March 2

Rev. Joan E. Sulser ~ Scripture Micah 6:8

We’re midway through the Christian season of Lent and continuing our focus on 20^th century saints whose walk with Jesus inspires and challenges us.

Today we’re looking at Dorothy Day. Of the five people we’re focusing on, she is the only American and the only one who was a lay person, rather than a clergy person. Her life story is complex and has unexpected twists and turns. Dorothy Day is probably the most like most of us. She certainly didn’t think she did anything extraordinary. In fact, long before her death November 29, 1980, Day found herself regarded by many as a saint. Her response? "Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily."

Dorothy Day was born in New York in 1897 and grew up in Chicago. Here Dorothy began to read books that stirred her conscience. Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, inspired her to take long walks in poor neighborhoods in Chicago’s South Side. It was the start of a life-long attraction to areas many people avoid. She attended the University of Illinois for a couple of years and then moved to New York City where she worked as a journalist.

Early on, Dorothy had a sense that the social order was unjust, a conviction that lasted throughout her life. When she was 20, she was one of the women arrested for protesting in front of the White House, speaking out for women’s right to vote. In her 20’s Dorothy lived what was then considered a risqué lifestyle, but would be pretty normal by today’s standards. When she was 30, she gave birth to a daughter and joined the Roman Catholic Church, leading to a breakup with her atheist anarchist boyfriend. Dorothy remained single for the rest of her life.

The Catholic climate of worship appealed to her. While initially she knew little about Catholic belief, Catholic spiritual discipline fascinated her. She saw the Catholic Church as "the church of the immigrants, the church of the poor." For the next few years she tried to find a way to bring together her religious faith and her radical social values.

In 1932, she met Peter Maurin, a Christian Brother from France who had embraced poverty as a vocation. He told Dorothy she should start a paper to publicize Catholic social teaching and promote steps to bring about the peaceful transformation of society. Day readily embraced the idea. If family past, work experience and religious faith had prepared her for anything, it was this. Within a few months, the first issue of The Catholic Worker was being handed out. Within a few more months, 100,000 copies were being printed each month.

For the first half year The Catholic Worker was only a newspaper, but as winter approached, homeless people began to knock on the door. Maurin’s essays in the paper were calling for renewal of the ancient Christian practice of hospitality to those who were homeless. In this way followers of Christ could respond to Jesus’ words: "I was a stranger and you took me in." Maurin opposed the idea that Christians should take care only of their friends and leave care of strangers to impersonal charitable agencies. Every home should have its "Christ Room" and every parish a house of hospitality ready to receive the "ambassadors of God."

Surrounded by people in need and attracting volunteers excited about ideas they discovered in The Catholic Worker, it was inevitable that the editors would soon be given the chance to put their principles into practice. Day’s apartment was the seed of many houses of hospitality to come. (Jim Forest, The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History)

The purpose of that first Catholic Worker "House of Hospitality," located in the slums of New York, was to carry out those works that sound like such a good idea in theory – housing the homeless and feeding the hungry. Dorothy wrote:

There are several families with us, destitute families, destitute to an unbelievable extent, and there, too, is nothing to do but to love. What I mean is that there is no chance of rehabilitation, no chance, so far as we see, of changing them; certainly no chance of adjusting them to this abominable world about them -- and who wants them adjusted, anyway?

What we would like to do is change the world – make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And to a certain extent, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the destitute – the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words – we can to a certain extent change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world.

What got Day into the most trouble was pacifism. A nonviolent way of life, as she saw it, was at the heart of the Gospel. She took as seriously as the early Church the command of Jesus to Peter: "Put away your sword, for whoever lives by the sword shall perish by the sword."

Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s declaration of war, Dorothy announced that the paper would maintain its pacifist stand. "We will print the words of Christ who is with us always," Day wrote. "Our manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount." Opposition to the war, she added, had nothing to do with sympathy for America’s enemies. "We love our country.... We have been the only country in the world where men and women of all nations have taken refuge from oppression." But the means of action the Catholic Worker movement supported were the works of mercy rather than the works of war. She urged "our friends and associates to care for the sick and the wounded, to the growing of food for the hungry, to the continuance of all our works of mercy in our houses and on our farms."

As you can imagine, this attitude was not popular. Some of the Catholic Worker houses closed because people didn’t want to work at a place associated with opposition to war. Dorothy was firm in her commitment to nonviolence – throughout WWII, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War. She spoke out, wrote articles, participated in civil disobedience … and encouraged others to do the same.

The Catholic Worker houses became a national and international movement. The Catholic Worker Movement, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933, is grounded in a firm belief in the God-given dignity of every human person. Today over 185 Catholic Worker communities remain committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken. Catholic Workers continue to protest injustice, war, racism, and violence of all forms. Staff members take a vow of voluntary poverty, to live alongside the low-income people they serve, treating them as "guests," not clients. Place of Grace in La Crosse is a Catholic Worker house, continuing the tradition of Christian hospitality.

It isn’t easy work. A passage from Dostoevsky which has become closely associated with Dorothy because she quoted it so often comes from The Brothers Karamazov. A society woman goes to Fr. Zossima to speak about her lack of faith and how to achieve immortality. The woman says she likes to love, but wants an immediate reward. Fr. Zossima’s response is, "Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams." This phrase sustains Workers through difficult moments in Houses of Hospitality when the problems are overwhelming and guests are often anything but grateful. The rush of romantic emotion often associated with helping the poor faded after a few days or weeks in a House of Hospitality and Workers have to be sustained by something much deeper. In the postcript to The Long Loneliness, Dorothy wrote: "…the final word is love. At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire" (The Long Loneliness, p. 285).

When I think of Dorothy Day, I think of her as someone who truly lived the words of the prophet Micah. She did justice, loved mercy and walked humbly with her God. With all that she accomplished – publishing newspapers, starting an international movement, receiving awards from the Vatican and Catholic universities – Dorothy remained humble. She said, "And when I think of the little I ever did, I am filled with hope and love for all those others devoted to the cause of social justice." Her faith sustained her, shaped her, guided her. "If I have achieved anything in my life," she once remarked, "it is because I have not been embarrassed to talk about God."

The two most recent persons we’ve looked at (Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Oscar Romero) were heroic figures who died for their faith. Dorothy Day lived for her faith. She saw herself as very ordinary, and called others to be ordinary. She said, "To this very day, common sense in religion is rare, and we are too often trying to be heroic instead of just ordinarily good and kind."

People like Bonhoeffer and Romero intimidate me. I look at them and think, "I could never be like that." In some ways, though, they’re easier to deal with. I figure God won’t ever call me into circumstances that dire, and I go about my daily life.

Dorothy Day is both easier and more challenging. She’s easier because she was such an ordinary person. She was a college dropout, a single mother, passionate, a lay person who loved and challenged the church. She seems like people I meet in daily life. Dorothy Day, however, is also challenging. Her commitment to nonviolence and care for the poorest of the poor, lived out without fanfare, challenges me to examine my commitments. Am I living what I believe? Dorothy’s realism about our society and those who are poor and her vision of what is possible challenge me to examine where I’m realistic and where I’m visionary. Is my vision in sync with God’s?

What does God require of us? To do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God. May Dorothy Day’s example challenge and inspire us as we walk with Jesus. Amen.