Heroines of Faith - Part 2

DAILY BYTE

This week we’re hearing the stories of five women of faith, who can challenge and encourage us in the living of our lives.

DOROTHY DAY (1897 – 1980)

In the year that Therese of Lisieux died, Dorothy Day was born in New York City. Growing up she had little exposure to religion, and by the time she was in college had totally rejected Christianity. Her friends and social circle comprised an odd assortment of communists, anarchists, artists and intellectuals, most of whom accepted Karl Marx’s dictum that “religion was the opium of the people.”

At the age of 29 she had a child with a man she deeply loved, and this sparked a mysterious conversion for her. She became aware of the aimlessness of her Bohemian existence and so committed both herself and her child to God. A painful consequence of this was the end of her common-law marriage, as the man she loved had no use for marriage or God. She also suffered from a sense that her conversion was a betrayal of the cause of the poor, as the church seemed to her to identify more with those in positions of power and privilege. She spent some lonely years in the wilderness, raising her child alone, praying for some way of reconciling her faith and her commitment to social justice.

The answer came in 1932 when she was encouraged to start a newspaper that would offer a radical Gospel critique of the social system and stand in solidarity with the working class. The ‘Catholic Worker’ was launched on May 1, 1933 – a publication that sought not only to denounce injustice, but also to announce a new social order based on the recognition of Christ in one’s neighbours.

In an effort to practice what they preached Dorothy Day converted the offices of the ‘Catholic Worker’ into a house of hospitality – the first of many – offering food for the hungry and shelter for the tired masses uprooted by the Depression. This became part of her enduring legacy as she continued to live out the implications of the gospel with great courage and often at great cost.

Her favourite saint was Therese of Lisieux (whom we looked at yesterday) whose “little way” indicated the path to holiness within all the business of our daily lives. From Therese, Dorothy Day drew the insight that any act of love might contribute to the balance of love in the world, and any suffering endured in love might ease the burden of others. But when people referred to her as a saint she would reply, “Don’t dismiss me that easily!” She wanted ordinary people to take the challenge of her life seriously, for she ardently believed that the challenge of the gospel was not for a few select “saints” but for everybody.

PRAY AS YOU GO

O Lord, we are all called to live extraordinary lives. And by your grace we can do so when we dare to take the challenge of the gospel seriously, and to express it in our daily lives. Strengthen us for this high calling we pray. Amen.

FOCUS READING

2 Corinthians 3:3-6 (The Message & CEV)

Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it - not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives - and we publish it.

We are sure about all this. Christ makes us sure in the very presence of God. We don't have the right to claim that we have done anything on our own. God gives us what it takes to do all that we do. His letter authorizes us to help carry out this new plan of action. The plan wasn't written out with ink on paper, with pages and pages of legal footnotes, killing your spirit. It's written with Spirit on spirit, his life on our lives!