.” And "If I have achieved anything in my life, it is because I have not been embarrassed to talk about God."
You can read more about her HERE.
Although her father was passionately anti-Catholic, Dorothy had a special fondness for the Catholic spiritual discipline and Catholic worship. While she was young and living in Chicago she occasionally attended Catholic Mass. Dorothy Day's concern for the poor and the social order led her to become a radical social activist early on. She tried to find the best way to solve the problem, fighting alongside various groups and becoming disillusioned with many. She had two especially heartbreaking relationships, one of which resulted in an abortion, and the other in the birth of her little girl, Tamar.
In gratitude to God and wanting Tamar to have all the graces she could, she decided to baptize and raise Tamar Catholic. This decision paved the way for her own reception into the Catholic Church that December. Sacramental life became the core of her existence - she attended daily mass, weekly confessions, and frequent adoration.
Dorothy Day was still very concerned with the plight of the poor, but didn't know how to go about helping them. She prayed to Mary for guidance on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and Peter Maurin showed up at her door the next day. Together they founded the Catholic Worker, a penny newspaper publicizing Catholic social teaching and encouraging Christian hospitality towards all, but most especially the needy. It quickly became not only a newspaper, but a movement serving the poor. Dorothy said of her movement, "We feed the hungry, yes. We try to shelter the homeless and give them clothes, but there is strong faith at work; we pray. If an outsider who comes to visit us doesn’t pay attention to our prayings and what that means, then he’ll miss the whole point.” And "If I have achieved anything in my life, it is because I have not been embarrassed to talk about God."
You can read more about her HERE.